· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, no. It happened to work at the same time we were out of stock on some things, but no, it was independent. [00:00:00] S0: Okay, so let's go back to when I interrupted you because you started talking about pain. You said talk about building a masterpiece. What were you going to say there? [00:00:00] S1: Oh, it requires tons of discipline and intelligence, and it's done over time. And that's really what the brand David's about, is like finish your masterpiece and tap into everyone's inner excellence. [00:00:00] S0: But how do you apply it to building your company, though?
· Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S1: Well, I think I start with like the what is a company? So our strategy is like two fundamental things in a company. People, it's all about people, as cliche as it is. And I think about the organization as a product. So my focus is all about that. And then the second piece is product and mastery of the product. And when I think of product, I think of brand and product as the same thing. Like, the product is just the raw thing, and then the brand is like what it wears, like the exterior piece. But if you try to look at the organization as a product, a company's just a group of people aligned towards a mission. So if that's the most important thing, like what actions does a company do to make sure that it's done? So for us, when I think of mastery is like we have four processes in the company that ensure our organization is done right and culture is lived. So if people are everything, who you select is the most important thing, who you select into the organization. How do you train and onboard them? Three, how do you select the ones to get promoted and rewarded? And then how you terminate the ones that shouldn't be there. So those four processes are really critical to building the organization and scaling it. And so we spend a lot of our time refining our hiring process. Training and onboarding is mission critical, and then promotion as well, rewarding the right behaviors, and then firing. And those are all organized around our value system, which is the best way to align a group of people to make sure the right behaviors are matching what we want.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: What are the behaviors that you want? [00:00:00] S1: We want truth seekers. People who have courage to seek truth. That's mission critical. You don't want biases in place. Foundational would be humility, which is I define as the freedom of pride and arrogance. So humility is really foundational, and it shows up like intellectually to be like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I need help." Like, I don't want to cover your ass culture where people are like, "I have this data, therefore my decision's good." Like, that's not really productive. [00:00:00] S0: Say more about that. [00:00:00] S1: You look at people from big corporate America come in, and then they will generate a bunch of data, surveys or whatever, to prove their experiment or cover their ass if the experiment goes wrong. [00:00:00] S0: It's like fake work. [00:00:00] S1: It's performative in a way of like, "I'm just doing this to cover my ass," versus focusing on the experiment and not worrying about covering your ass. Entrepreneurship is a very important value of the company as well, and that's like so anti. Like to any activity, like any performative activity and fearing of failure is like the opposite of entrepreneurship. You just can't have that as a company scales. And so you get a lot of people coming from different corporate environments that have that, like just protect their job. [00:00:00] S0: Are you able to recruit from other food companies? Because like you're so different. Most of these companies haven't been founder-led in, I don't know, half a century, if not longer.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Are you able to recruit from other food companies? Because like you're so different. Most of these companies haven't been founder-led in, I don't know, half a century, if not longer. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. We can and we do. There's a lot of good experience they have. You just sort of have to baptize them when they come in. So that's where the onboarding process is really critical. [00:00:00] S0: You baptize them? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: What does that mean? [00:00:00] S1: You just have to teach them new beliefs, new values. If you just sort of throw them in, they're just going to take what they know and apply it. And so you really want to- Have them assimilate to the culture in a way, and so a very thoughtful onboarding process where you learn the values of the company. You learn entrepreneurship. We pack boxes, you learn humility, you learn all these things. It's really critical. [00:00:00] S0: Are the most talented people in your company the ones with no experience, though? [00:00:00] S1: The most talented people in our company are former founders. [00:00:00] S0: Say more about this.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Say more about this. [00:00:00] S1: Convincing a founder to not do their thing to join a greater company is a really strong signal of the opportunity we have ahead. Basically, I would position it as like, this is a platform for you to go do your thing. You could do your thing with amazing technology, you can do your thing with resources, and you don't have to deal with the bullshit of raising money, all the bureaucracy that comes with the different stakeholders. And I think you see this in AI, where a lot of founder talent goes to those platforms. Convincing them to join a founder-led company without bureaucracy and for them to be able to fill their vision is... [00:00:00] S0: Do you specifically target founders? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, for sure. Because they have agency, they have courage, they have humility. Yeah. And they're not ruined by corporate America or school. School ruins you, too. You have to follow procedures. You're not thinking outside of the box. You're following a playbook. There's no playbook in entrepreneurship. You just have to think from first principles, understand the fundamentals, and fucking just go. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, we just had Luca Ferrari on this, and he started this crazy company called Bending Spoons. He's doing it from Milan, not exactly like a startup hub, and he's talking about being isolated was super valuable to him because he can't even copy the startup mantras because he doesn't know them. He's immune to them. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And his point was just he prefers young graduates, or even people that didn't graduate, to over-experience. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: He's just like, "I don't want your bad experience." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: "I know what we're doing. Let's just take high-agency, young, smart people that want it really badly." And I think he said he got something like 800,000 applications last year for 350 positions, because he's in markets where there's smart people everywhere. There's no great jobs for them. Their economy's terrible. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And he's just like, "I'm just optimizing for this, and then I'll come in and indoctrinate them into how we're running the business," which is completely different than school or a company that's like a mediocre company.