#42: Matt Biilmann, Co-Founder and CEO of Netlify — career pivoting, marketing for mass adoption,...

Welcome to From Startup to Grownup, the podcast. My name is Alisa Cohn. I'm an executive coach, an angel investor, and the author of From Startup to Grownup. Each week I talk to founders, creators, advisors, investors, and builders of all kinds about their insights and experiences in going from startup to grownup. Welcome back, and I'm so delighted to welcome Matt Billman to the podcast. Matt is the co-founder and CEO of Netlify. Netlify is a web development platform which provides the fastest way to combine your favorite tools and APIs to build the fastest sites, stores, and apps for the web. They've been a rocket ship and they've raised $212 million. Matt and I had an incredible discussion about how he got from being a musicologist and a music journalist to being the technical co-founder and CEO of Netlify. We specifically covered how his humanities background allows him to predict the future and his specific tip for everyone who is trying to get mass adoption of a product, service, or spread your idea. Netlify is a remote-by-design company, and we talked a lot about the culture and tools necessary to make a remote culture thrive. We discussed how Matt thinks about hiring, his specific hiring questions, and the markers that signal he needs to hire new executives. We also talked about how he's grown as a leader and his specific advice for startup founders and for all leaders. It was an incredible conversation. You're gonna love it and you're gonna learn a lot. So please enjoy my wonderful conversation with Matt Billman, CEO and co-founder of Netlify. Matt, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

Thank you. So excited to be here.

I'm excited to have you so much. And first, let's talk about, Netlify, what was the founding insight? Tell me all about that story.

Yeah, so the founding insight from Netlify was really that, that there was a big change about to happen in how software developers were building experiences on the web, where for a long time, every website you visited or every web store you bought some from or every, uh, web application you interacted with was typically built like one big monolithic application where the part that defines the end user experience and the part that defines the underlying business logic and data access and so on were all bundled together into, into one application with developers sort of working across those tiers. And our founding insight was that that companies would start to split that up into sort of a self-standing layer, really just for building the user experience on the web. And then different self-standing composable layers for content or data access or payments or e-commerce and so on. And we saw that that would lead to a lot of changes in how developers worked and collaborated and the toolings they would need. And saw that there was an opportunity of really building a platform for the developers that works on building the user experiences and really making their lives easier and reducing the friction in working on the code and actually getting that code into the world as running applications that people can visit on the web.

Yeah, I love it. Like, when was that? Well, I guess I'm just curious, like, what were the dynamics around the web and kind of how did how did you see that coming?

Yeah, so all of these things are of course always really long journeys that suddenly seem like they move very fast, right? Like, so I spent 7 years in Spain where I worked as a CTO for a company that were, we were building websites for small to medium businesses in Spain and Europe, but at a very large scale. So to give you an idea, we were building around 100 websites a week. Tens of thousands, right? Like, and as a CTO, I ran the, the whole organization that built the platform that the designers would use to actually design those websites and that the developers would, would maintain, and that then the clients would use for content management and so on. And, and that platform powered all the websites all the way from initial brief to production. And then I started a startup in Spain together with Julio, who was the main founder of that company, based on saying, okay, we've just built this whole kind of platform in-house. So let's build a cloud-hosted content management system that other professionals can use to build websites for their clients. And I started working on that and that was built with this like traditional architecture of the web as one big monolithic application with content and UI run as parts of the same application. And there was like a concept already there of like separating the template layer and the UI layer from all the more underlying content and so on that marketers and content editors were we would work with. And I just intuitively started sensing that that separation could be much more foundational and much more like it could literally be different applications instead of being the same. And around the time in our industry, some of the first what you called headless CMSs back then, like Contentful, some unknown ones now like Osmic and Content Cloud and so on. Started coming out and I could see that, okay, I buy into that whole model of separating these pieces. So I could sort of either take the content piece that we had built and build another headless CMS, but there was already several of those out there. And on the flip side, I saw that no one were taking care of the developers building the UI layer. So I saw that there was like a real opportunity for accelerating this whole change in architecture and started building just a small MVP at first. Set myself like very hard deadline of like build this in 2 weeks, spend 2 weeks more on adding like pricing and plans and then get it in front of people and see if there's some interest in the market, right? Like, so to launch that. It's called Bitballoon. Quickly saw that the right kind of early adopters in the developer space was like interested in it and started signing up and playing around with it. And then started talking to one of my best friends back in Denmark, Chris, who had built his own production company in the web space and then sold that to a full service agency where he was a partner and chief digital officer. And I sort of started talking him through this whole architectural change and what it would mean both for developers but also in businesses in terms of like better user experiences, faster user experiences, better security, lower cost, and so on. And we sort of started talking through all the, like, if that architecture was really better, like what was all the points that were holding back companies from adopting it? What would we need to solve to really make it like something that everyone would go build with. And that became sort of the core roadmap for Netlify. And somehow I convinced Chris to quit his well-paying job back in Denmark and move with his family to one of the most expensive cities in the world without having a salary and founded Netlify together.

