Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:32:14 · Brian Halligan, Mati Staniszewski, Anton Osika
[00:32:14] S2: Okay. What about your calendar? [00:32:17] S1: Calendar is at least week in advance clean in terms of what I want to do. Then if there's an urgent thing that comes up, then things get reshuffled. And then I think the biggest piece that I've done over the last six months, and you mentioned the conferences, the events, is planning at least a quarter ahead which continents I'll be in. And I'm trying to never be switching the continent in the same month. Within a month, I'm trying to stay in one place. [00:32:47] S2: Oh, so you go to The US for a month? [00:32:48] S1: I usually try to be in The US for close to a month. [00:32:52] S2: I see. [00:32:52] S1: And that helps a lot with getting on the ground, working with the team, but also working with the customers. I think it's going to decrease to two weeks now given how distributed we are. But before that, I used to go for like a few days sometimes to US and has been not Okay. Ideal [00:33:13] S2: Your calendar must be nuts. What does it look like and where do you build in time to actually think? [00:33:22] S0: It's a good question. I kind of I think I think best by talking together with someone else. Okay. So it naturally like happens. [00:33:33] S2: I see.
00:33:33 · Brian Halligan, Anton Osika, Mati Staniszewski
[00:33:33] S2: I see. [00:33:34] S0: Maybe late in the office or something with one on one time. Yeah, think I'm like, I'm still in this like firestorm and I'm going to set on innovating on what works best. Like there's a certain type of creativity that you also only get like when you're bored or like you get some downtime, and I don't I think there's some way to program myself with the like this environment to get more of that. [00:34:02] S2: I did a Wednesday, every Wednesday I work from home, and no meeting. I was no meeting Wednesday. That helped. I'm also a little introverted, so I needed a little time to recharge. Are you guys introverted or extroverted? Are you introverted? [00:34:14] S0: I say that, but people around me are like, no, no, you're fake introverts. But I mean, if I'm alone for a full day, I'm like, Oh, God. [00:34:22] S2: Oh, you are? People, human, come here. I'm not like that. I'm like, Woah, I need another alone day. Okay. Interesting. [00:34:29] S1: The no meetings day helps. I also have no meetings day. It usually gets meetings, but they are meetings I actually want to do rather than are proactive for the future rather than in the moment in this given week.
00:34:29 · Mati Staniszewski, Brian Halligan, Anton Osika
[00:34:29] S1: The no meetings day helps. I also have no meetings day. It usually gets meetings, but they are meetings I actually want to do rather than are proactive for the future rather than in the moment in this given week. [00:34:42] S2: One of the things that really helped me was once a month I made a to do list of like, here's the eight things I want to get done. And I would publish that on our we had a wiki at the time. And so everyone in the company would see what I was working on. And I would look at it every couple of days and be like, does my calendar match my to do list? Because all the Slacks and emails are everybody else's priorities imposed on you. And by putting it on there, it sort of allowed me to say no. It's just so much stuff, and it was hard to say no. And so it gave me license to say, you know, it's not on my to do list. I'm not going to do it. And then I got a hat with a big No on it, a no hat, and I walk around the office and people call me Doctor. No, because I just wanted to keep it focused on a couple of things that I was trying to get done and the company was trying to get done. And I would lose focus and then it'd be a firestorm and then back. So I didn't nail it, but that was a small hack that helped a little. Okay. You two are doing an amazing job building amazing companies in Europe, my two favorite entrepreneurs. What's it like building an amazing AI company in Europe? And what are the pluses and minuses of building in Europe? [00:35:57] S0: I think the network around you is not as mature compared to especially Silicon Valley.
00:35:57 · Anton Osika, Brian Halligan
[00:35:57] S0: I think the network around you is not as mature compared to especially Silicon Valley. [00:36:05] S2: Yeah. [00:36:06] S0: And that makes it more difficult with the distribution. Mean, investors are like just one coffee away can be valuable. And then once you're staffing, especially on the high slope generalists are distributed across the world, right? But as you're staffing with people who have done it and seen it before, it's trickier to find it in Europe, would say. [00:36:37] S2: But I heard you refer to building in Europe as hard mode. [00:36:40] S0: I mean, parts are hard mode, but at the same time, I think I don't know. Maybe we would have been more successful building from the valley or something. I could see that. But I think it has been very helpful for us to be the go to number one talent destination in Stockholm. And that's the reason I decided, no, we're going to stay here. We're to stay here and bet on that there's much more available talent that doesn't jump around, like they aren't entitled and spoiled. Yeah. And they're cheaper. They're cheaper. They're yearning for a possibility to literally change the world. Yeah. And there's not many companies that have done it from Europe. There has not been a trillion dollar company from Europe and being at ElevenLabs or building at Lovable is one of those very, very rare opportunities here. [00:37:31] S2: I agree with that. I'm going ask you this. You've got employees in The US and Europe. Any difference?
00:37:31 · Brian Halligan, Mati Staniszewski
[00:37:31] S2: I agree with that. I'm going ask you this. You've got employees in The US and Europe. Any difference? [00:37:39] S1: Definitely differences. And similar, I will quickly add that I think that talent in Europe can be incredible. You need to find that talent. [00:37:49] S2: You're building in London mostly or all over? [00:37:51] S1: All over, but London and Poland are our biggest hubs. [00:37:54] S2: Poland must be terrific. [00:37:56] S1: Poland is incredible. Some of the best. Central Eastern Europe, some of the [00:37:59] S2: Everybody must want to work for you in Poland. Like Anton Osika. [00:38:02] S1: We are heavily building the brand across Eastern Europe, we think those engineers are just so incredible. They are yearning for something. I think they're yearning for a company that actually wants to build something generational, something big. And there's just so few of those opportunities. At the same time, the companies of Silicon Valley frequently don't give that opportunity. So it's like perfect. [00:38:21] S2: To build new stuff, they give
00:38:21 · Brian Halligan, Mati Staniszewski
[00:38:21] S2: To build new stuff, they give [00:38:23] S1: Exactly. IT so I think one of the differences, which is a lot of Europeans, especially Eastern Europe, are very straightforward, straight to the point, very direct, sometimes too direct, which we actually really enjoy as a company. It helped share a lot of ideas, criticism, feedback in a much better way. On the other hand, what I think you ask is going for them is that confidence of things are going to be amazing, are great, are very ambitious across the entirety of the people and that's something that we are continuously trying to instill in some of the people across Europe too. And maybe the other thing that helps across Europe is that you're building in Europe, you of course need to build for the global market. You cannot build just for European market. But then when you do that, then the time zone is actually perfect for catering to The US, South America, to Europe and to Asia as well, which helped in our case as well. [00:39:22] S2: And the difference between American employees and European? [00:39:25] S1: It will be that. I think the main one is also beyond being direct and confident, I think the entrepreneurship aspiration is very different. In The US, everybody knows value of equity. Everybody is treating that as part of a good career. In Europe, you need to convince the employees. Sometimes you need to convince the families that this [00:39:44] S2: is the