Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:38:56 · Chase Lochmiller
[00:38:56] S0: It's it's not that. It's it's you know, that is definitely like a data point. It's it's like a I think our job as a CEO is, you know, you are reading this mosaic of information, right? You have all these little tidbits, and they're often in from, like, very different parts of the organization and different... You know, coming from someone super technical, coming from someone that's, like, more of a people person, coming... You know, like, all these, like, different things, and and you're sort of amassing all these different pieces of information. And, you know, it's up to you to, like, make a judgment call around, like, what the best decision is for the company. I do think that... I forget who published it. Think it was First Round Capital has this really great blog called The Startup Laws of Physics. And the crux of it is something along the lines of you know, people scale linearly, companies scale exponentially. So you sort of have this great companies scale exponentially. So you sort of have this dynamic where even if you challenge your people to continue to grow and continue to invest in themselves, if the company really grows in the way that you're sort of setting out as an as an ambitious leader, oftentimes, like, the person who was the right person for that role at one point in time may not be able to grow and scale to be the person in that role two years later when the company is 10 times bigger. And that... That's that's a hard reality to face as a leader because you end up in the trenches with these people. You end up, like, working late nights, early mornings. You know, you know, you see these people really giving everything they have, you know, to the mission. And, when you when you have those moments where the the company outgrows the person, it's really just hard, right? Because you care a lot about these people on a personal basis, even if you know the best thing for the company is to find someone new for a specific role. Anyway, coming back to why I've fired people in the past, it's almost like every case is a snowflake. Every single one is different. And, you know, it's it's it's ultimately up to you to make the the the judgment call of what's what's the right thing for the business.
00:41:09 · Brian Halligan, Chase Lochmiller
[00:41:09] S1: Okay. I... Two of my recent interviews, I interviewed Ali Ghodsi from Databricks. Love him. [00:41:17] S0: Great guy. [00:41:18] S1: And he he... He's basically had the same management team for ten years with the... He turned over one person. And then David to carry a friend of mine and coming on the pod. On average, he turned over two per year on the exec team for lots of reasons. I find that odd. They're in kind of similar businesses, and it's just so and they're both really good, and they're so different. [00:41:45] S0: Totally. Actually, my current COO and CFO worked alongside Dave at MongoDB for for about a decade. So he wasn't one of the people that was, you know, churned. [00:41:58] S1: By churn, I mean, some of them leave. They No. [00:42:01] S0: I I totally understand. And, but, look, I don't think there's any right answer. And, you know, I I've seen different things work. I think what I've found most effective for me is that, if you have someone that's really struggling, the team recognizes it. And we view it as the team is ultimately there to win. And I mean, I saw this... I grew up playing competitive sports. And if you were on a team, you always loved your teammates. You had a strong and special bond that came from the locker room down the field. And if you had a teammate that was just struggling or a weak link and led to the team's downfall, it was like you knew that the right thing to do was to replace that person with someone [00:42:48] S1: It sounds like you're in the middle of those two. [00:42:51] S0: I'm in the middle of the two, for sure.
00:42:51 · Chase Lochmiller, Brian Halligan
[00:42:51] S0: I'm in the middle of the two, for sure. [00:42:52] S1: Okay, fine. Yeah. Speaking of teams and people, one thing that is fascinating about your business, and I just think about the culture we built at HubSpot, people rhymed at HubSpot. But on your... In your organization, you have AI researchers and you have welders. How do you create a culture across all of them? Are they different cultures? How do you comp people across all of it? How does all that work? [00:43:17] S0: Yeah, it's a great question. We've always felt like we've had an incredibly diverse culture just from the people that are coming to help build this. And one of our core values is tapping into the collective genius, right? It's like no one person has all the domain expertise to deliver the full solution that we're trying to bring to bear. And we all can learn from one another. And all of us working together towards a cohesive solution is going to result in an amplified result that none of us could have done individually. And there have been critical innovations that people have gotten from people like electricians that are working on wiring things up to the researchers are then benefiting from those specific use cases. And you know, how we think about, you know, the whole building management system, how we think about sort of the operating system from, you know, the electron to the token, I think is something that really sets us apart.
