#66, Mary-Catherine Lader, COO of Uniswap Labs — How you know you're ready to take on more risk, ...

Welcome back. This is From Startup to Grownup. My name is Alisa Cohn, and today I'm super excited to welcome Mary Katherine Lader to the show. Mary Katherine is the COO of Uniswap Labs, a developer of decentralized finance software. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a leader, or if you're trying to figure out your own career journey, you're going to get a lot out of this discussion. We talked about Mary Katherine's career journey and how she navigated from wanting to be a war correspondent to a pretty traditional career in finance at Goldman and BlackRock, to moving into the wild world of crypto as the current COO of Uniswap. We talked about how she created her own onboarding plan when she took that role and what she wishes she had done differently. We also talked about culture, hiring, and how you can manage a fast-growing business. We discussed the rituals she instituted at Uniswap, how they bring people together, and some key insights about one of my favorite topics, meetings. This is an incredibly rich conversation and you're going to learn a lot, and you'll find it useful whatever stage in your career you're at. So please Enjoy this great conversation with Mary Katherine Lader. Mary Katherine, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you.

It is so fun to be here.

I'm so— yeah, it's so fun. I'm so excited. We have so many things to talk about. So what I want to start with is Uniswap. So you're the CEO of Uniswap. What the heck is Uniswap?

Yes. Okay. So Uniswap Labs is a small startup, 100 people based in New York City. And what it enables is best thought of as YouTube for markets, I think. That is an open source platform, technology platform that lets anybody on a blockchain deposit tokens and create liquidity. That's an innovation in the history of financial markets. So how do you use that? Our company develops a simple mobile app that's a self-custody wallet. So instead of having an institution hold your assets, you're holding it yourself in like your personal safety deposit box on the blockchain. And the intention is that that ultimately unlocks universal ownership, that everyone owns their own stuff.

I love it. I love it so much. And I just want to tell my listeners, we're not shifting this podcast to be about crypto. I promise you. Okay. We're not here to talk about crypto, but, you know, people want They don't want to hear about crypto. They don't understand it. Everything you said, it sounds great, but it's like hard to follow. And I was— we both were just in Davos and I walked and talked with a very famous journalist. I will not mention his name, but he said during our walk and talk that crypto is a Ponzi scheme. So there's still this like notion that crypto is a Ponzi scheme. We've had a lot of fraud issues. So can you explain what you just said in the context of crypto and why it's not a Ponzi scheme and what is innovative about it? And also what is sort of not so scary about it that people are so scared of?

So I'm going to cheat a little bit and recommend a book.

Oh, good.

That just came out. It's called Read, Write, Own by this guy Chris Dixon, who's an investor in Uniswap Labs and Andreessen Horowitz. But I'll borrow an analogy from him. He talks about blockchains as computers and sort of next wave of the internet. It allows digital ownership, digitally native ownership, like you can actually own a thing embedded in the code, not just because a contract parallel to it says you do. And then he talks about crypto as a casino. And so when people talk about crypto, you kind of don't know what they're referring to. They may be referring to a specific token. They may be referring to blockchain. They may be referring to smart contract software that runs on top of blockchains. So all that is to say, the journalist who said it's a Ponzi scheme, like, ask a follow-up question or just choose to walk the other way, kind of depending on how much energy you have. That's what I do. Someone's like, what do you do? I'm sort of like, uh, do you have the interest? And do I have the interest in explaining to you as much as I love our mission? But taking a step back, I think to build on Chris Dixon's kind of sort of two categories. There's crypto as an asset class, and then there's the technology that underlies it that has a lot of potential.

Yeah.

So why are these things connected? If blockchains let you keep a distributed record, distributed compute, and then basically embed value in code so that like you own the thing you create, then you can create new assets. So some of the first things created on blockchains, new assets. Things that people want to buy and sell.

Yeah.

And those things don't necessarily have value. They might not be attached to any kind of activity or any kind of good. And so there's been a lot of assets that people speculate around, and it's not always clear how to— what informs that. So I can understand there's like a ton of confusion out there, but underlying so much of it is a lot of really powerful technology.

Oh, I see. That's just really helpful, actually. And if somebody wants to take one step forward, so the book is great, but one step forward in understanding crypto even like dipping their toe into like either be a user or find a way to access it, what's an accessible way and one step that you recommend for people?

Can I recommend that you download our app? I mean, if you download the Uniswap app, first of all, it's accessible. It's a pink unicorn. It's a really cute logo. Yeah. And cute branding and playful. We try to make it accessible and easy. But you might be like, well, why? Like, what do you actually want to buy or do you want to swap or trade a token? So what I think I did for my family over Christmas 2 years ago is that I gave everyone in my family a domain name with their name. So you can go to GoDaddy and do the same thing on the internet where you're basically paying a fee to GoDaddy to then hold a registration for you. Or you can buy what's called an Ethereum name service domain where you have an asset, unique asset, Alisa Cohn.eth on ETH. And so that is a domain asset that you own with your name on a blockchain. So that's like one kind of simple thing. I had this moment with my 77-year-old father where I showed it to him. We downloaded the Uniswap wallet and gave him this domain name. And he looked at it and he's like, so how do I get it from this phone to this phone? And I was like, that's the point. It exists on the blockchain in both phones. You can access it from both phones. So it is, look, it is all a little bit ethereal, but that's one fun starting point.

That's a great starting point. I love that. So everyone can go do that. Send me an email when you have your domain name. I love it. Now, Mary Katherine, You were headed for traditional career. Like there was nothing in your sort of background that said she's going to get into crypto. It's like an ethereal thing. So what happened? You were Goldman, you were BlackRock. What was that like and why and how did you make the shift into what you're doing now?

Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if it's more like, why was I there in the first place? You know, but anyway, like, um, but you're right. I started my career as an investor, um, in renewable energy, clean technology, and distressed assets, which somehow actually overlapped a lot in the financial crisis. So a lot of renewable energy assets on banks, distressed banks, balance sheets. Law school, business school, started a fintech company that failed, then started a couple fintech businesses at BlackRock. But all big institutions, big brands, big platforms. And I was passionate about crypto all along the way from about 2011. When I was in law school, I took a seminar with a guy named Jonathan Zittrain, who wrote a book called The Future of the Internet. And we read the Bitcoin white paper. And after working on Wall Street 2008-2011, the financial crisis, as like a newbie out of college, I I was just struck by how much access was determined by relationships and a lot of kind of arcane terminology and language. And I was benefiting and I was being educated in all those things. But it also kind of felt like the internet was going to disrupt some of this. Like, as the internet, like, lowers cost of distribution, makes it easier to gain knowledge, surely this was going to affect finance long term. And so when I read the Bitcoin white paper, the idea of like a digitally native money system I thought was really powerful and exciting. Put that aside, bought it, you know, like many people who've been into it for a long time. It's not like I bought it and bought a ton and held it for a long time. You got to buy and sell. If only, if only. I know, I know. It's kind of like buy and sell. And then I found myself following this trajectory of like, what are the ways that the internet could disrupt finance and make access to money and financial services more fair? Started one company focused on that, built a retirement savings business at BlackRock focused on that, then in climate risk and ESG business at BlackRock focused on that., and a friend of mine in 2020 joined Uniswap as the 8th employee. Oh, wow. And Uniswap was an open-source project. It was legally, there was a company and a team, but there wasn't like a business model or a plan to turn it into a business. And he called me and was like, I have found this thing that has amazing product-market fit and a phenomenal founder and all these values that are the things that you believe are compelling about blockchains: openness, access, transparency. And I think this company could be huge, but we have to do 10,000 things right. And if you don't come and take this job, which at the time was like undefined, then you are a big company person. And in the morning, you should look yourself in the mirror and be like, I say I'm into blockchains and crypto. I say I love building businesses because I built these different businesses inside a big company. I say I'm an entrepreneur, but I'm a big company person.