Yeah, and that's, that's really quite incredible. And as you say, it's sort of, it's all these like iterative moments where you kind of observe something. And, and before we move on to talk about, you know, your company overall, I just want to point out that you studied musicology and cultural studies in, in university, and that you were also a journalist. I think you were a music journalist. So I— and but also you are the technical co-founder and the CEO of Netlify. So like, that's a lot. And I'm curious, do you think that you were able to kind of see the future and understand the environment that you were inhabiting or trying to inhabit because of the sort of, you know, liberal arts background or the curiosity of a journalist, the training as a journalist? Or how do those pieces come together? Because that's a lot in one person.

Yeah, I think the insatiable curiosity has always been sort of my core driver for everything. I did start programming computers when I was 10 years old and got a Commodore 64 and got obsessed about the idea that you could somehow create a virtual world that you could interact with just by writing code at an early age. Came from a family where a lot of them, a lot of my family was involved in art and culture, education, universities, and so on. So initially my family was very worried about this whole computer thing and what that would turn out to me spending so much time in a room with this new kind of box, right? Study the musicology, took a bachelor in musicology with a side in comparative literature, and then started a master's in cultural studies while getting a job as a musical journalist and editor for the Danish radio. And I think that background has had a lot to do with being able to predict not, not just like the, the next thing in technology, but, but the cultural part of it. Like, technology is in the end driven by, by humans, right? Um, it's, um, it's, it's not like a series of independent inventions that just magically make their way into the world, right? Like, it's It's all based on people actually adopting the technology and getting attached to the also cultural significance of it. And the same goes from this space of developer tools where it's not just the technically most correct tools that gets adopted. It's often the ones that are intuitive to understand or like that hits a certain nerve in the cultural jargon of software developers and what they are trying to achieve that gets adopted. And I think a lot of the success in predicting this change in the architecture of the web came from understanding that those kind of humans' reactions to the technology together with the technology itself, right? And I think that that's sort of always been my, unique skill set to both have the depth of being able to go write the code and understand the lower levels of it, but also having a broader education in how ideas spread and how people understand the world and be able to link those two parts together.

Gosh, I really love that. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. And if you can't, if you don't have a good answer, that's totally fine. But like, What's your advice on how ideas spread? Like if you could sort of give one piece of advice to entrepreneurs, to others who are listening to this podcast, what do they need to know about your decades of studying how ideas spread and why adoption gets taken up?

Yeah, that's a tough one to boil down to one idea because it's a really, really deep field, right? Like, but the core message is remember that it's about It's about humans and it's not just the technology, right? Like you can have brilliant technologies. Like an early example for me was like, I've been deeply fascinated with a programming language called Haskell and wrote some production code in it. It's a very niche programming language. And part of why it's niche is because it turns out that it's hard for people to learn. It's a big break with how they normally think about programming and it takes sort of rewiring a bit, like how you approach programs and so on. And I think it's incredibly important to remember that that's what drives the adoption. It's not like the pure technology itself that drives the adoption. It's people meeting that technology approaching it and getting something out of it that makes them tell other people they should go use it. And it's really often about how easy the technology is to adopt. There's a great essay out there called "Worse is Better" by Richard Gabriel, I think, like that's about technology adoption in the same way, like an old story of the fight between Lisp machines and the C operating system. Again, similar, like a system that was incredibly well thought out from the core abstractions. And then another system that was much simpler in many ways and not as technologically well-founded, but easier to adopt that really won out in the real world. So understanding like how people approach the technology is typically the key to understanding what technology will, will get adopted.

I love that. Thank you for what a beautiful answer. And I really put you on the spot on that. And you're reminding me of, um, I had Hubert, um, Palin on my show. He's the CEO and co-founder of Productboard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he talks a lot about empathy. You know, in terms of making great products. And you're really talking about the same thing. It's like, keep the user in mind, be aware of what the user needs and wants and will be willing to take up. Not like, be nice to people empathy, but empathy in terms of put yourself in the user's shoes. That's kind of what I also hear you saying.

Yeah, and understand that the user is always part of a community, right? Like it's never just a single, single user when it, when it goes through something like, um, When it goes to something like a software development tool, for example, part of what entrepreneurs have to understand is even like, how do the organizations where software developers work function and how are they split up, right? Like if you're a frontend developer, what tools can you actually adopt in a way that's viable within your organization and what tools will be organizationally impossible to adopt. Even if you, as a frontend developer within your expertise, come and say, like, this is clearly better for me, then there might still be things that you're just not empowered to adopt or you just can't communicate to the rest of the organization, right? Like, so I think You have to have empathy with the users, but it also really comes from understanding the community and the organizations they're part of.

Yeah, very insightful. I love that. And now I also want to go back and double-click on you co-founding with your co-founder, Chris. And I heard, you know, you said you were friends. And so I'm just curious, why was he the one that you called up to say, let's do this together? And what do you think you said that did convince him? Like, how did you together get him to leave his high-paying job and move to, you know, godforsaken San Francisco?

Well, there was some trip to Sonoma with some generous amounts of red wine involved.

Speaking of empathy, absolutely.

