00:19:34 · S1, Brendan Foody
[00:19:34] S1: Let's talk about some of the hard stuff. [00:19:35] S0: Yeah. I mean, I remember before we... It really started working, it felt like this roller coaster where it oscillated between the best day in the world when we'd sign a big customer contract. We worked with a lot of seed stage customers, so the customer had go out of business the next month, and it felt like the worst day in the world. And it was just very, very tumultuous. And I think it was... Once it started really working and we saw the inflection, it was a little bit more consistent. But there's still there's still this very strong hedonic treadmill where within three months, you get acclimated to the new thing, and then it, you know, raises your expectations. And, every day, there's, you know, a new thing that's popping up that I have to worry about. And so I think it's always less glamorous, than than people think on the outside because running a startup that's growing quickly, is always bound to come with, you know, a million problems. [00:20:38] S1: Good problems to have. [00:20:39] S0: Good problems to have, but problems nonetheless. [00:20:42] S1: Yeah. How do you keep that perspective? You know, the highs are never as high as they feel and the lows are never as low as they feel. [00:20:48] S0: Yeah. I think it's about being very long term oriented. [00:20:51] S1: I like that.
00:20:51 · S1, Brendan Foody
[00:20:51] S1: I like that. [00:20:52] S0: I find that it's easy to reflect on something that happened this week and think, didn't have to deal with that thing last week, so this week is horrible. Right? But if I zoom out to where were we last year or the year before that, it gives a lot of perspective around broadly things are going pretty well, and where will we be next year and in ten years because ultimately that's what matters. And it... It's hard to say that in the moment everyone gets sucked into the day to day of all the problems that they have. But trying to always ground ourselves in that is what's most helpful, I found. [00:21:30] S1: Yeah. I like that quite a bit. Something that I've been thinking about and reflecting on as your journey between becoming, you know, a leader of people to a leader of managers, to a leader of function, to a leader of company is how do you kind of be that mirror to provide the study perspective about let's keep our eye on the long term. Let's keep our eye on the prize. Absolutely. Do you find yourself doing that for your org?
00:21:30 · S1, Brendan Foody
[00:21:30] S1: Yeah. I like that quite a bit. Something that I've been thinking about and reflecting on as your journey between becoming, you know, a leader of people to a leader of managers, to a leader of function, to a leader of company is how do you kind of be that mirror to provide the study perspective about let's keep our eye on the long term. Let's keep our eye on the prize. Absolutely. Do you find yourself doing that for your org? [00:21:53] S0: I do. And I I find that how you do that changes over time as well. Like, think early on, it's about great storytelling of what will the world look like in ten years. And and that remains important. But I think one of the changes is grounding that storytelling in metrics of what is the North Star metric that matters? What are all the things that feed into that? These numbers that you can compound over a decade because you know that those will drive immense customer value. And that's something that I've certainly gained more of an appreciation for over the last year or so. [00:22:29] S1: Let's talk about some of your favorite habits and tools. [00:22:32] S0: Of course. Other than Notion or... Well [00:22:35] S1: Well, we can we can definitely talk about Notion. But I'm curious to know, like, what have you leaned on as a CEO founder? What tools have helped you?
00:22:35 · S1, Brendan Foody
[00:22:35] S1: Well, we can we can definitely talk about Notion. But I'm curious to know, like, what have you leaned on as a CEO founder? What tools have helped you? [00:22:42] S0: Well, I I am serious in saying I use Notion a ton. In fact, even so much is, like, UI inspiration because Notion's obviously beautiful. And so I... One of our front end engineers always jokes that I'll never be annoyed with the front end if they just make it look more like Notion. [00:22:58] S1: And I will be very happy. [00:23:00] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I use it most to track relationships, whether it's customers or candidates. I find it very helpful, less so a template from the community, more so that I love that it's very flexible and being able to configure all of the different dimensions and have charts that spin up to show me the analytics on our pipeline and how we're doing. And so, yeah, those those sort of analysis where... Because an issue with spreadsheets is you can't, like, click and have the page Yeah. That you're editing. And so that's the reason that I love it so much that you can have a document embedded within each of the cells and and units that, are stored in the database. [00:23:47] S1: Yeah. The databases are incredibly helpful. And having that context on our platform. [00:23:51] S0: Absolutely. Well, this is one thing, we were talking about a lot on our team is that Notion AI can now connect with all of our different knowledge bases. I think my coveted said a message, like, ignorance is now, unacceptable, because people should just ask questions to the knowledge base.
00:23:51 · Brendan Foody, S1
[00:23:51] S0: Absolutely. Well, this is one thing, we were talking about a lot on our team is that Notion AI can now connect with all of our different knowledge bases. I think my coveted said a message, like, ignorance is now, unacceptable, because people should just ask questions to the knowledge base. [00:24:09] S1: So you've talked a little bit about how you use Notion. What about our AI products? [00:24:14] S0: Yeah. I really like drafting things with them, of course. I think it's the first one. And then I think the second thing is the knowledge base retrieval. Especially, I know the connectors are newer, but as those develop over time to not just read from all of our applications, but also write in all of them, I think that's really exciting. Because ultimately, context is at the heart of all productivity and having the tool that has all the context on our interactions is the, you know, most important way to leverage that. [00:24:47] S1: What's one building block of advice you'd leave behind for early stage founders? [00:24:53] S0: I think it's find the thing that you're obsessed with because self discipline will only go so far. It's the problem that... [00:25:02] S1: Especially if you're not disciplined to with. [00:25:03] S0: Especially if you're not disciplined to begin with. Right? It's a thing that you can't stop thinking about and you just need to keep coming back to because that's the draw that will last for the decade that it takes to build a business.
00:25:03 · Brendan Foody, S1
[00:25:03] S0: Especially if you're not disciplined to begin with. Right? It's a thing that you can't stop thinking about and you just need to keep coming back to because that's the draw that will last for the decade that it takes to build a business. [00:25:17] S1: And my last question is, if you had to rebuild Merkor from scratch today, what is the first block you'd start with? [00:25:24] S0: I think it would be the team because I think that early on you do a lot to discover the market and the problem and what it needs to look like versus now that I have more of an understanding of that, it's like I need to have the people that I really trust in place to execute. And so it all does come back to hiring in one way or another. [00:25:50] S1: Doing it great. Yeah. Right? Doing it great with people you wanna build with. Absolutely. I love that. Alright. You.