Oh, what a challenge.

I know. And I was like devastated. I was so offended.

I was like, you know, and that's a whole other separate conversation of why is that such a horrible insult, right?

But I was like, that's, you know, I'm curious.

No, I am curious about that. I mean, what, so far that is a very like that intervention moment.

Yes.

Right. But it is, I think it's an interesting question. Like, okay, so what's the problem with being a big company person? Yes. And why were you so offended?

I think cuz I knew it wasn't my heart. Mm-hmm. You know, it's not so much that I was like, thought there was something, uh, that was like the worst way to spend a life, but I just kind of knew that I'm a person who needs a mission.

Mm-hmm.

And I love building things from scratch. And I've been able to do that in a lower risk way inside of place, right? You don't have to totally start from zero. If it doesn't work out, they move you to start a new thing or do a different thing, right? So that kind of like protected me, I think.

That's true.

And so that had benefits that I'm grateful for. But I think he reached me at a time where I was like, okay, like, what are you protecting yourself from, you know?

Yeah. So it was like put up or shut up time.

Yeah, put up or shut up.

Yeah. So then what happened? So you, so you met— when I want to remind myself of your founder's name. Your founder's name is Hayden Adams, right? So you, did you go down and meet? Like, so what was the process then after your friend called you?

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it wasn't even a company. That's also very interesting. It was a project. So, you know, sort of spin out, tell us what happened.

It was best known as a project and kind of a movement and a brand because people really beloved it. So my friend called me and said what I just mentioned to you. And I didn't— I listened right away when he said that. He'd been kind of mentioning it casually for months and I hadn't been paying attention. And I had been sort of headhunted at the time for CEO and CFO jobs at crypto companies blockchain companies. Oh, okay. Because I'd been babysitting blockchain for BlackRock, basically.

Yeah.

It wasn't really a business or project. Now it is. Now BlackRock is doing a ton in the years since I've left. They partnered with Coinbase and Circle and they've made investments and they're doing all kinds of cool stuff. Bitcoin ETF. But the babysitting the issue as a passion project alongside my day job meant that I just knew people in the industry. So I started getting headhunted for these other jobs. I just kind of parallel processed all of them. And the other roles were defined. They were big teams. They had revenue. And this one was kind of an open question. But when I met Hayden, the founder, who I think was 26 maybe at the time, it just, it was so obvious that he was boldly pursuing the intrinsic benefits of a blockchain, that he was not compromising to capture hype, and he wasn't compromising to just build a business in the short term. So I wasn't sure if it would work, but I knew it would be special.

Yeah.

And that even if I, after 6 to 9 months, he was like, actually, I want us to be a small open source research team. I was like, I can I'll find another job. You know what I mean? I'll be okay. And I will have challenged myself to think differently and to also be full-time in this world that I think has a lot of potential.

Yeah. You know, that's fascinating when you say, "I know I'll be okay and I'll get another job." Right? And I think that people actually prevent themselves from taking a leap, from taking a risk, because they have these fears, most of which are really unfounded. Certainly someone at your age and stage in your career, you know, you might cling— someone like you might cling to safety, but for some reason you were able to tell yourself, Don't cling to safety. Do you have any ideas what you thought about? Like, because you're sure there was still some risk, and I'm sure you had to like tell your parents and like tell other people.

Yeah.

So what was that like, and how did you think about risk?

So I grew up wanting to be a war correspondent, so I think again I kind of got back to this like, wait, the choices you've made have not actually demonstrated the risk tolerance you believe you have. And so it was that kind of like come-to-one-self moment of, um, what am I so afraid of? And I went I mean, I went to law school and business school at Harvard in part because I felt like, frankly, like as a woman in business, it would help me if I ever chose to take time out of the workforce to have that much more of a network, that much more of kind of like a foundation. I'm not sure if that's that important, but I'd done all these things to kind of de-risk my career. And as I just kept thinking about it, I was like, well, what was all of that for if when faced with an opportunity that speaks to my heart where I feel connected to the person who created it, it has unique product market fit already, which which is extraordinary, hardest part probably, right, of starting a company. Then like, what was all that for if not to take a risk now? I didn't think that deeply. I think as I started to kind of like sit with the decision, I felt like it would be riskier to stay at BlackRock, actually. I felt like at that point, I'd already learned how to build teams. I'd already learned how to like sell products and launch products and set a strategy and communicate a vision to a global team of hundreds of people. And that was what was a great thing at a big company to learn, right? That was what that platform was really beneficial for. You can do that in a short period of time. And if that wasn't for doing that in a different higher risk, higher reward potential context, then like, what for? And also at a big company, you kind of reach a point where you're like, well, what's next? Like, you reach a plateau and the next level is like 10 years away.

Right.

And at a certain point, you want to just keep challenging yourself to like stay fresh and sharp. So I ultimately just felt like, and maybe I'm thinking about risk in the the wrong way. Yeah, the long term might be riskier. And like, I might be less happy. I might like, you know what I mean? Like, what are you de-risking for? At a certain point, if like you're not energized, that shows up in everything, whether it's like the financial return you're achieving for yourself or progress or the impact of your work, right?

Totally. No. And then also you just become that person who's kind of trudging one step in front of the other. And then it's like, for what? And then you wake up one day and you're like, oh, I can climb the career ladder, but it was against the wrong shelf or the wrong wall.

Yes.

And then, you know, then it's sort of like you have to come to terms. So it sounds like you had that insight.

Yeah.

So then you joined Uniswap. How many people? So what was it like? Tell us about how did you carve out the role for yourself? What was that like? And both tell us like, you know, what it felt like, but then also tell us step by step what you did and how you thought about it.