But, but there was a deeper story to it as well, right? Like, we we had a— it's funny, like, back when we both lived in Denmark and were playing a lot of computer games together and so on, we were often talking about like someday we would open a jazz club together since that was one of our shared passions and always joking about that. We kept— we sort of both got into the path of technology from the humanities. Chris also, he studied film and media. Before then starting his own production company in sort of the intersection of like high, high-quality interactive online productions involving a lot of interactive video production and so on. And so we obviously always, always had like started building also that sense of like what's going on in the space and, and what's happening. In some ways, what triggered the conversations on doing something together was a harder journey in the sense that in 2013, Chris wrote me and told me that he had just been diagnosed with cancer and was going to start treatment with chemotherapy and radiation. And it's like a big shock, like one of my best, best friends. So yeah, I was going home for Christmas that Christmas and made sure I booked some extra time and just spent some extra time at home and got a chance to spend some extra time with Chris as he was going through that. That was right around the time where I started to the predecessor to Netlify, Bitballoon, and had sort of really seen this architectural shift happening. So we spent a lot of time also just talking about that. And Chris is like a natural in figuring out how to get people excited and how to build movements and motions around things, right? Like, so he was very keen on like, on that part of it. How does it become a category? How does it become a thing, right? And fortunately, like, Chris went through his treatment, came out the other side, got cured, is today fully clear. But I think also came out like sort of with a question of, okay, what do I really want to do? And I think that became like sort of the real trigger point where we decided, okay, life is short. Let's, let's try to really do something together and see what's the, what's the biggest and most impactful thing we can, we can come up with and how we go about that. And that sort of became the onset to setting off and doing that.

Wow. Well, thanks for sharing that. And I'm so glad that Chris is okay. But it is true that these life moments, and I think we also had during the pandemic, but these life moments of truth can really you know, push us into a path that maybe we've been considering, but now is like the real deal. Like now it seems important.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. 100%. I think it's always like, it, I think getting that kind of perspective and it's very different how people get to that point in their life. Right. But getting that sense of perspective of life is short and flickering and you never know what's what's next. So you better push yourself to make the most of it. And like, I think a lot of these kinds of entrepreneurial journeys start with some sort of insight around that and sense around that.

Yeah. I'm just curious about, have you had any kind of moment of truth like that or like a moment where things turned for you in that way?

And I think I haven't had like a like one specific moment to point to, but I've had different moments that sort of led me to somewhat get that sense of like, in parts through, in parts, like the arts and the literature and so on helped me get there, right? Like the power of the arts is to get you insights into other humans' experiences, right?. And I think I got through that some of that sense of both how vast or how brief life can be. And that built some of my internal character for seeking out adventure in some ways. Yeah.

Yeah. I love that. I think that we have a lot to learn from culture and from certainly from literature, we sort of can share other people's stories. So, you all started the company, and I wanna just sort of talk about the culture and the way you work, right? So, this is pre-pandemic. And I think that you even then really had this vision of a distributed culture. In fact, you say, let's see, on your website, you say, "Rather than just being remote-friendly, we strive to be a workplace where you can work from home and have an equal opportunity to influence decisions and culture across the organization." and it goes on. That doesn't just happen, right? It's like, there's like some thought process there. So, I'm curious, could you talk about like the thought process that you came to, to recognize you wanted to have that kind of distributed culture?

Yeah. I mean, I was a very firm believer, even when we started Netlify, that long-term, over time, this kind of like remote distributed way of working would be, would become mainstream and, and would be, um, would be dominating in a way where, where, like, what I was always saying early was that from our generation of companies, any company that didn't do remote really well would be at a massive competitive disadvantage to the companies that did it well. Simply because like access to global talent and the ability of getting the best parts out of remote work, because there's obviously like very real trade-offs between like the kind of work you do when you're very tight together in one location and have none of the overhead of sort of online communication and so on. But there's also like an immense advantage, especially to more, more of the work you do on your own as a developer and so on, to being able to just sit in, in your own place, be fully focused and, and, and build, right? So I always felt like the companies that would be able to get the most out of the combination of those two ways of working would just inherently like have access to more talent globally. They would get better at taking advantage of the focus of working from home while keeping enough of the advantages of getting people together once in a while. So early on, we always thought, okay, we need to build the company with that in mind. And we started out with a hybrid culture, right? Like, so we had an office in San Francisco. But from the beginning, we told everyone to work from home Tuesdays and Thursdays to make sure that all the habits we built, all the tooling we use was built on tooling that works when you're not at the office, right? Like, and that was part of like this idea of like, we need to build a distributed culture, even if we also have a space where we come together. Great. And then when the, when the pandemic hit, it was very natural for us to just like give up the lease on the office and, and go fully remote. Now we're, to be fair, still, still looking for the right way of bringing back that other piece of like getting people together in, in, in between the remote work and finding the right cadence of, of connecting and the right structure of like what do we need in terms of either coworking spaces or some office spaces, but in a different form. And I think there's going to be a lot of, like, the whole industry still has, have a lot to learn in that regard. But I also think it's very clear that this original thought of, of, of, of mine, that, that the remote work was like a, a big component in the future, has really played out to, to be true. And getting the cultural component of that right is really important.

