Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
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
00:39:44 · Brian Halligan, Mati Staniszewski
[00:39:44] S2: is the [00:39:45] S1: right thing. In Poland, we need to frequently explain that equity is worth something, almost force the employees to take the equity, which I always said an interesting surprise of like, how does it work? But now we've went through this cycle a few times and equity is worth something with the tender offers. So people started educating other people that this is actually the right choice, which we hope will in places like Poland and wider Europe will become more normalized and then something that people will want to do across entrepreneurship. [00:40:17] S2: When I was in my late twenties, I spent, or in early thirties, seven years in Asia. And I worked for this company PTC, a very good company in The US. And I had to convince Japanese people and Chinese people and Korean people that this thing called equity is going be worth a lot. And man, it was a dogfight convincing them. Like, what? You're just trying to pay me less money. I remember those days and people made a lot of money on that stock. Okay, on this topic, 996, are you guys in office? 996, hardcore? Like one interesting thing, my generation of CEOs, we kind of followed, Steve Jobs was sort of on our Mount Rushmore. And the current generation feels like it's a lot more Elon, and companies are working much more like Elon's companies. Who's your Mount Rushmore? Are you nine ninety six like Elon plus? Like, where where are you guys at? [00:41:14] S1: Steve Jobs is great. Yeah. [00:41:15] S2: Yeah. Think it was a good one. [00:41:16] S1: I I mean,
00:41:16 · Mati Staniszewski, Anton Osika, Brian Halligan
[00:41:16] S1: I I mean, [00:41:17] S0: what I like about him is he really understands that, like, a team working better and better and better over time and, like, really obsessing and caring about what you're doing is what Who [00:41:26] S2: are talking about? [00:41:27] S0: Steve Jobs. Yes. [00:41:28] S2: Yes. Yes. So who who... If I'm Steve Jobs, who are you Elon? [00:41:33] S0: Who's your... I mean, my style can be a bit Elon or like, I need this has to be... To get done now. Yes. What what does it take to do this faster? [00:41:40] S2: Is it Daniel there? [00:41:42] S0: No, I don't know him that well, unfortunately. [00:41:43] S2: Okay. How [00:41:44] S0: he operated. But so based on reading about Elon, I have a bit of that, but I think you lose a lot of the, like, the autonomy and teams feeling ownership of doing doing it too much the long way. So I might get back to you on with a bit a of of of bit people have family, families as well. So it's just we have very, very, very high expectations of everyone to drive impact. And then if you're not working many hours, you need to have clearly have the pain in other ways. [00:42:27] S2: Do you think that scales, like one of the problems with scale is that drive sort of wanes and that, you know, do you think that fades and is there ideas in your head how you keep that motivation going? [00:42:41] S0: I think it's about setting very, very ambitious goals every week. [00:42:49] S2: That's one of your things every week you put out goals.
00:42:49 · Brian Halligan, Anton Osika, Mati Staniszewski
[00:42:49] S2: That's one of your things every week you put out goals. [00:42:52] S0: Yeah. And then it's very it's being very clear before someone joins on what the expectations are and it's about evaluating impact. [00:43:03] S2: And have you lost candidates like VP candidates because like, you know what? Yeah, I love the mission. I love you, but I can only do fifty hours a week and I gotta, I've got a life. I've got four kids. [00:43:17] S0: I lost, I think we lost some kind of like that, but that's maybe good. [00:43:22] S2: Life in the big city. Yeah. Okay. Who's your Mount Rushmore? [00:43:27] S1: It's very closer to Steve Jobs between those two. Okay. But he was always like so caring about the design, about making it kind of hiding the complexity from the user and making it easy to use. He does have this obsessive piece which is maybe slightly different to how I would try to run it or work in a company. But I love what he created as his legacy. But there are amazing other CEOs. There's more pockets from different people that are incredible. I like Jamie Dimon and his clarity and across so many things that he runs and I think he has like half a million people under him, he feels very calm and under control. I think this is admirable. Satya, I think the way he turned it around and he is a very caring person around how he runs the company. I think this is another great leader. But from the nine ninety six, I think in our case... Are you [00:44:29] S2: guys nine ninety six?