Yeah. So I, I'd known this friend who reached out to me for several years. That was helpful because he could sort of say, I know you're good at these things. I've seen you do these things. That was very helpful. And then I spent probably 2 days cumulatively over the course of a couple weeks with Hayden, just being like, what are your problems right now? Like, what do you need help with? What do you hope for this thing? What do you think about these other players who are trying to do something somewhat similar? I listened to, like, I read a ton. I, like, watched tons of YouTube videos, listened to tons of podcasts. And then I wrote a job description for myself.

Oh wow.

And I was like, I think you need a COO. And I know that's kind of silly because it's a small team of 8 people. But I also was leaving like a pretty good spot. And I was like, if the whole company doesn't need a COO in a year, then I can excuse myself. And like, and if you also don't need a COO in a year, it won't matter that we like had this blip or whatever. So I wrote that job description. It was very clear. It was sort of like drive partnerships, go-to-market strategy, which is sort of umbrella, but a little bit separate. Business strategy, and then team building. And I just went through and I actually looked through my resume and like LinkedIn and my own experience. It wasn't written down and just put it in those buckets. And I was just like, here's all the different ways that I've built a team before. What about this resonates with you? Doesn't resonate with you? And then I met every person in the company.

All 8 of them?

All 8. And then I think they had like a little like deliberation. Like everybody was, it was everybody's decision, like a consensus decision.

Of course.

Yeah. And then I, yeah, and then I just gave my notice. And so I had a long leave period of sort of 90 days at BlackRock. And that gave me a lot of time to start to transition and figure out like what we would, what, you know, I would do. And I didn't take any time off. Went straight over Memorial Day weekend, Tuesday after Memorial Day, started full-time. And it was a walk-up in Brooklyn. And you had to like walk past a bunch of trash to like get to the actual office. And people were always getting locked out and losing the keys. And yeah, it was like a charming space. End of the pan— sort of end of the pandemic, June 2021.

Okay.

But we all came into the office. It was a really fun vibe.

Yeah, I'm sure. Why did you come into the office? Why did everyone come into the office? Because one thing also about, let's say, crypto, it's sort of the, you know, let's say the millennials and the younger people who don't want to be in the offices or all that, like the memes that I have. But it sounds like you guys obviously wanted to be in the office because because it was a pandemic, you could still not be in the office.

Yeah. Well, that's a great point because people will say, isn't the Uniswap protocol, which is a core foundational open source infrastructure, isn't that decentralized? So like, shouldn't your team be distributed? And I don't think those things are related at all.

Yeah, good to know.

Right? So you can have a decentralized community that is like a governance system and a community associated with decentralized software. But if you are a small core team that's trying innovate rapidly in a company model, and we are a for-profit C-Corp, Uniswap Labs, a for-profit C-Corp, then it matters if you're in person. It still just does. So we don't require anybody to come into the office. I think there are definitely like members of our team who would probably quit on principle if everybody was required to be in the office. But we find that, I don't know, 60% of people come in voluntarily just because they because it's one, if you like your colleagues, it's more fun to be around them sometimes. And I think we're all kind of finding collaborations faster.

Yeah, in person. Yeah, for sure. So what was your first, I mean, I'm just picturing you, you onboard yourself into the role of COO for an 8-person team, not even a company, right? So what were you, how did you think about onboarding yourself? Because I know that nobody else was giving you guidance. You were sure generating it all yourself. What was that like? And again, specifics around kind of day one and week one, and how did you think about success as you were kind of early Yeah, so I talked to everyone I knew who had ever touched Uniswap. Great.

So I talked to anybody I knew who'd use the product. I obviously used it myself. I did, um, I did a little, uh, one-pager of like important strategic questions, uh, and then I did a 90-day plan for myself. So the important strategic questions I did all with outside information. I talked to all the investors, I talked to every person I knew in crypto to get what they thought about it. Um, so that was kind of like an outside in perspective. And then I talked through that one-pager with, um, my, my friend at the company who was the head lawyer, with Hayden, the founder. And then when I started, top priority was I talked to every single person for like an hour on the team and I got their thoughts on those things. Um, and then coming out of that, I did a 90-day plan and I broke it into, um, urgent and important. Uh, and then within important, I think I did like a 2x2 or something like that. Right.

Of course.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And sort of try to say like 30, 60, 90 days or whatever. A little bit tragically, I recently pulled this up again and there's a solid portion of it that like still remains to be done. You know, I was like, like figure out product strategy in 90 days, you know.

Totally, totally. We're so ambitious, right?

So ambitious.

I know, ambitious. But also I think, you know, the whole notion of having a plan is really not about the plan, it's about you having kind of a way to go and then things probably change. But I am curious like, so why didn't you figure out product strategy in 90 days? Or what did get in the way of you executing that plan? And what are some things— and I guess I would say, what advice would you give to other people who are onboarding themselves, let's face it, themselves into a startup in particular, so that they can be successful?

Yeah. Well, I do think that sharing your goals and your plan, if it's a very small team, with everybody is very important. Yeah. Because when, especially if you have people who have different disciplines and are different stages in their careers, it's easy to then be like, well, what is that person doing? Like how are they adding value? Because it's so different. And we are like, we're like 70% engineers. And so, and I think probably 55% under 30. So not, people don't have the same work context. Right. So that I think is really helpful, just like setting a norm of like being very, very open about your priorities and including when they change. And then we just tried to set a norm of being very transparent and public about all communication internally. So like everything in public Slack channels. As we grew, that became harder to maintain. Maintain, right? Because then when you're talking to a room of 8 people, it's not that scary if someone thinks your idea is dumb. When it's 50 people, it's kind of scary. You slip into the side channels and talk to 3 people on Slack instead of like getting up and talking to them in person. So that's been something we kind of have to push over and over. Um, but back to like onboarding yourself. Yeah, I think just like kind of keeping yourself transparent to everybody of what you're working on. And then I wish I'd put aside, like, this is a parking a lot. I wish I'd just like given myself permission to say that was too ambitious. Mm, yeah, you know, totally. The other thing that honestly got in the way was the regulatory environment changed.

Yes, I'm sure that's true. And that happened sort of on your watch, like as you were entering, so you had to probably turn your attention to that.

Yes, exactly.

So that makes sense.

All of a sudden it was like, oh wait, uh, there was a new chair of the SEC. People were optimistic because he seemed to understand the technology that he would come in and have a set of proposals as to like how to protect consumers and, you know, reduce market manipulation and all the things people worry about. And instead, it turned out he was just pretty directly antagonistic.

Right.

And so then we kind of had to come up with like, what does that mean?

Right. So everything changed.

Everything changed.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, when the facts change, right, you have to change your strategy.

Right. And I—

but I think just to generalize that to everybody, the idea is that you had a plan, you were trying to focus on the plan, communicate the plan, be transparent about the plan, but then obviously external factors change, you have to make changes as a leader for sure. I think that's what you're saying. And that's, I think, very profound. And can you just share, like, if you think about some of the items that were on that plan that you wanted to make sure that you did in 30 days or 60 days to give people an understanding of what that's like to onboard yourself and how do you define success in the first, you know, the first early, early stages?