Absolutely. And once again, you were sort of ahead of the trend. You could kind of see it coming. So, I really have to go really specific on tactics. So, what specific tactics do you use in terms of tooling and instrumenting, in terms of processes, in terms of connectedness? In terms of hiring? Give us the secrets. Give us the masterclass secrets to how to make your version— because I understand that your version of remote work was sort of still hybrid. There's probably some hybrid components of it, but like to make sort of this, the remote, the remote by design process or company work.

I mean, I think the core piece in the beginning was to force everybody to be remote 2 days a week. Right? Like, I think if you have a core of your company that sits together in an office and works like that every single day of the week, then that will, like, that will set the pace for your culture and you won't be able to have a distributed team feel on even ground with the rest, right? Like, so I think that, that was sort of the first cornerstone because again, As with all these things, like the tools and the technology is typically second to the actual culture of how people think of the tools and the technologies and work together. Like from a practical standpoint, we used Slack since the beginning and really used Slack also as like the office where a bunch of chatter goes on. There's lots of silly channels. Like, we have a channel called YELLING in all caps where people only type in all caps and yell about stuff. We had since the beginning an AWW channel where people post cute pictures of animals, right? Like, there's a lot of that stuff going on that's important if you want, like, people to feel when they're distributed that they're part of a culture and part of a company and not just Like, I mean, if all they see is just some task list they have to go execute off, right? Like, that's not a culture, right? Like, that's just being like a cog in some machine. So investing in those things, like rather than Slack as a tool, but then those uses of it, that's been important. We've had like, there's been a lot of like weird traditions that emerged like that and has come and gone, right? Like at a point, our template for pull requests, which is when a developer makes a clone, like proposes a change to the codebase with a new feature and everything, you make a pull request that has a write-up of the, what is this change? What's in it? Now a core template for that always had a field in the end that said picture of a cute animal. So you would have this whole serious description of like, here's the change and everything, and here's the picture of a cute animal because you have to, right? Like those kinds of things are kind of akin to like the culture of little jokes that you get in an office or little human interactions, right? Like, so building human interactions into into how people use the tooling online. I think it's really key to building a remote company where it feels like there's actually a remote culture and where things are happening. And again, the toolset that we use are very, like, there's nothing especially revolutionary in that. We use Slack as our main team chat. We use GitHub for a lot of things that probably goes further than non-developer-focused companies, but still, like, it's, I mean, issue tracker and code repository. We use Notion for all of our collaborative documents. And then we have an internal, like, website that's our core company handbook with, like, the descriptions of how the company functions and so on. We use Zoom for for video calls. So, so again, very standard tech stack, right? Like, the secret is not really in the tech stack. I think it's in, in, in all of the other things. And then of course, early on, when you talk hiring, it was pretty important for us to interview for people that thrive in a remote company, right? Like, also at the, at the leadership level. And early on, it was really hard at the, at the senior leadership level because very few had experience with distributed companies. Then suddenly the pandemic came, and now, now that's becoming much easier because like now everybody has, has experience in, in working remotely. But it'll still be— when, when I'm interviewing, I'll still try to dig into, in, in this experience of going remote, what What did you learn in it, Leda? And what did you like? What did you dislike? Because some will, will have sort of begrudgingly be dragged into it and just really wish for the day where they can put everyone in an office again. And they probably won't be the best fit for, for a company where you, where you see it as a, as a broader fit, where maybe spaces with people in them once in a while will still have a role to play, but core functioning of the company has to be distributed.

Yeah. Well, I love that. So like, let's dig a little deeper on that hiring process. So what if you were hiring me? How would you, what kinds of questions would you ask me? And how, what would a good answer look like and a bad answer look like? So go ahead, hit me with a few questions. We'll do an interview right now.

I would ask you like, what's your experience been working remotely with people?

But if I'm trying to get the job, right, I'm going to try to get the job. I'd say, oh, well, I didn't have that much before the pandemic, but during the pandemic, you know, I embraced it. It really worked well. I learned, I took LinkedIn Learning classes and I made sure that I was, you know, really focused on how to learn how to manage remotely.

Yeah, I would probably still dig into your actual experiences. Like how was it? Running your team like that? What parts do you really miss from having people in a place? When do you think you should get people together in a place? I think it's always like, you will pretty quickly get a sense of whether that, like even from the nonverbal responses of people, You will see some people get clearly excited about some of the components of distributed. Some people clearly direct towards their memories of being in an office, and it's always like a relief when they get to talk about that, right? Like, and some people understand also and are very frank about talking about the challenges of remote, which is really important to know that they fully invested in it, right? Because it's not all roses, right? Like, there are real challenges.

Yeah, I love that, by the way. I love how specific you expect to get with somebody to really decide if they're into it, plus which you can kind of see from their excitement or lack of excitement. And, and I want to talk about one, just because you brought it up. There are, of course, a number of challenges in remote work. Um, yeah, one specific challenge I'm gonna just lay out to you is many managers— or there was a, there was kind of a vibe that managers would say If I can't see them, I don't know what they're working on, or I don't know if they're working. And that, you know, with a certain kind of manager and a certain kind of person in a certain kind of company, that actually may sort of be true. So I'm curious, how do you think about that in your company, about how do we know work is getting done even though we're remote and we expect managers to be able to be expert at managing remotely?

