Bryan Johnson bootstrapped Braintree, which sold to eBay for $800 million. A customer called him an asshole for his snippy response about pricing, and Johnson realized exhaustion and poor self-care were destroying his leadership and company culture.
Your company, Braintree acquired Venmo in 2012, and then you sold it to eBay in 2013 for $800 million. Do you think you would have achieved the same success had you been getting the nine hours of sleep and being doing what was optimal for your body? At.
Braintree, I was really scrappy. I bootstrapped the company when all that stress was going on. One time, this customer called in to get pricing, and I answered the phone, and I was a little snippy with him. And then a few minutes later, he called in again, and another one of my teammates answered it, and they said, yeah, like, I just talked to someone. He was kind of a hole. I wanted to talk to somebody else. I thought, oh, that is so sad. I'm deeply disappointed in myself. It's going to be hard for me to be a CEO and build the culture I want to build in the company and the customer base I want to have if I'm in this state. If I could have explained to my former self how good I would feel, if I would have taken care of the basics, I would have built a better company. I would have made better decisions. I would have done everything better.