Yeah. Well, I'll say one thing I wish I had done. I wish I'd started— I'd said success for the company and also a little bit for myself.

Oh, yeah.

Because what I found was that because there wasn't anyone else who had like an operational skill set, um, or experience, um, people certainly develop that skill set later. I sometimes got stuck doing some of those things, and that wasn't— that those really aren't my strengths. Like, I'm not— I'm, I'm an operator, but that doesn't mean that I'm the best at operations. It's not like I've run a supply chain company, you know what I mean, or logistics company. And so even these little operations things, and I wish I'd identify, like, if you're doing this stuff, you're spending your time the wrong way, you're not using your superpowers, and the company needs you for your superpowers. Hours, which in my case is more like communication and partnerships and growth, right? Um, and I, I think I might have been able to identify like, okay, hire for that job faster, hire for like the head of people faster, for example, right? Um, so anyway, so that's kind of one thing I wish I had done. Um, in terms of, you asked for the details of how I just like—

yeah, just some specifics that really you were like, I got this done and this done and that was helpful to build credibility.

Yeah, well, key hires, that's like critical thing is if you can internalize and understand the culture of a very small, like, wet clay evolving team.

Yeah.

And try and write that down, uh, and then hire consistent with what I— what the skill gap is, but also the culture is evolving to be. I think that's huge.

Yeah.

And that's something I love. Like, I actually love hiring and recruiting. People. I love finding a match for a person and seeing people grow. So one of the first things we did is we wrote a mission statement. We wrote values. We wrote a little vision of like, what does the world look like if we achieve our mission? And then from there, you know, start to figure out like, okay, what kinds of— can we use that as an interview process? So we're not just hiring someone who's like run a people function, but someone who's going to understand that unlocking universal ownership and exchange change is kind of part of what an ethos, and that we want that to be something that our people we're hiring believe in.

Yeah.

So what do we, what do we do tactically? I mean, I think it was like hire, uh, we hired a VP of engineering, but we also hired a handful of engineers. We hired head of people, growth person. I think there was sort of like 12 hires in that first 6 months. The next year we quadrupled the company. Wow. To 100 people.

Yeah.

So then it was like create a process. And hire the best recruiter. Don't use an agency or network anymore. So that was one piece that was very tangible, concrete. We're glad this woman showed up because now we have more people. Yeah.

Not more people for more people's sake.

No.

More people to do stuff.

Yes.

That was important to move this thing forward.

Yes. More people to do stuff. Again, I think that comes downstream of what is the culture that we want, the culture, the values, the mission that we want these people to be doing. So I'm glad that we started with that, set the mission and then hire people. The next thing that we started and didn't finish that. So it kind of falls a little bit in both categories of like add value and also be realistic is we're trying to figure out who are the next set of users. So Uniswap's products, website and an app, we didn't have the app at the time, are used by consumers. The protocol infrastructure is used by professionals or other people who access it programmatically through API. And we— in crypto, you don't have the level of like detailed information that you or at least at least in blockchains, things that are actually on-chain, as opposed to like Coinbase, a centralized company, you don't have all the data that you have that Facebook has. I don't know your email address. I don't know your phone number. I don't know everything you're clicking on. So you actually don't know a ton about your users. So one of the first things I did was like, let's go after 3 big segments and figure out, are they using Uniswap today? Will they ever? And we were like consumer, developer, and institutions. And I should have picked one. And it's very obvious.

This.

And I remember I was at like a New York tech thing with this woman who was CEO of a fintech company. She was asking me about what, you know, Uniswap was like. And I was like, we're doing all three things because blockchains are so scalable. And you have a shared backend infrastructure. And like, go-to-market is like, sort of digitally native, you launch globally instantly, you don't have to launch in every country. And therefore, we're taking those efficiencies. And we're going to do developers and consumers and institutions. And she was like, you are crazy, like, pick one thing and do it well. And I was like, Yeah, I know, it's the old world.

Okay, boomer.

Okay, okay, boomer.

Exactly.

We can do it all. We can do it all. It's really, really obvious. And I just wish that we'd picked one. We should have just said consumers or developers and forget institutions for years to come. And I don't think we wasted a ton of time or engineering time, but it just split our focus. And then that meant that everyone was like, well, what's our strategy? Which of these things is most important to us?

Right. Totally. How often do I go into a company and everyone says, what's our strategy? And it just has to do with maybe lack of focus, less of or lack of understanding of all the people, right? Leadership may understand it, but like, you have to communicate that to the people is really hard, especially when you're kind of diversified, as you're saying.

Yes, totally.

Yeah. So one thing you talked about, I wanted to get into this, is that you decided to start with creating mission, values, culture. So I always coach startups to do that. They often do not do that because, oh no, we gotta go do our thing, right? And focus on the business. But that's such an essential part of business, such an essential part of the business, what galvanizes people, but also to hire people, as you said, So first of all, did you get any pushback when you said, let's have a mission? That's first of all. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I didn't, I didn't tell everyone what it should be because I hadn't started the company, right? So like, and so I just said, do we have one? Should we have one? And then we did a little on-site. So I think 45 days after I joined, we did an on-site and we did a bunch of prep. We had everybody like answer a survey. Like, what do you think? What does Uniswap stand for to you? What are the values and anti-values and people we should hire.

Say more about anti-values.

Yeah, it was great because we had values, and I remember the number one thing was low ego, and anti-values, the number one thing was ego. And so that was a kind of perfect symmetry, but then it's also— sometimes it's easier when you're interviewing or when you are reacting to a prior company or culture you worked in. It's sometimes easier, I think, to like define what you don't want.

Yeah.

So anyway, so that's, that's what we had. Everybody kind of defined that. So it was co-created, and we were small enough that that wasn't so painful and cumbersome. I think we were 16 to 20 people when we started to do that, or by the time we finished it. So people reacted pretty well, but I was not— I didn't feel like I could stand in front of even the teeny little team and say, "These are our mission and values." We did it design thinking style with whiteboards and stickers and stuff like that. And one thing that came out of it was really interesting. There was probably like one value or one kind of principle that stuck out as like the clear winner. And then so many of the things that were all like kind of small. And the one that really stuck out, or one value that stuck out was build to last. Which is kind of, I don't know, I guess there's like, I think there's a good book called Build to Last or something, right? But build to last, because part of the power of blockchains is that they're durable. They don't have to be run by one— they're not run by one company. And so you as a developer can build on a blockchain and it should be what's called credibly neutral. You should be able to expect that you're not going to get kicked off in the way that like Twitter and Facebook kicked companies off of APIs, right? Whole businesses have been built depending on them. And then they were like, sorry, we're keeping this garden to ourselves. That like durability was something that was like a philosophical technical principle, but also could be part of a culture. Right? Are we here to build something that we are proud of in the long term and not just something that's going to be sold in a number of years?