So that thought, strangely enough, always felt like is the simplest one, right? Like, because in a great company, no one should care about how many hours people are spending with their butt in a seat. They should care about the impact someone is having to the business, right? Like, so this should just really force people to articulate like what is the outcome they're after, right? Like what is the actual thing they're trying to achieve? For our business and are they achieving that or not, right? Like, and if they're not achieving it, it doesn't really matter if one person is a harder worker than another person or if they spend more hours solving the problem or not. What matters is if like, if they actually solve the business problems we have, right? Like, and that should be, if a manager can't articulate, is this person actually like moving our product forward or moving our metrics forward or making a difference to our business, well, then maybe we should just not hire that person because like, what, what, what are we even paying them for? Right. So, so that part of remote, I think, is fundamentally really healthy, right? Like that you should really stress about focusing on what, what output are we actually expecting from people rather than what time commitment or like, are they working at this time or at that time, right? Like, that should be pretty immaterial to the business versus compared to like the investment we are making in, in money in, in this employee. Are they making— are they driving outcomes for the business that, that they're actually worth it, right? Like, so I think that's one of the clear sort of really healthy things of remote that it forces you in a good way to ask those questions instead of the, oh yeah, I can see that this person always leaves later than me and comes in earlier than me. Right. But well, if they're just sitting there chatting with their colleagues all day, who cares?

Right. Right. I love that. I really agree with you that like to be excellent at remote work, let's say managing, especially if you want to be an excellent remote manager, it's really just being about an excellent manager. With all the management hygiene that that entails, which forces you— and I like that word, I'm sorry— but like, it forces you to get clear and specific about what you're expecting. And it forces the communication because even like— I'm just so passionate about this— even like delegation, I can be kind of like fast and loose and we can have a quick conversation about it, but not if we're remote and not if we're on different time zones. I have to really get in my head what I'm looking for from you and how we communicate that and my expectations about it. Otherwise, they're going to screw up and it's going to be your fault.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So, one thing that you've really, obviously, really gone through an extensive process and really cared about is your values. So, I'm curious, what are the specifics, the sort of the step-by-step of how you thought about your values, how you've refreshed your values, how you've landed on your values that then lead to your culture?

Yeah, I mean, the first, the first piece is that part of like a culture and the values, it's always just gonna happen because of the people you bring in at first, right? Like, so typically most companies will be fairly shaped by how their founders, like who were their founders in the early days and who did they hire, right? Like, so a lot of it comes from like then understanding like the culture that emerged at Netlify, how it looked like, how it felt like, and then actually distilling that into into values and then thinking through, okay, like, as we've gone through different iterations of these values, when we communicate and reiterate and reinforce these values, what is it we're trying to, to achieve, right? Like, a culture, as I said, like, will, will spread dynamically and will, will be in the company, right? Like, in the end, like, the culture is what you do and how people act, right? But you want to reinforce some parts of it or change the focus from one part to another at some stages, right? Like, and you want to try to pick like ways of articulating those values that can be useful management tools in trying to strengthen the parts of the culture that you think should be stronger and putting the focus in the right place. And it's been like a learning lesson for us, how to do it and when to do it. I think both Chris and I being Danish in the first days, we had sort of this inherent skepticism of the corporate values as something that seemed very American and very like, it would often be some very like innovation, empowerment and so on. It was like, okay, yeah, but like, what's the company actually like? So, we had to first go through a bit of a phase of like, okay, what do we even think about these kinds of corporate values and how do we see them as being useful? And then—

I want to just interrupt for one second. How did you guys do that? So, first of all, you're skeptical. I don't blame you. And then, by the way, just spoiler alert, I saw a lot of the Patrick Lencioni Five Dysfunctions of a Team kind of framework. Yeah, I love that. And that's super American. Super American.

It's very American. Yeah.

And so how did you two kind of talk each other into and convince yourselves like, actually, this is something we should take a look at?

I mean, the first was really early when we were like, I guess, seed stage company and our early employees came, right? At some point came to us. It's like, like, we want a set of values. And we were like, okay, okay. Let's do it. Forced into it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So we sort of sat down at a little workshop, all of us early people, and pinned down some initial thoughts. And that became like a second iteration after the Series A where we did another sort of values workshop and got the first set of sort of written down values that were more broad still in like transparency and commitment and empowerment and like then story around each of those and what they meant to us and so on. Um, we then had a, we, we had a certain, certain phase where, where one of our leaders brought up the Advantage and we all read it as a leadership team and we saw that there was a lot on that, like on, on trust and accountability and transparency, that, that resonated a lot with, with how we also thought about like a healthy culture in the company. So, so that for sure became embedded. And then as we grew sort of the next iteration of our leadership team and started going into more of the growth phase, we again got together in a leadership offsite to really clarify, like, again, how we articulate the values. I always separate that a bit from like, what is the culture of the company? And because in the end, that's a living thing that happens, right? Like, that, that happens by how people actually interact and talk together, right? Like, and you, you can say whatever you want in, in the values, but the most important is actually like, how, how does the company feel like? And the values should be a way— like, the articulation of the values, as I said, should be a way of strengthening the parts of that culture that you think are really important, um, and maybe counteracting sometimes some of the parts of that culture that you see as is, is needs to change too.

