Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

Why Andy Hoang is inspired by Dyson founder

25 Sept 2022 · 1 min

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Andy Hoang credits James Dyson as his main inspiration, pointing to Dyson's hands-on tinkering approach and continued involvement in product development into his seventies. Hoang breaks businesses into three types: product-focused, marketing-focused, and operations-focused, with Amazon as an example of the last. He sees Evernote as product-focused, betting that great product experiences, not marketing, will drive growth.

Who are your inspirations either overall as like a human or as a founder specifically?
James Dyson, the guy that invented the Dyson vacuum. Yeah. Not many people know, but he's like 70, almost 75 years old and he's still so hands-on in the business. Like, I think there's like 3 types of businesses. I like to think there are 3 types of businesses. There's like product-focused businesses, marketing-focused businesses, and like ops-focused, like And Amazon would be like an operations-focused business. And we at Evernote feel that we're like a product-focused business, and that's what's going to drive our, our business forward. Isn't that we're great marketers, it's that we're creating amazing experience through our product. And I think James Dyson has done that for his business. He's like a real hands-on founder that loves to tinker and build the product.
And I love his product. I think