Right. That's really powerful. And so, then you had kind of a North Star in some ways.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's so powerful. And then, of course, I'm sure you translated it into the culture and I'd love to hear about that. And also, in particular, you were talking about how with 8 people, this is true for all startups. It's not about crypto. This is true for all startups. With 8 people, you're like, "Hey, Frankie, what do you think about that?" Or whatever. And everyone's making decisions, and then suddenly you have meetings in a separate room where other people are not invited and that's uncomfortable, or to your point, people feel uncomfortable addressing 60 people in the Slack channel. How did you handle that? And how big is the company now?

It's 100 people.

100 people. So how did you handle that scaling and that growth from 8 people to 100 people in terms of communication, processes, rituals, the way you kind of kept the company moving, and maybe also mistakes that mistakes that you made?

Yeah, I can, I mean, we definitely made some mistakes. I think that, yeah, things that we did well, we just stuck to having an all-hands every single week. It's so simple, it sounds so obvious, but it's like lightweight, easy, just one forum, like don't let it drop. That I think was helpful. So if there was, if we noticed, actually people don't realize we have a marketing team now, and what does the marketing team do? Just like have them present in all hands, you know what I mean? So like that kind of became our kind of casual. We do a lot in Slack. We do a lot, and we sort of push people to do everything in shared channels. Where I think we over-implemented process and then have kind of scaled back too far to the other side is in product development process. So, we had a couple of PMs join from bigger places who were used to lots of checkpoints, and docs, and processes, and decision docs, and a decision doc for everything. And at first, that was very welcome because you went from, as you just said, very informal decision-making, like everyone knows who they have to talk to, you know who's an expert for input, you know who the decision-maker is, you know who's going to implement the work, who needs to be informed, to then actually not knowing that at all. And that can become really threatening when people get misinterpreted, when they're sort of like, "Wait, no one asked for my input? Do you not value me anymore?" And no, it's just the person coordinating this work is new to the company and doesn't know you're the expert who built this part of the product. And that creates all this unintentional confusion and less trust. So at first, it was exciting that we had these PMs from FAANG and they were going to—

Define FAANG. Define FAANG.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. So big tech companies that have built the biggest, most used tech products in the world. And I came from BlackRock. So I built fintech businesses and I built teams, but I didn't come from consumer tech. And so very much different. To what was being recommended.

Right.

And it just slowed things down.

Yeah.

And it created a lot of extra process. So, we basically shrunk the product team in half. Now we have 3 PMs.

Oh, wow.

And things, I think, move a lot faster. We're now reintroducing rituals. One thing we did this year, we copied Shopify's no recurring meetings for the first 2 weeks of the year, and which was great.

Tell us more about that.

Okay, so, um, Toby Luckey is the founder and CEO of Shopify, actually loves crypto, funnily enough. We asked him to be an advisor once, and he was like, don't get advisors ever, I don't believe in them, but if you want help, call me anytime.

Oh, that's nice.

That's very candid advice. Yeah, that's right. Um, so I get— last year, Shopify, you know, big company, right, thousand people, um, got rid of all recurring meetings across the whole company for the first two weeks of the year. And then you had to like, I think, go through some kind of check to put them back on the calendar.

To add them back. If you were going to add them back.

If you're going to add them back.

It gave you 2 weeks to kind of pause and ask yourself, do I really need this meeting? Or like, what meeting do I need? Oh, I know it's this meeting.

Totally.

Yeah.

And wait, is that a discussion meeting or a decision meeting? And should it be at the beginning of the week or the end of the week? And how frequently? And are these the right people anymore?

Love it.

Right. And so it just as a blanket rule, it just like removes loses the room for misinterpretation. So anyway, and then they quantify like how much time they thought they saved the company by getting rid of a lot of meetings. So we did that this year, um, for the first time, and I don't think we had a ton of extra meetings, but it was still just helpful to be like, now we're going to start fresh. I told you we had, we had like no rituals, and we had kind of a little bit too much, and then we had not enough, and we're just now starting to layer it back in.

Yeah.

And that just gave us an opportunity to write down, here are the forms we have, and here's Here's how you make decisions, and here's how you can educate yourself on the context of product market users. We're just starting to get to that next phase of that I think is right for 100 people. Right.

No, that makes complete sense. It's hard to calibrate what's right for 100 people because it's also not 100 of the same person. Yes. Different functions, different expectations, different needs for clarity. How do you as a company think about about how you then, you know, sort of give the right thing that people need inside of the workforce to create clarity and understand the impact they have?

It's a great question. Um, yeah, clarity is the most important word, I think, here, because it's the clarity that people are looking for. Do you need my input or not? What is good, right? What are we trying to achieve?

Exactly.

You know, it's not like, tell me— it's so different from, like, instruction or guidance or like what comes through in a, um, I think when people say what's the strategy, often they're looking for just clarity, right? Um, what do we do around this? So one thing we did that I hope has been helpful is we started, uh, what are called these university sessions. So uni-iversity, like Uniswap, basically.

Oh my God, I love it! University! Yeah. Oh my God, I love it.

We reached a point where, um, there were enough people who you realized just like had gotten thrown into their job without quite enough time to like figure out the whole tech stack or to like really know who our users are. And again, we hadn't like formalized all this content necessarily. And so we had a very small— we still have a small people team. I think we had a 4-person, 3-person people team and still do. And I was just like, we have to set up these sessions so people understand more things. And here's the most critical topics. What is Uniswap?

How does it work?

Who uses it? How to use it, a liquidity pool, you know what I mean? What is a self-custody wallet? Call it, this whole concept of owning your own assets. And they were like, you want us to spin up a whole learning and development program in like a week for a 100-person company? And so, we just made it self-serve. We just said, we asked people, if you are an expert on a topic that you think everyone in the company should know about, just sign up and do your own session. I love that. And that's been very simple and like powerful. And we have one a week and it gives people an opportunity to showcase their expertise. Expertise. So, if there is like an independent contributor engineer who's 2 years out of college, but who is like trying to figure out how we have something like usernames in our app, and they are the expert, they can now host a whole university session on like, how do you have a username on a blockchain.

So good. You know, that's so good because who do you want to learn from really? You want to learn from people inside the company. Yeah. The experts, right? Not the L&D team or whatever. Also, although some of the presentations may not be the best or most polished, it teaches people by doing how to present and how to teach, and then they see, right, like what's working and not working. I love everything about that. It kind of elevates the whole brown bag lunch thing also, and yet that's how people learn, right? Sitting around and discussing and getting into something, especially with somebody who they know, and also gets— helps people get to know each other in the company.