Is there an example? Is there an example of that?

And there was a, there was an example in, in pinning down own it, ship it as a, as, as a value, and, um, weigh in, then buy in. Um, on the early stages of our company, there was for just a place where we grew up where everybody was used to being involved in every decision because it was like a small company, tight-knit culture, very transparent.

Right?

But it also led to a point where too many things lacked a clear owner and where there was sometimes a sense of like, instead of like having a clear owner saying like, I think we should like, here's my plan, let's all go through it, getting to a decision on like what we're going to do and then everybody going in that direction, it could get a more murky process where everybody were continuously like discussing and moving. And things got too fluid, right? So that was one of the points where we thought, okay, we need to coin both the weigh-in then buy-in, right? Like we do want to keep that part of everybody feeling like they can contribute and they can be heard in a process of making a decision, right? Like we do want manages to go in and seek, like, seek out people and have them give input and listen to that and question their own ideas. But then we also want anyone who owns something to really be accountable to driving that, to actually, like, shipping it, right? Like, and everybody around that to buy in, right? Like, to really say, okay, now we're moving forward in this direction. We all got it. Push in the same direction, we got to buy in, right? Like, so that was, that was like formulating those two was really important in saying like, okay, this is something we have to, to, to be intentional around.

Yeah, I love that. But how did you kind of, let's say, guide that or maybe enforce that? Because you first have a company, everyone's like, I, my say matters. I mean, this is very normal in startups, right? Like you got 50 people in a Everyone's like, "I get to say what I want to say and my opinion matters." And then like 150 people, you're like, "No, no, we really literally cannot do that anymore." Right? But that doesn't matter. I still feel bad because I'm one of your early employees and I joined the company in part to be able to weigh in all the time. So, how did you get people like me to make that shift?

Yeah. I mean, I think, again, it comes from really working with the whole chain of leaderships, right? Again, and it came from taking both part of it. Right? Like, it came up really, like, instilling that we want you to go in and, and ask people to weigh in, right? Like, we want you to, to not be afraid of that period of, of feedback and of people being opinionated. And then in return, we want you to have, like, in your arsenal this core value of weighing than buying and of own it and ship it, right? Like, that you can bring up and say, like, well, this is how we have to operate. And, and we did some things like adopting, like, DASCI as a as a decision-making process, right? Like, so you could also tie this value to like, okay, now let's, let's, let's put up a DASCI and put like a driver on so we know who owns this and, and who is expected to drive it and who's expected to inform and who's expected to approve and so on, right?

Like, right, when you said Rossi, you mean R-A-C-I?

Yeah, it's a different driver. Yeah, yeah, there's a bunch of these different ones, right? Okay. This one came out of Atlassian, stands for like driver, approver, contributor, and informed. And it's a relatively like lightweight version of these decision-making frameworks, right? And I think any of them can be useful, but it's more a way of tying also these things to like a practical thing. Okay. Like when someone comes to me and it's like, oh, everybody's got this weighing in. And like, I can't get like, have you put up a task? Right? Like, and then they can be like, ah, no, try to do that. And then we can all make it explicit that you're the driver here. And these are the people that needs to approve. And these are the people that are contributing. And these are the ones that that you should inform about it and everything else. And like, keep them, keep them fed, listen to people, but also know that you're the one that, that needs to own it and ship it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's really about habituating everybody to that. And back to the notion of clarity, the need for real clarity on what your role is here. Like, yes, you can weigh in, but you're not the driver. And when the driver decides, that's what the decision is made. Yeah, I love that. That's so really helpful. You know, one thing, you know, we mentioned this value about, um, own it and ship it. And one thing you talk about inside of that value is to admit mistakes. And I think that's a very important element of everything having to do with just the personal growth, right? So how do you make it safe for people to admit mistakes?

Yeah, it's really, it's, it's, it's really hot. I'll be honest, right? Like, because it's scary. And some people bring over cultural baggage from places where admitting a mistake is a sign of weakness and could be a career blocker or something like that, right? Like, so it can be challenging. It's extremely important because like you can't build a culture of shipping if you're afraid of making mistakes, right? Because like no one, if you want people to iterate fast and get stuff done, like part of that is making mistakes and learning from them. Otherwise it's not possible. We try to tie it back and not be afraid of admitting those kinds of mistakes ourselves in like, here's where we went wrong. We planned this initiative, didn't turn out right. This is what we're learning from it, and, and everything's fine as long as we're learning from the mistakes we, we want. We also, like, me and Chris personally as founders, made, made it a part of our interview. Like, we, we would always have an interview question of the line of, what's the— in your professional life or last couple of years, whatever— what's the, what's the single biggest mistake you've made? And you would either, like, in that hiring process, you would get very different reaction. There's a, there are a lot of people that come from places where when you get that question, they will ask it by talking a lot about other people's mistakes. They'll be like, oh yeah, like, my biggest mistake, yeah, like, I, I was like, my boss simply couldn't, like, I simply couldn't convince him to do the right thing even if I totally I knew what it was and so on. And that would be like a big red flag, right? Like, and then there would be others that would be, oh yeah, like I had this like thing and like I totally made a mistake that like really didn't work out. I learned from it. Like, this is what I would do differently today and so on, right? Like, and that's the pattern you want to see, right? Like when people are comfortable with that, that's a really great sign, right?

