Derek Andersen, co-founder of Startup Grind, shares how he built thousands of events and chapters worldwide. He talks about quitting his job during the 2009 recession to pursue work that excited him, and why leaning into that excitement matters more than playing it safe.
Chapters
How's everybody doing? You guys as tired as I am? No. Some of you. I was like, no, I'm super well rested. Like, OK, that's not a good sign. So which one of these 2 people do you think is the entrepreneur? If you think it's Mike Tyson— raise your hand if you think it's Mike Tyson. Nobody? One person? OK. A couple? You don't have to be— OK. Maybe about 40%? If you think it's this person. OK. OK, good. So I'm one of the founders of Startup Grind. And our mission is really simple. It's to educate every entrepreneur in the world. With kind of three core values of giving before you take, helping others before you help yourself, and making friends. How many people have attended a startup grind? Anyone? Okay, a couple of you. Whereabouts did you attend? Port-au-Prince. Port-au-Prince. Redwood City. Redwood City. Xinjiang. Where? Turkey. India. What about— So I've attended a few events and— OK. Great. That's awesome. So we've hosted about 7,000 events for about a quarter of a million attendees. Today we have about 400 chapters across the world. These are active chapters. So if a chapter— we've hosted events in almost 600 cities. But really, the active chapter is sort of the important number to us. And active means hopefully you're hosting an event maybe every other month. And this is one of the unique things about what we do is— and the format was really designed around this, of trying to be able to be consistent and to always be there. So a lot of different programming, it kind of comes and goes. And our goal is to be the thing that's kind of this constant thread year-round. We've had about 30 million minutes of our content watched. We've had 7,000 of the top entrepreneurs and VCs and other people speak at StartBrant since 2010. This is my email address. If I can be helpful, I'm happy to dig out a business card, but this ultimately is what it says on it. If I can be helpful, please reach out and let me know. These are some of the things I can probably be helpful on. I had literally someone text me last night. At like 5 o'clock, like, I don't know how I got your number, but like, I'm trying to like apply for a job. Can you like give me some tips on like Texans versus like what to say in the job interview? If you're trying to figure out like, hey, I've got somebody that offered me this amount of money, or I'm trying to figure out should I negotiate this term or something, that's something I can probably be useful on. If you and your co-founder are fighting, I'd be— that's kind of fun. Like, I'm happy to like mediate for you two. That's something I'm good at. Bad things like investment. I don't invest. I'm not an investor. I don't have any problem with investors most of the time, but that's just not what I do. And so that's not a good thing to ask me for. Another thing is like picking my brain. This is not something like with the type of head that I have, like I don't want any sort of operations on my head. That would be bad for the look that I have going. So I don't need my brain to be picked. I don't drink coffee, so let's not go get a coffee. I don't drink coffee either. Just let me know what you need, how I can help, and just keep it simple. It's easy. This is what most people think success looks like, this thing on the left. And I know if you're in this room, you know that's not the reality of things. It's much more like this. And I thought I would just share a couple of experiences that I've had. I've lived now in the Valley since 2005. And I thought I would be successful way faster than I will be someday. I thought it would just be smooth sailing, and it's been far from that. And these are some of the things I have worked on. I mean, you've maybe heard of one of them, you know? So— well, you've heard of EA probably, EA Sports or Electronic Arts. You've probably heard of that. But that's not my company. I was just like an intern. P on there. But I worked on so many different things trying to find something that people actually would like. And it took me— I feel like it took me 5 years to find one thing that people liked of all the things that I saw and all the opportunities I looked at and meetings and everything, really searching for 5 years. So I'm going to just tell you about 2 of these. And then we can do questions at the end. The first— is that I was at Electronic Arts. I was a product manager. I was sort of unfulfilled creatively with what I was doing, and I wish I'd kept a journal, and I really would encourage you to write, to even once a day write a paragraph, because I would do anything to go back and read what I felt like during this time. even just one paragraph a day. It would bring me so much inspiration because I've come so far, but it's hard to see because I don't have a record of it. But I was at EA, and I would come home, and I would work on my ideas, or I'd be up in the middle of the night just laying in bed thinking about stuff, and I couldn't get it out of my head, and I realized that if I worked 110% at EA, I would've ranked in the top 2% of employees in the reviews. And I got like a $5,000 raise or something. Nobody really cared. But then I realized if I worked 70%, I was still in the top 90— I was in the 90th percentile, but I could spend that other 30% or 40% of my energy on my own ideas. So after a couple of years at EA, I would then go to Starbucks in the morning at I'd work till 9. I'd go into work. I'd be the second person into work instead of the first person. Then I would leave at a normal hour and go home and work on my ideas. I did this for quite some time. I started working on this idea. My friend and I were going to quit our jobs and do it. My wife was pregnant at the time with our first child. I decided, what better time to quit your job than right when your wife has your first child, right? It just makes— it's really smart. And so she had the baby and they were safe and everything was good. And so I left. And I just, you know, told them I was leaving. And when I left, I was offered this big promotion to stay. And it was right in the middle of the Great Recession. This is 2009. And I realized that as I was listening to this, I realized that if I wasn't super excited about what I was hearing, because every rational thing in my mind said, take this job, this amazing opportunity, take this opportunity. But I just, as Tim probably talks about this, Tim Draper, but if you don't, when something's exciting, you kind of lean forward. Yeah. Many of you are relaxing in your chairs, so I'm slowly trying to bring you out of those really— I was looking at this chair like, I wonder what it's like to sit in this chair. It looks awesome. But you kind of lean forward. You kind of feel it. And for me, if it's something I'm not excited about, I will literally almost fall asleep. And this is why I don't make investments, because when I get pitched, I get really sleepy. And that's not very fun. And so, like, that's why I don't invest in anything, or I don't— I'm not an investor, because I don't like— I like to be awake. And so, but, like, so I wasn't excited about it, so I just left. And the idea that I left for, my friend, he couldn't quit his job, and so it was just me alone. And I was, like, doing this thing that I wasn't passionate about. I didn't like it. It was a really horrible idea. But it got me to jump. So it was good. It didn't work, so then I moved on to the next thing. The first— this was the first thing I worked on. This was what I jumped with. Then I started working for my friend, this company called movieclips.com. Anybody ever heard of Movie Clips? If you've ever watched a movie trailer on YouTube, you've used Movie Clips. It was a guy I knew in college. He invited me to do some marketing for them, so I started doing some work for them, and their startup kind of took off. Oh, really? Today that company is worth— they sold Movie Clips, but they had another company that spun out of it that's now worth about $500 million. I mean, I got to just see it. I didn't really have a big impact, but I got to be a little bit a part of it. And that sort of motivated me and inspired me. What advice would you give to a young person who wants to start their own company?