Totally.

Yeah.

Exactly. And feel like they have a voice, right? And so then hopefully then that helps empower people because so much of what we're doing in whether you want to call it Web3 or crypto, you can't just port a model from an existing consumer tech company that's built on totally centralized infrastructure and assume it's all going to work. And we had a couple misfires with people trying to do that in a number of different ways, whether it was like a technical decision or a way of working.. And so you want to hear from the junior people who like don't have as many assumptions about like how you do a thing. Right. So anyway, that's one simple thing that we've done. And then we also now do like every quarter we do a voice of the user that our customer support team does. Our customer support team is amazing. A lot of crypto companies don't even really have customer support. They're just sort of like, welcome to this new world. Good luck out there. We do that. We do a quarterly, like, where's the market context that the growth team does. And then, of course, we do roadmaps and everything like that. We just try to make sure that people who own those works, who lead those teams, are speaking to it, to the whole company, all the time.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I love that. And so, you really are, probably you and Hayden, I would just picture, leaving the company. What's your relationship like? How has it changed? I guess I would say, how have seen him grow as a leader and how do you think you participate in that process of him growing as a leader?

Yeah. Well, I think there are other people who definitely lead the company with us. Yeah. And there's especially one person who was there before it was even a company. And so that was one thing that I was mindful of in joining. It's just like I was fortunate to join a thing that had already realized a kind of success and a category of success and felt like a sense of stewardship. That to really just like listen, like what made this work and what all of you hope for it. And I'd say Hayden has that attitude himself too, I think. And I think that's part of what makes him a great leader. He's now, and he's like in his late 20s, he had one job after college that he will quickly say he got fired from. And then he taught himself to code and how to write smart contracts. And a friend of his said that would be, you know, an important part of the future and very few people understood how to do it. And if you could do it, it would be interesting. What's our relationship like? I mean, we talk multiple times a day. We used to share an office. So that first Brooklyn office where it was one big open room. And then when we went to, we moved to a small office elsewhere. And there was one conference room and then there was a smaller semi-conference room that we turned into our office. Because at a certain point you do have to have conversations that not everybody is hearing. Um, so it's not that we had to sit next to each other at all times, but like if we had each had an office, then there would be no conference room. So all this to say, we talk to each other like hours and hours a day. Um, I've learned a ton from him. I think I have been pushed to question why I think things have to be a certain way or what good looks I also, I think, had a bias toward measuring work inputs are important. And I think I've come to realize a lot more that you get much better results if you just look for the outputs and agree on what those are, especially people with different ways of working and different working styles. And hopefully, I think I've learned a lot from him. I think that we've figured out each other's strengths and weaknesses. So, he oversees product design engineering. I oversee the rest of the company. The engineering team is the vast majority of the employees, it's like between 55% and 70% of the team at any given time. But the other functions have a lot of stuff too, right? There's like tons to do with people, finance, communications, go-to-market, growth, etc. So, that's kind of how we've split up the world. And we have a leadership team that meets, there's 3 or 4 others on the leadership team. Meet once a week for an hour, just talk about what's on our mind. And now we have sort of like the next level of the functional leaders who also meet because what we found is that too much was being pushed to us to make decisions. And not only was that not fun and necessary, but also it's like disempowering and it's unintentional. And so we've just now created this kind of like next forum, which some companies call like an opco or something like that. We've kept it a little more like simple, just functional leads. And that sort of helped kind of make sure that those people are also more empowered to make those decisions and not looking to us and then sort of wait, is this a business decision? And does that mean it's MC's decision or is it a product decision? It's Hayden. And those are like intertwined. And so the more that it's just, we can give input and the team that has to execute or that has a specific goal can decide, I think it actually makes our working relationship easier.

Right.

Because it means you're not just talking about like, hey, I have this list of things. Okay, what's your list of things? You know, and can you have like a more creative relationship?

Yeah, totally. I think that's great. And also it's interesting, you think about like the different meetings you have to have. So we talk about meetings, yeah, like, oh, I mean, there's a waste of time, but actually meetings are necessary.

Yeah.

So you all as a leadership team have to meet, and then there's always a time in the company where it's like, you know what, we need the next level down to also have meetings.

Yeah.

Both inform each other, to be informed, and also to decide. So kind of finding that balance and having that grow. It's so important. But if you think about your partnership with Hayden, or maybe advice you have for other people in terms of how do you— what advice do you have to sort of partner with founders? Yeah. Partner with CEOs who are a different breed. I mean, Hayden, 26 or whatever now, you know, 23 when he started the company, you know, like he's a different breed. What advice do you have, or what insights do you have, you know, coming out of that partnership?

Yeah. I think it's important to understand what you want to spend your time on. And you don't always get to do what you want to do, right? But just to be kind of clear about what, where, again, sort of like has to get done or necessary, and then like your superpowers. Because I think especially if you are, if you have a little more work experience and you're partnering with a younger founder, you can end up up just all in the shit work that nobody wants to do, right? Yeah, totally. And I think I found myself a little stuck there for probably my second year at the company. First year was a lot of just laying the foundation. What do we want to be doing? It was very generative, very inspiring, and very fun. And then the next year was a little bit of like, ugh, okay, everyone now needs to have structure and that sort of stuff. So that I think is helpful. I think it helps to get out there and talk to other founders and talk to other teams about how they do things. And I think I've come to really appreciate speaking in more first principles or even just human terms because you're not relying on a proxy for what a certain word means or an assumption that the world's going to be the same. So, a simple example is I could say this market is this big, but if you do it on a blockchain, maybe you're going to pay a lot less for it, and so it's not that big after all. And so, if you're coming from a different perspective, you might think, well, why should I listen to your analysis if you're assuming that these conditions are going to be true in the future. And then people, especially I think business people, can like lose translation credibility with a technical partner and founder. So anyway, it's been helpful to me, like have other people who kind of help me change and evolve the way I communicate. But also we just spent a ton of time together, like fundraising process, like, you know, going through fundraising processes, especially a fundraising process in 2022, right after like parts of crypto had crashed. And, um, and that was like a lot of weekends, like a lot of late nights. There's just no shortage for time together, right?

Time in the water. Yeah, yeah. And I guess I would ask you, how have you seen him grow in this period?

So much. I mean, um, yeah, I would say, look, I think if you've never managed a person and then you manage you watch 2 dozen people, not simultaneously, but in sequence over the course of a couple of years, you just start to pick up a lot of patterns. And so, just watching that happen really fast has been important. I think he has really high EQ, which isn't something that you necessarily assume about a young technical founder. It's sort of a stereotype, but I don't see why it should be. And so, I think I've learned from him to think a little bit more about like, "How will this make people feel?" You know, I think maybe that's also coming from a big company or sort of like, whatever, things change and people move around and it's all kind of inevitable. And when you're small and everything feels kind of precious, and if you care about all the people you hired, which I do, it's sometimes been helpful to kind of be reminded to slow down a little bit. He also helps me assume positive intent. He always assumes positive intent. He is an optimist. Optimist. And I think for me, coming from Wall Street, my first job being on an aggressive, very competitive trading floor with no women and no one wants to help you, I don't always default to assuming positive intent. And that can be very helpful as a negotiator. That's very helpful. It's part of what makes me really good at business development and partnerships, but it's the wrong attitude internally. And so it's not even intentional.