Yeah, I think that's great. And then, the idea, I'm sure, is that you have to then reinforce that by not punishing people for making mistakes. But that's also a fine line because ultimately, their performance, and to your point earlier about outcomes, outcomes really matter. So, how do you kind of square that circle around people can make mistakes and it's safe, but at some point they actually have to also do a good job.

Of course, of course. Like, there's always, there's always that part of like, of course, like, if, if everything you do at the company is a constant string of mistakes, that's probably not a, a good fit, right? Like, and again, that, that needs to come from, from understanding what's like the, the longer term outcome you're, you're trying to drive, right? And it's something It's even something that I've tried to get better and better at in, in my growth as, as, as a CEO and, and leader, where I think especially as a, as a founder, right, like one of the things that you inherently encounter is that if you, if you want to build a very strong team, hopefully you're hiring people in, in all the different functions reporting to you that knows a lot more about their functional area than you do. Like I would say, if you're not doing that, you're doing something really wrong. So you're never like the expert in any of those areas. And I think that leads to like, how do you actually lead those people? Like how do we manage them and hold them accountable when they're like expert in a field that you're absolutely not an expert in? And it comes down to that idea of like, What is the outcome they need to deliver to the business? And one, are they delivering that outcome? If they're delivering the outcome, then like obviously they're doing a good job. You've just agreed on like what the outcome should be and what they're delivering. But if they're not delivering the outcome, can they articulate a plan to deliver the outcome that you believe in? Like, can they come tell you like, this is how I'm gonna fix things and get this outcome, and this is how I'm going to turn this around and get this outcome. And if they can do that, and, and, and like, then it's like, then obviously, like, we, we always set super ambitious goals as a growth stage startup, so we'll not always hit those goals, right? But as long as there is a clear plan for like, okay, what, what should we do? As long as you really trust the leaders, like, okay, this this sounds like the right step to fix the mistakes we just made, then, then it's good. And then as, as soon as you get to the point where you're not delivering the outcome you need for the, for the business strategically, and the leader can't articulate how to get that outcome, that's probably the time where you need to go find a new leader, right?

Yeah, I think that's very wise. Could you talk a little bit more about how you know when it's time to get a new leader? Because again, there's a known thing in startups where you have employees who are great and executives who are great in the early stage, great in the middle stage, and, and, and, you know, great in late stage, and etc., etc., but mostly early stage or not late stage and late stage and early stage. So how— what are the other markers that showcase to you it's time to think about getting a different executive in there?

Yeah, I mean, it, it is like it is one of the hardest and most challenging parts of, of building a startup, right? Like that, that, that journey of, of people and leaders and struggling between the balance of always giving people a, a way forward and a way to grow, and then sometimes getting to the point where, where you need something else, right? Um, and for me, as I said, like the The core framework for me has really been like what, when I hire a leader, right? Like, or if I went to go and rehire any of my leaders now, what is the outcome I would need to get from that function and from that role, right? Like, what is it that I would need to sit through and talk? Like, can you do this, right? Like, can we get there? And if people are delivering on that, well, then it's easy enough to keep them, right? Like, that's, that's the easy decision, right? Like, and then, as I said, when, when some of those goals start to fail, that's, that's when my framework has really become— if I am open and transparent with the leader about those things failing, does that leader come to me with a better plan? That I, that I, together with the advices around me, my board, my, my professional advisors and so on, can believe in and say like, this seems like the right way to, to, to, to fix this, or this seems like the right argument that we should change the goal because it's not achievable, right? Like, if, if that's the case, then it's still the right leader. If that's not the case, then it's probably time either to, to try to layer that person or replace that person.

Yeah, I think that's so wise. I think that there's also this marker around like, do they get defensive, right? Or do they kind of buy in and realize, yes, it's my responsibility to make this plan, and so I need to— I'm also a big fan of self-study. I feel like people, for whatever reason, People don't do enough. I know everyone's busy, but I also kind of feel like executives need to go out and get their own mentors and like read books and read blog posts and find people around them to help them grow in their roles. Because if they've never done it before, the only way they'll be able to do it is through mentorship in some, in some ways.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, how do you, how do you continue your own learning and growth? You know, as a founder?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, one, it's probably always been one thing that I've been pretty good at, right? Like I mentioned at the beginning that my core driver is sort of an insatiable curiosity of, of pretty much everything, right? Like, so I'm, I'm always reading, I'm always learning. Um, I do have an, an executive coach as well that I work with in program called the 10x CEO that's been really valuable, I would say, at the earliest stages of Netlify. We got a lot of other founders in as early investors, advisors, and so on, right? Like, so I always tried to learn from people that were one step ahead on the journey, ideally one or two steps, right? Like it had sort of seeing what was around the, the corners, as well as a solid cohort of founders in around this, the same stage. Then of course, as we got more into Series C and Series D, the, the network of, of, of other CEO founders at stages ahead got smaller, right? Like, and that was when I started having to, to, to invest also in like a a personal coach and trying to find the right path there and so on, right?

