Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
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?
00:44:29 · Brian Halligan, Mati Staniszewski
[00:44:29] S2: guys nine ninety six? [00:44:31] S1: Not in the office. I think everybody is online chronically and all the time. We definitely make it very explicit before you join. We think it's like once in a lifetime change with AI across the world. We can be the voice of the change, the voice of the technology and everybody understands the opportunity ahead is rare. And we do those candidates across, then you We do frequently. Mean, they frequently won't, I think, even apply. We are very vocal in the process. It's a lot of time commitment. We never impose it or ask anyone for doing that, but they do. It's usually seven days a week, but you are not maybe working all the seven days a week, but you are online and ready to jump in, especially on the weekends on any questions. And I think people enjoy working next to passionate people. So you get that bar higher, you run together and then when you see results, it's also motivating. [00:45:30] S2: In the last 50 employees, from employee two fifty to 500 versus 50 to 100, is there a difference in your mind? In commitment, in zeal and whatever? [00:45:43] S1: It's definitely some, but the current employees are also on it. And I think the small teams helped where you effectively joined a unit of 10 people or less. So you are seeing that everybody is running in that unit and everybody else is running too. So you are going after that too. Of course, we also have people with families, people that will have other things and that can work and it does. But usually those people are thinking about work and how to improve at all times.
00:45:43 · Mati Staniszewski, Brian Halligan, Anton Osika
[00:45:43] S1: It's definitely some, but the current employees are also on it. And I think the small teams helped where you effectively joined a unit of 10 people or less. So you are seeing that everybody is running in that unit and everybody else is running too. So you are going after that too. Of course, we also have people with families, people that will have other things and that can work and it does. But usually those people are thinking about work and how to improve at all times. [00:46:16] S2: What do you guys think European like what needs to happen in Europe to have like a lot more of you guys? [00:46:24] S0: I think they're coming. [00:46:25] S2: You do? [00:46:26] S0: Yeah, truly, yes. [00:46:27] S1: 100%. Okay. [00:46:28] S0: There's like engineering schools now you ask them, would you consider starting a startup or being part of the funding team? Yeah. 80%, yes. Okay. It went up to 10x. [00:46:38] S2: Okay, since interesting. [00:46:40] S1: And that first generation will help. I think few other companies, if we do a good job, get some people to start another set of companies. I think the second thing of what's missing in the European ecosystem is people that have done it before, have seen that scale, and then of course have got a good outcome to then make clear of this is actually a really cool thing to do. Hopefully those people can infuse additional set of startups across Europe.
00:46:40 · Mati Staniszewski, Brian Halligan
[00:46:40] S1: And that first generation will help. I think few other companies, if we do a good job, get some people to start another set of companies. I think the second thing of what's missing in the European ecosystem is people that have done it before, have seen that scale, and then of course have got a good outcome to then make clear of this is actually a really cool thing to do. Hopefully those people can infuse additional set of startups across Europe. [00:47:07] S2: We started HubSpot in Boston, and it's got a lot of the same benefits of Europe, like so much talent. MIT's there. We were a magnet for it. The area it fell down is as we scaled and we need to hire a head of marketing who had seen the movie before, someone who had really operated at scale. So we started hiring more people in the Valley. That started to happen around 1,000 employees, but it feels similar. Boston feels similar to Europe in that way. Boston's conservative. It's kind of similar. Any advice for all, there's lots of young, entrepreneurs listening to this pod that want to build the next Lovable, the next ElevenLabs. Any advice?