Right.

So, yeah, I think we've complemented each other well, sort of like that optimist and then just sort of a little bit more like execution-focused.

Totally. Yeah. I love how you just completely negated a stereotype too, how like women are so empathetic and they teach men to be empathetic. Apparently not. Not in this case, right? And also, you know, that the sort of technical founder, right, with no EQ, right? So he's the one who's teaching you. But also, and, and I would also just say in general, founders are very obviously, understandably protective of their thing and their people and whatnot.

Community— I think in a way I just assumed community would be part of the fabric of my life, and I find myself drawn to communities and creating communities. So I've always hosted things and brought people together everywhere I've lived, and I bounced around a little bit, um, as an adult. Uh, so lived in Kenya for a bit, Hong Kong for a bit, and somehow at the end of a few months I would be like, you know, dozens and dozens of people and feel so grateful for that. But I I think I just assumed that that would exist. And I don't know if I ever reflected on, wait, what kinds of communities do I care about being part of? And what are the principles of community building that I think are really important?

Right.

And I think that's one thing that at Uniswap now I've had to think about fresh. And one for us as a company, but also, yeah, for us as a company, our company culture, but also what does our brand mean? Our brand has a lot of affinity. And support from so many people and trying to figure out how do you have digital communities and shared experiences and kind of rituals. I don't think we've done anything really outstanding yet. We're just sort of building that. A lot of it's just been organic and grassroots. But that's something I hope to kind of reflect a little bit more about, like what kind of community building do I think is really useful and still kind of important. —today.

Yeah.

Because community has become such a buzzword. It's like what— right? There was a period where community at a startup meant make everyone in the office happy and host events. Yeah. And then there was a period where Facebook and big tech companies were talking about it. It was because you could create Facebook pages and other things that could be digital forums. And now in crypto, it's very diffuse. And it kind of means go-to-market, but in a sometimes more grassroots, less structured way, or like user support. Is sometimes what some communities mean by that. So anyway, that's just like a whole bunch of different random thoughts. But I guess what I'm saying is I think it's time to think again about like, you know, what kinds of communities do I want to be helping build and contributing to? Oh, interesting. That's right.

So then it's like you want to reinvent community kind of for yourself, but also, you know, that you have to maybe take these insights of a community and apply them inside of Uniswap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I think that's very, you know, it's sort of like, I don't know, if you think about the Steve Jobs quote about like, you know, connecting the dots backwards. I mean, I know that I grew up in a youth group called Young Judea, and it was quote-unquote peer-led. So when you're 13, I don't know about you, but when I was 13, I didn't know what it meant to be peer-led. What's peer-led mean? Yeah, but I did know that I was facilitating discussion groups for my peers, right, my little comrades there when I was 13 years old. So now that I'm a facilitator, I'm quite a bit older than 13 now. I've had a lot of years in the water as a facilitator. And, you know, I look back on that time and realize like that was so formative for me. And I learned so much just naturally about how to do that. And I just suspect that some of that has seeped into you and maybe there's another chapter for you in applying those skills.

Totally. Right. A lot— I think that is part of— has seeped into me of sort of how do you think about bringing bringing a group of people together, kind of a diverse collection of people together with different perspectives and create an environment where they're going to want to talk to each other and build bridges. And yeah, that's a big part of what brought me to crypto, honestly, is like, I feel like it's misunderstood. I think it has huge potential. I'm willing to risk and stake my reputation on trying to help at least explain and demonstrate how this spot of it has a lot of potential for the world. And that means other people have to all be part of that. I don't think the best way to do that today is to just do a lot of press or something like that. It's a combination of having people who tell your story for you because they believe in what you're doing and they kind of bring people together. But you're right, the point around facilitation, having so many, being so deep in the water, That really resonates too, because yeah, I do feel like just comfortable showing up in a room and being like, okay, you know, aren't we all happy to be here together and not kind of spooked, you know? Well, if this person is like in traditional finance and these people are in crypto and this person's a regulator, do they all hate each other? Probably. But like, it's okay, you know, like everyone can, can like talk and then go home and keep, you know, hopefully maybe you think a little bit differently.

Right, right. Totally. So if I think about your career so far, you know, you've done all these interesting things. You spent time in interesting places. Do you have any regrets or sort of wish you had in your career? That is a great question.

It's funny, I went to a dinner this week where we played this game, This or That. Have you ever played this game? Mm-hmm. So this is a thing that I would do in a small community setting where you say, would you rather go to the moon or the Mariana Trench? You do thumbs up if the moon, thumbs down if Mariana Trench. And one of the questions, and it's a simple, simple game, and you don't have to explain. So, it's kind of a bonding thing. And one of the questions was, would you go back 10 years? If you could be 10 years younger today and you don't keep with you the relationships that you built in the past 10 years. So, 10 years younger and you know everything you know and you have 10 more years to live or whatever, would you do it? And it's a really tough thing because it's really like, how do you think about sunk cost and you justify your path to date? And I told you how I even went to law school and business school, which are kind of— people don't usually go to law school because they're interested in the internet, right? I didn't intend to practice law. I went because I felt like the internet was going to shape finance and financial markets in a way where law would be a very critical part of that. And I think if I were 10 years younger, I probably would have just gone straight into tech. I might have tried to teach myself to code, and I probably would have done something in product. So because it's that product has become this discipline that is sort of cross-functional take an idea, an opportunity, and like turn it into something. What I do today, I still get to do all those things. And so I think because of my kind of timeline and trajectory, it's— I still get to use those skills and do those things. But I wonder if I were a little bit younger, I might have gotten a little bit more technical earlier. Yeah. Um, but that's my only real regret. The other thing that I, um, I don't so much regret In a way, I'm kind of grateful for where I am in this kind of part of the journey for women in the workforce. I was in business school, I think, right when Sheryl Sandberg wrote Lean In and read it. Wasn't the biggest fan, appreciated the effort, but had worked in male-dominated environments and felt like, "I don't really like talking about gender topics and issues, and I don't think it's the right use of my time. Is it really helping anyone?" of us and, you know, just like do good work. And, uh, and I think that I actually had more like chips on my shoulder and kind of residual, um, kind of, uh, like maybe armor about just sort of protecting myself as a woman in more male-dominated environments. And I think it's taken me some time to shed that. And I— that's another benefit. Maybe if you're 10 years younger, you didn't have to like, you know, get a little beat up in Wall Street where they tell you literally what to wear to work every day. Just my experience in the early, mid-2000s, and you could only wear 3 colors and stuff like that. And I kind of wish I didn't have to deal with some of that, but in other ways, maybe it made me tougher. I don't know.

