This Week in Startups
00:11:38 · Molly Wood, Jason Calacanis, Dorena Kuya
[00:11:38] S1: Right. But [00:11:39] S0: maybe there were enough instances of it that it felt that way. Yeah. In which case you would really have to think about that, like, are you letting enough people of color in as members? Do you have a code of conduct? Because maybe it was, there were just happened to be some Karens at the place who just were maniacal maniacs who were entitled, and you needed to say to them, Hey, you cannot talk to the staff this way. And the team here that supports you, we expect as part of your membership, that you treat them with as much respect as the other members, they're members themselves. That's what I would have done, I would have made the staff members. And I would have allowed the staff to use the facility as members and I would have called the staff members. And they would have just been employee members, they would have been, know, whatever. That's how I would have done the optics. Interesting. And I would have put in the first code of conduct, we treat the support team at the wing with as much respect or more than fellow members. They are members of the community in equal standing to the paying members. Then if somebody were to criticize you, Molly, you could just say, hey, look, number one in our manual is to treat the support members as well as you treat the paying members. Alright, everybody. On the phone today is OpenPhone's founder, Dorena Kuya. Welcome to the program, Dorena. [00:12:50] S3: Thanks, Jason. Great to be here.
00:12:50 · Dorena Kuya, Jason Calacanis
[00:12:50] S3: Thanks, Jason. Great to be here. [00:12:52] S0: What about the situation where you have, you know, a phone number that's a common number? So customer support number or maybe you wanted people to just be able to call you and generally talk to the sales team. How do you handle that when you have a group number, a shared number? [00:13:06] S3: That's actually one of the super unique things about the way we've built OpenPhone is that we allow you to have a shared number for your team. First of all, when you call into that shared number, you can set round robin if that's applicable, or by default, everyone's phone would ring. The first person to pick it up will be able [00:13:23] S0: to have a call. I like that for customer support. Wow. [00:13:25] S3: Exactly. Exactly. And also, if if I'm on a call with a customer, I don't interrupted. There are other people who can pick up new calls coming in. But I also really think what's very cool is that this workflow works as well for text messages. And not only can you just like share responsibility for responding to text, But you can also use this as a training exercise because the way that it works is that if I am a customer support rep, there is a text message from a customer, I don't know how to answer, I can actually tag my teammates privately on that conversation and get help and say, hey, Is this okay to say or how would you respond?
00:13:25 · Dorena Kuya, Jason Calacanis, Molly Wood
[00:13:25] S3: Exactly. Exactly. And also, if if I'm on a call with a customer, I don't interrupted. There are other people who can pick up new calls coming in. But I also really think what's very cool is that this workflow works as well for text messages. And not only can you just like share responsibility for responding to text, But you can also use this as a training exercise because the way that it works is that if I am a customer support rep, there is a text message from a customer, I don't know how to answer, I can actually tag my teammates privately on that conversation and get help and say, hey, Is this okay to say or how would you respond? [00:14:02] S0: Okay, everybody. Twist listeners can get 20% off any plan for their first six months at OpenPhone. Just go to openphone.com/twist. If you got an existing number, they'll port it right over for free. Head to openphone.com/twist today for 20% off. [00:14:18] S1: When do you... This gets to sort of another version of that conversation. When do you have that conversation with that? Know, I mean, in our case, we're pretty early stage, so it's rare. It's we can definitely, in founder university and the accelerator have some of these conversations with people like this is the worst case scenario planning you might want to be doing, but like, when do you, as a VC, like maybe see this starting to go off the rails or you see a couple of the, you know, because all of a sudden the wing, which was such a huge deal, had raised so much money is up and I'll you when this happens, [00:14:48] S0: this happens Who
00:14:48 · Jason Calacanis, Molly Wood
[00:14:48] S0: this happens Who [00:14:48] S1: did an when interview and when?
00:14:50 · Jason Calacanis
[00:14:50] S0: It's when a big influx of money comes in, Because people see that scorecard and in certain people, it triggers entitlement. When certain VCs raise a bunch of money, when they have a big exit, you see all of a sudden on their... You see this happen with VCs, right? Oh, their company went public, it became worth a lot of money. I got to write a book about it. Oh wait, that's me. You know, all of a sudden they're a genius and everybody needs to listen to hang on their every word because they're the third or fourth investor in Uber or whatever it is. Or, you know, they start taking pictures of their jets and all this stuff, right? And they just get obnoxious and they get full of themselves because in our world, for better or worse, money is a scorecard. And that's Siri with that ding telling me I'm That was one ding for correct, it's okay. So, it's accurate. And I think that's what happens, you see it all the time, a founder raises $50,000,000 $25,000,000 and they go off the rails. And other ones are just like, okay, got that money, let me get back to work, I'm product focused. But it can be a distraction, it can also be an eagle lift. So I think when the influx of money comes in, that's when a discussion should happen with the founders. I tend to do it as a board member on a regular basis, but I'm actually now thinking maybe I should incorporate this into founder university or the accelerator. Like we incorporated planning, we're bringing accounting because we did like two year planning and we realized people don't know basic accounting. Yeah, mean, it makes sense, You're starting a company and building an app.
00:16:24 · Molly Wood, Jason Calacanis
[00:16:24] S1: It's amazing that we have that built included because you know, how would you, it doesn't mean it's your skill set just because So you're a [00:16:31] S0: I'm literally going to have one of our portfolio companies come in and teach basic accounting, just chart of accounting, like here's how you categorize bills, here's why you do it, here's how you can have a P and L, you know, and do reporting. Just so they don't do it, you know, run the company for two years and then never do their accounting right and have to do a bit cleanup job later. So I do think maybe talking about morals, ethics, perception, you know, and acting with, you know, a high moral authority, you want to have the high ground in how you make decisions, think is very important. [00:17:06] S1: I even think you could frame it as just intentionality. Like you're being intentional about how you're building your business and you're considering bad outcomes early so that you can try to head them off, think is really, really valuable. It's interesting because that's so every time Elizabeth Holmes comes up and people would interview me as a journalist and now even at once as an investor about it, the question was always like, shouldn't the VCs have done something and [00:17:31] S0: blind spots, [00:17:32] S1: but also if there has, if they make it part of our mandate to say, as you're planning for your growth, are you being intentional about the potential bad outcomes? That seems really valuable.