00:24:43 · Burkay Gür, Gorkem Yurtseven, Molly O'Shea
[00:24:43] S2: You go. [00:24:45] S1: So we are both Turkish, but we didn't know each other back home. We met in San Francisco, like when I first moved here 2014, immediately I met him. We were both working at different companies, minding our own business. And it was actually during Covid time, we've told this story a couple more times before, but we rented a house in Palm Springs and that's when we first thought, okay, maybe there is like a working chemistry between us and then it took us maybe another year to start the company. But that's how we met. We were longtime friends for over ten years and never worked together until that COVID Palm Springs house. And here we are. We've been building the company for five, six years now. [00:25:35] S0: And you've been pulling people from Coinbase? [00:25:37] S1: Coinbase and Amazon. It's [00:25:39] S0: funny. It's like [00:25:40] S1: from both places. Exactly. [00:25:42] S0: And so what were you looking for in the early days? What were the types of hires?
00:25:42 · Molly O'Shea, Burkay Gür
[00:25:42] S0: And so what were you looking for in the early days? What were the types of hires? [00:25:50] S2: I would say, like, just really good people in many ways. Like, I think one is obviously, like, they have to be excellent technically. I think early on, like, we definitely had to get the technical part right, because, like, were just doing a lot of, like, deep technical work. We still are, but at that time, that was our, like, differentiator. So, people who are really good at, you know, very good technically, I would say also, like, people who are just, like, people that we get along with. I think like early team chemistry is like really, really important. I think if you can, like figuring out like product market fit is probably the most challenging thing for a startup, right? So like you have to, in our mind, I think, you have to keep a pretty small team that can work really, really well together, that can like stick together and just have a really like great way of experimenting with ideas and then, like, throwing things that don't work and just, like, keep moving and keep looking
00:27:03 · Gorkem Yurtseven, Molly O'Shea, Burkay Gür
[00:27:03] S1: for And this is one of the biggest advantages of starting a company in your mid-30s because you have your whole working life, people you worked with, you trusted, you didn't trust, that you can bring in together. And as soon as you reach out to people, if you have something while they come and join you and they want to be part of the story, and if you are like younger you unfortunately don't have that. And you have to just go on your own and try to hire people and get trust. But here we build trust with so many people that early engineering team was almost all people like we knew before and worked with and trusted. Helped navigating the problem so much easier. [00:27:48] S0: What are your views on scaling up or keeping flat? [00:27:52] S2: So culture wise, like our company, I would say, is like flatter than your run of the mill startup. I think, like, the deepest level we have is, like, two levels of, like, reporting. And, yeah, I think that's by design, I would say. We really believe in this, like, super ICs. I think it's becoming more popular. Now it has a name. Don't think we have [00:28:20] S0: a Really? Yeah. Super ICs? [00:28:22] S2: Super ICs. ICs. [00:28:23] S0: So we have forward deployed... Deployed agents... Not agents. It agents? [00:28:28] S2: Well, agents. Agents soon. [00:28:29] S0: No. I mean, I should So know the final talent here quite we have forward deployed engineers and now we have super ICs. [00:28:35] S1: Super
00:28:35 · Gorkem Yurtseven, Burkay Gür, Molly O'Shea
[00:28:35] S1: Super [00:28:36] S2: ICs. ICs are, I think, like, now it's becoming a more common term. Basically, you want your, like, management layer to be super ICs. So people who are just, like, so epic at their job, they can, like, actually do hands on work and then they can also, like, lead teams. I think we have a very similar without, like, calling it this way, we always have the structure in a way that, like, essentially, like, we don't have peer managers. We don't plan on having peer managers. [00:29:06] S0: Yeah.
00:29:06 · Molly O'Shea, Burkay Gür
[00:29:06] S0: Yeah. [00:29:07] S2: And we can gather the team around, like, these really magnetic, like, people within the team that are just, like, really freaking good. And that's just, like, a very, I don't know, natural way of like building leadership within the team. So that's kind of how we've been building it out. Like, we just add really good people and then we see leaders emerge and we gather like the teams around them. But how long can you go this way? I think there's a limit, right? So, you start hitting, I think, like some communication bottlenecks, right? And I think that's part of the scaling challenge, right? Like, you have to kind of think about like, we think a lot about, like, how communicate do with the team broadly? How do we keep everyone, like, aligned? I think those are, like, you know, as you grow, those start becoming the challenges. And so far, like, we just try to have, like, many check ins with the team. I think we're still keeping everything flat and see, like, when things break and then we would throw, like, maybe more management layers. But essentially we're really focused on this super IC strategy.
00:30:17 · Gorkem Yurtseven, Molly O'Shea, Burkay Gür
[00:30:17] S1: And in a way, our growth was timed perfectly with how coding agents and LLMs became a huge part of software engineering. I think forever we can keep this as long as agents and coding models improve at this pace. We just need really talented leaders, super ICs, to manage, maybe be the leader of, I don't know, five to 10 engineers, and you rely on coding agents to do most of the work, and I think we can keep up like this to have like maybe just two levels of hierarchy and that's it. [00:30:55] S0: I mean, AppLovin does multi billion dollars in revenue. They have like 400 employees and 100 people on their engineering team. [00:31:02] S2: Big fan of Adam. Big fan. [00:31:04] S0: I mean, I was there today. It's crazy. I mean, like their market cap peaked at like $250,000,000,000. Now they're at like 130, 150. But I mean, it's like, he is such a proponent of what you're just saying. Like his whole thing is built on individual contributors and people not just because now we have access to coding agents. What about the other side of the brain? What about the human personal things? Also holding the business weight of it and making business decisions, but having you know, the team effort around it. So I think that is like kind of a structural component that's just fundamentally changing. It's like, you can't just be a 10x engineer. You have to be a lot more.