An investor shares three traits he looks for in founders: metrics-driven decision-making like DoorDash's logistics focus, ruthless talent management across growth phases, and strong PR skills to navigate relationships with incumbents without triggering resistance.
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Are there any other kind of like characteristics or maybe traits of that, that you've kind of seen with some of the best founders that you've worked with?
Yeah. So number one, they need to be metrics-focused from the top. And so that ensures that everybody in the organization will be metrics-focused. Some people like, I'll tell you why I invested in DoorDash was because I had looked at the other 4 sort of delivery companies at the time and they were all really interested in the experience of the food. Right? They were really into the experience, the passion for food. And the DoorDash guys couldn't give a crap about food. They just cared about numbers. They were literally just metrics driven. They were a logistics company. And I was like, well, the logistics company's gonna beat the foodies every time. And so, you know, a lot of people get into different businesses for different reasons, but really you have to care about the metrics. So that's sort of the first thing. The second thing is that As you go through these seasons, there are going to be people who are going to be helpful to you during a particular season who will be a hindrance to you in a different season. And so the turnover in some of these marketplaces companies is quite high. And so you have to be willing and good at recruiting as well as letting people go, and you have to be willing to do that. And so that's another thing that the more ruthless, if you will, founders have proven to be better. In that regard. And it doesn't mean that the people who are good for one season aren't good people or aren't talented. It just means that they're not a fit for the next season because what the business needs is very different. And then the other thing that we've noticed is that the CEOs need to be good, particularly on the B2B side, they need to be very good at PR because you've got to massage the existing people in the market, particularly if there's brokers or other folks who are gonna be displaced by what you're doing. You know, there, again, there are these seasons where you have to kind of sneak up on the market before they see you coming, 'cause otherwise they will just not use your stuff knowing that it's about to impact their own margins. So you have to, you have to be very good at PR in that way. Thoughtful.