00:43:17 · Chase Lochmiller, Brian Halligan
[00:43:17] S0: Yeah, it's a great question. We've always felt like we've had an incredibly diverse culture just from the people that are coming to help build this. And one of our core values is tapping into the collective genius, right? It's like no one person has all the domain expertise to deliver the full solution that we're trying to bring to bear. And we all can learn from one another. And all of us working together towards a cohesive solution is going to result in an amplified result that none of us could have done individually. And there have been critical innovations that people have gotten from people like electricians that are working on wiring things up to the researchers are then benefiting from those specific use cases. And you know, how we think about, you know, the whole building management system, how we think about sort of the operating system from, you know, the electron to the token, I think is something that really sets us apart. [00:44:15] S1: I read an article in the journal about VCs and people in your industry when they're presenting conferences, like people are attacking them or protesting them, and you're sort of in the middle of a wave. It's an election issue around the data centers. And I've heard your story on why it's good for communities and why it's great for humanity. Are you facing some of that heavy criticism yourself, and how do you deal with it personally? Is... Do you have security? Like, where are... How how tricky is this for you?
00:44:15 · Brian Halligan, Chase Lochmiller
[00:44:15] S1: I read an article in the journal about VCs and people in your industry when they're presenting conferences, like people are attacking them or protesting them, and you're sort of in the middle of a wave. It's an election issue around the data centers. And I've heard your story on why it's good for communities and why it's great for humanity. Are you facing some of that heavy criticism yourself, and how do you deal with it personally? Is... Do you have security? Like, where are... How how tricky is this for you? [00:44:48] S0: The way I think about it is when I look around at the people at Crusoe, these are all people that want to do good for the world. There's not a single person I met at Crusoe that doesn't want to do good for the world. And I believe fundamentally that there is a right way to, you know, bring this infrastructure to life where everybody can benefit. You know, energy, you know, from a water usage standpoint, from a tax revenue standpoint, from a school and community standpoint, and then from, you know, the end use cases and how it's actually fueling human progress through, you know, the greatest technological wave we've ever experienced. [00:45:26] S1: I've heard I've heard you explain it. You explain it extremely well, and you make a lot of sense. And I wish the rest of the AI leaders would explain it as well as you did. But, like, for you, you must be catching a lot of flak in, like
00:45:40 · Chase Lochmiller
[00:45:40] S0: Well, so my major thing is, like, I'm I'm... I always try to take a very first principled approach to things. And if I have high conviction in something, like, I've built up from a a set of ground truth facts, I have no problem disagreeing with someone. And I can try to poke holes into why someone else, I think, is wrong and why we're trying to do things the right way. But I do feel like fundamentally at Crusoe, permeates in the culture, people want to do this the right way. People want to do this as a as a good service to the world. This has become a political issue, particularly around the, you know, the the AI data centers. And there's just so much misinformation around this out there that I've often said that what the data center industry... Their biggest problem is we have a marketing problem. We haven't been able to get the truth out there. And to me, the truth is on our side. And so when you explain the truth... And I've been in these rooms, you know, where I go to these local communities, I meet with the county judge, I meet with folks in these communities where we're building infrastructure. And when you sit down and you really explain to them what's happening, and, you know, you're not coming at it from like a, Hey, I'm smarter than you. You got to, like, listen to me. It's like, Here's just, like, what's happening, and here's how we're trying to do our very best to make it, good for you and good for us and good for the world. And, you know, I think when you have those conversations, like, people are receptive to it, right? Independent of politics, you know, political allegiances, I think people are receptive to authenticity and facts. And so that's really our approach to this. Now, am I worried from a security standpoint? Sure. We've had to increase our security footprint just given there's crazy people out there that wanna wanna wanna create a big statement. So... Yeah.