That's great. I agree. You know, insatiable curiosity and a thirst for learning are such keys. Could you articulate maybe some of the specific ways that you feel you have grown as a leader?

Oh yeah. I mean, you have to grow so much during this journey, right? Like it's such different stages and your role constantly transforms, right? Like when I started out Netlify, I was just sitting and writing all the code and talking to all the customers, right? Like doing everything. My role today is obviously very, very different, right? Like now it's a lot more about building strategy and getting alignment across both board members and senior leadership and key individuals in organization and trying to work in that way. It's a constant journey also in upleveling in how you understand a business and how to become more and more of a business leader rather than a technologist, right? So it's like, it's such a constant learning curve and change is sort of the only constant that it's hard to point out like one specific thing.

Yeah, I can understand that. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome or severe self-doubt?

I think everybody has. Ironically, I experienced it much more right at the beginning. Like I was completely self-taught as a developer. And I always imagined that out there, there were all these like highly trained professional developers that clearly knew exactly what they were doing. And I was just like fiddling around. And it was sort of a big revelation when I started working as a developer and suddenly discovered like, Hey, I actually know pretty well around all these people and it's like, no, there are no one out there that just magically knows what they're doing. We're all just figuring it out. So I think going through that experience early in my career and that whole change from working in a completely different industry and suddenly on top of it, my first actual, like, on-location paid job was as a senior developer. So right there, there was like a lot of like, whoa, like, do they realize what they've done? Like, initial discovery. But I think working through that early on built up some core confidence, right? Like, But, but of course, like, I think it's always, it's always part of it and not, and, and not just an unhealthy part, right? Like, I think you always need to balance. It's one of the tricky things as a founder, right? Like, you have to be somehow irrational in coming out and saying, like, for some reason I believe we should do all these things that, that, that unique and, and original and different from what the market is doing. And because I think I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong, right? Like, like, most founding journeys have to start in, in that way. And then at the same time, you have to keep doubting, you have to keep questioning, you have to keep examining, like, all, all the areas where, where you are making mistakes and where you, where you're not doing the right things, because there's found to be lots of them.

Yes, I think that's so wise and such a balance. It's a lifelong journey to kind of figure that balance out, right? Yeah. Yeah. Matt, just a couple more questions. What do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

Yeah, like so, so much, right? Like I think by now, if I went back and started the company again, it would be such a different experience, right? Like, because of, of having seen everything. Um, once— at the same time, it's so, so much of those learnings are really about the experience, right? Like, there's always like a limit to what you can learn from other people's experiences, and there's a level of things that really just like, no matter how much you read No matter how much you see things from the outside, once you go through them yourself, it gets ingrained in a way that you can never get from like pure learnings. And a lot of them I sort of had to translate. I mean, I think I've grown a lot in being able to hold people accountable and have harder conversations upfront than where earlier in my journey I would be a lot more vague around that or afraid of that. And then there's like 2 million tactical things, right? Like this, there's this quote by Picasso, right? Like around when art critics meet, they talk about like the meaning of art and the questions behind the painting. And when artists meet, they talk about what kind of trim routine to use, right? Like, and there's some level of that where just as you build this from the ground up, like there's just so many individual tactical things that you wish you knew upfront.

Yeah. Like how to incorporate, right? And like the corporate structure and how to structure and like, using Asana versus Slack or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, precisely. And just like, I don't know, understanding like earlier on the roles between like when, when to introduce a product function and how to structure that function, like the roles between product marketing and channel marketing and like all these things that you learn along the way that kind of much, much more tactical. And I wish I knew all of those when I started.

But yeah, yeah, that's why second-time founders are so wise. So wise. And my, my last question before I let you go is, what advice do you have for other founders as they embark on their journeys to grow into leaders?

Yeah, make sure you make sure to always check on, on like, are you are you having fun and is this what you want, right? Like, and you have to actually, like, there's some founders that hit a point where the reasons that they started being builders and so on are no longer what they will get from their job, right? Like, as a company becomes bigger, you will really become told about people and direction and strategy. Mixed with like being able to inject some of like hopefully like the creative innovation and so on, right? Like, but, but it is naturally like a completely different life day to day that you, that you have once you're like running a larger company versus the life you have day to day when you're like early stage sitting with a few other people and just building stuff and make sure that, that that you understand that that's where, like, that if you want to keep going on the journey as staying a leader, then make sure that that's what you want, right? Like, and that you mentally, like, strive to become that rather than try to hang on to what it meant to be a builder in the really early days.

Very wise. Amazing. Matt, thank you so much. What an incredible conversation. And I know people are gonna get so much out of it. So I just really appreciate your time and your insight.

Yes, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure.

Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grownup. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this this podcast, drop me a line through my website, alisacohn.com.