· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, just like efficiency and simplicity. I think the best design is the simplest design, and just I think my nature. [00:00:00] S0: So how does that manifest, your nature manifest in the way you're building this business? Because it looks super complicated. [00:00:00] S1: It is complicated, but... Well, one, it's a very flat organization, so there's not a lot of depth. So I have like 25 direct reports. [00:00:00] S0: What's interesting is I read this book on Jensen, and Jensen has famously like 60 direct reports, and a lot of people when that came out in the book, and I think he's talked about this in some interviews too, they're like, "That's way too many. How could he do it?" And it's like, "Well, this guy's running the most valuable company in the world. Seems to be working for him." How many direct reports is too many?
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: What's interesting is I read this book on Jensen, and Jensen has famously like 60 direct reports, and a lot of people when that came out in the book, and I think he's talked about this in some interviews too, they're like, "That's way too many. How could he do it?" And it's like, "Well, this guy's running the most valuable company in the world. Seems to be working for him." How many direct reports is too many? [00:00:00] S1: Well, I used to think that like seven or eight was the most you could have to really develop and give the right attention to develop the best leaders possible. Now, I think the value of having so many direct reports is that it allows you to see a lot, and it keeps the organization, and keeps me closer to the problems. And what I tell people if they're reporting to me is like, "I'm not going to manage or tell you what to do. We're going to work together to set priorities. But I am going to expect you to bring things to me. You need to bring the problems to me, and we're going to figure it out together. But I'm not going to be managing your to-do list." So it takes a certain type of leader to report to me. I'm not going to manage them. But I'm going to lead them. Yeah, so it requires these leaders to have just better agency and autonomy if they're working with me, versus a conventional organization, which is like, "Oh, I only have eight direct reports." Then you just get this very, very stacked thing that the hierarchy gets too stacked and information doesn't flow as well. [00:00:00] S0: Do you have a co-founder? [00:00:00] S1: Yeah.
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Are you still working together? [00:00:00] S1: No. He's no longer at the company. [00:00:00] S0: What happened? [00:00:00] S1: He was really helpful in the beginning, but most founding teams never really scale to the promised land. The hardest thing in leadership is that the team that gets you started in the different life cycles usually is not the same group of people. So that's a true observation that I've had. [00:00:00] S0: The observation you had is the founding team that says there's two, three, four co-founders, usually it's actually one. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: It just takes time to reveal who the one is. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I've noticed the same exact thing. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: I talked about Adam Foroughi earlier in AppLovin, and I think he even said this on the podcast. He wants to run a very strict and ruthless meritocracy. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, same way. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, and his whole thing was like, well, the co-founder that maybe had the skills to be the CTO at the beginning couldn't hang, so we had to literally... And in many cases, they had a conversation. Adam was the one driving it, but he was just like, "You see what's going on, so do you want what's best for the company or do you want to have this fight?" And in many cases, if you just frame it as like, "This is obviously best for the company. You see what's going on," and it's somewhat amicable.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah, and his whole thing was like, well, the co-founder that maybe had the skills to be the CTO at the beginning couldn't hang, so we had to literally... And in many cases, they had a conversation. Adam was the one driving it, but he was just like, "You see what's going on, so do you want what's best for the company or do you want to have this fight?" And in many cases, if you just frame it as like, "This is obviously best for the company. You see what's going on," and it's somewhat amicable. [00:00:00] S1: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I don't like the founder/co-founder's titles because it implies some privilege. It's inherently anti-merocratic. [00:00:00] S0: What do you mean you don't like the founder/co-founder's titles? [00:00:00] S1: I just don't like it. The founder isn't a role. It's not a job. You never hire it, so it doesn't have a role in the company. So, I think it's actually people abuse its power, and I don't think it should get special treatment. So, I don't use it. I think it's an abuse of power. Everyone has a role, everyone has duties, and either you do them well or you don't.
· Peter Rahal, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I just don't like it. The founder isn't a role. It's not a job. You never hire it, so it doesn't have a role in the company. So, I think it's actually people abuse its power, and I don't think it should get special treatment. So, I don't use it. I think it's an abuse of power. Everyone has a role, everyone has duties, and either you do them well or you don't. [00:00:00] S0: This is what's getting more and more interesting about me having more of these conversations, is to start seeing the same similarities between the people. Because I mentioned Luca Ferrari earlier. Adam Foroughi mentioned a few times. They both said the same thing. Like, Luca Ferrari is just like, "We don't even like the term founder in the company." And I think it was four founders of Bending Spoons. He's like, "We all have the same job, and that job is to do whatever's best for the company." [00:00:00] S1: Mm-hmm. [00:00:00] S0: They don't use the title at all. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. It's not on my signature. [00:00:00] S0: So you define your role as what? [00:00:00] S1: Chief executive. [00:00:00] S0: And how do you think about that in terms? You wake up every day.
· David Senra, Peter Rahal
[00:00:00] S0: And how do you think about that in terms? You wake up every day. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, my kind of forever job description is the management team, making sure they're performing, make sure we get product market fit, and continually get product market fit. Organizational health, so just like, how is the culture? Are people scared? Are people free and creative? Are we living the values? Can people recite the values? So, culture. And then four would be alignment of strategy. Are we organizationally aligned? Not in decisions, but does everyone understand where we're going, why we're going, and is everyone incentivized to go there? Is the group of people moving in the right direction? And then fifth would be cash or fundraising. So those are my forever. And then I have one, what I like to call, this is like founder mode, but what I've always done is I call it my main job is reactionary leadership support. So, reactionary in the sense I literally react to it. So, fires or problems, I get information. It's very reactionary, which is generally viewed as negative, but my job is to react to the problems. So, reactionary leadership support. So, the leadership support, I either have to drop what I'm doing or prioritize and reshuffle and then go in and assess, figure out, fix it, whether that's directly, indirectly, or whatever, provide resources, just shine a flashlight on it, and then get the fuck out of the way. And I expect that on all leaders in the company. I call it reactionary leadership support.