Yeah, I hear that. I mean, the whole notion of like, if I had only known then— well, you didn't know then, and in some ways it formed you. But I understand that there's some clear insights that like, I could have done this sooner, or I wouldn't have had to get, you know, beat up, as you say, in this kind of a way. Yeah, that's really powerful. Yeah. Just a few more questions. I'm just curious about imposter syndrome, and I'm just curious, have you ever experienced imposter syndrome?

Um, where you mean feeling like I don't deserve to be here?

Yeah, feeling like a fraud. Like, yeah, basically, ever— you've accomplished anything in your life because of luck, but yeah, luck is about to run out. They're gonna find you out.

Yeah. I've never felt like my luck is going to run out. I have never felt like I would be found out that I didn't belong somewhere, shouldn't be somewhere. I have many times felt like I really don't know anything about this and I am responsible for it or need to learn about it. I've many times felt a little bit insecure or concerned that like, I don't have a content skill set or like these, the expectations on me are high. But I've always believed in my luck and I feel like that becomes self-perpetuating. I don't. I think I've seen enough really successful people who are kind of normal or very normal and people who are extraordinary who don't necessarily have kinds of success that I just have an appreciation for. It's not like some people deserve some outcomes and others don't. And so I don't really judge myself in that way. But I definitely have insecurity around judging myself. Have I worked hard enough? Have I thought deeply enough about this? Am I the right person to be asking, answering this question or making this decision? I try and conquer that by just being open about it. I think that's the only way to handle it. It's probably a little bit easier as you have a defined position and a role, especially if you're more senior in a company. But that I try to hire by— I try to solve for by hiring or hiring for it, not wasting time in filling your knowledge gap, just being honest about it because there's nothing worse than trying to to pretend you have a skill set and have people realize you don't. So for example, I'm not a consumer marketer. We have consumer products. I oversee marketing. I'm not going to pretend that I'm doing this job and overseeing marketing because I'm amazing at consumer marketing. Yeah. But I will get help ASAP and make sure everyone knows I'm getting help. So if they think I'm doing a bad job, uh, they can tell me and not blame the person who runs market, you know, who's amazing. Right. But so that's kind of how I handle that.

What about you? She's— no one's ever asked me that on air before. You know, I think the reason I'm so interested in imposter syndrome is because I certainly have had these feelings over the years. And certainly, I mean, not in my career for sure, but then also as a solopreneur. So, you know, 22 years ago when I became a coach with just like on Friday decided to become a coach and on Monday became a coach and I had done training and had my own coach. I think that I've had to really have a journey into or out of, let's say, imposter syndrome. And I've learned a lot about it along the way. But what I've also learned is that 95% of high achievers feel imposter syndrome at some point. So if you're self-doubting, imposter syndrome, and it can be crippling at times, but I think it can also be a real sort of fire inside of you. But I also think ultimately for anyone, you know, if the, the, you know, I always tell my clients it's an inner journey and an outer journey. So inside out and outside in. You've got to work on your inside, whatever, but then you also have to like get help and prepare and do the things in life so that you can actually show up in a competent way.

Yeah, yeah, the inner journey is so important. I think for me it shows up more— the inner journey I've had to work on more as a leader is just around worry, or like all the things that can go wrong. So I think that's what I've had to— this year I'm meditating more, you know, I'm having fewer meetings, trying to have more unstructured time, because part of my job is to worry about all the things that can go wrong. That's part of Hayden's job, is to have a product vision, technical vision for the future. And part of my job is to figure out if we make that a business, but also worry about all the things that can go wrong and try to mitigate that. But how you experience that and how you feel it shows up for the people around you. And that I haven't always— I think I sometimes will say, I say everything that's on my mind all the time. And so, you know, then you realize, oh, hey, that's— I'm not really worried about that. That was like a, you know, one ten-thousandth outcome. And why did I say that? And now this poor person is worrying about this too, you know?

So sure, because then also you see the impact you have as a leader. Yeah, right. It really matters. Yeah, that's really powerful. Thank you for sharing all that. Just two more questions. What do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

Hmm, I wish I'd known that that inner journey is so important. I don't think I realized that until the past last year. I think I felt like horsepower output, what you do, is the most important thing. And I only really recently— it's pretty obvious, I guess I haven't been reading and listening to your podcast enough. Obviously not. Exactly. But I've only recently started to realize that, okay, there isn't this linear input output for impact, just really what drives me in my career. But that actually, if you invest— if you can slow down and invest in some of that inner work, you can pick the right things a little bit more effectively sometimes. So that I wish I'd figured out sooner.

Yeah. How do you now invest in your inner life and your inner work?

Cliché, but I told you I've just started meditating. I think meditation was one of these things where I was like, well, everyone does it. I can't just download one of these apps. Like, that can't be the right way to do it. And I was like, well, maybe that's better than not doing it, you know. So, so meditation— I try to read more, I keep a journal. Those are some of the— just kind of simple.

Yeah, simple is what works when it comes to that, getting to know yourself. Yeah, becoming more attuned to yourself. Totally.

Yeah. And one thing I did on that category that you and I talked about was that year in review exercise. Yeah. Where you looked at the year before and the positive peaks and negative moments. Yeah. And then just what the positive peaks that really were effective, made you feel joy or productivity, put them on a to-do list. And then negative moments and not to do. So just try to do a few more things like that. Excellent.

Last question: what advice you have for founders as they embark on their own journeys to grow into leaders?

One thing that is hard hard but ultimately simple is to write what you think. Because writing scales really well. And writing forces you to organize and be clear about what you believe. And I think that's probably the most scalable, high ROI activity, you know, beyond building the thing or whatever, right? The core kind of zero-to-one thing that you're doing as a founder, I would say, is writing what you intend whether that's a mission, vision, and values, how you think about culture, what you think about products, you know, any number of things. But that's my biggest advice because for me, as in, you know, you can't— your COO who you hire can't do that all for you. They can do some things, but ultimately it is your company. And, uh, the more you write, the more other people can then start to feel like it is also their money to, right? And they can feel a sense of belonging and contribution because they know you're all in the same direction and you kind of are setting that expectation. So that's my biggest piece of advice.

Wow, that's great advice. Yeah, and they know where you stand. Yeah, yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Mary Katherine, what can I tell you? Deep talk. Love this conversation. Great talk. Thank you, thank you for joining me. I really, really appreciate it.

Thank you, it's great to do this. Thank you, Alisa Cohn.

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 podcast, drop me a line through my website, alisacohn.com.