Derek Andersen, founder of Startup Grind, discusses what drives entrepreneurs: the relentless need to build something from nothing and win. He shares how his global community spans Israel, Palestine, and Iran, and describes unexpected momentum like discovering a chapter in a place called Bobble that existed without their knowledge. The key lesson: stay open to cold emails and opportunities you can't predict or engineer.
Chapters
Being an entrepreneur or starting a company is not just being hard. This is like being an artist, a sculptor, or a composer.
That you earn respect by building strong relationships with people, by believing in them, and by setting high expectations for people.
And we also knew that the product as it existed was like a very crappy version of what we wanted to build, so we just kept trying to make it better and better.
It's never been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur.
And it kind of took off from there, and, you know, we didn't know where it was going to go, and we signed up one customer at a time.
Sometimes that obsessiveness can drive you crazy when you're always questioning, questioning, questioning, tweaking, tweaking, tweaking. But then when you look back over the ages, you realize that's the mark of someone who's thinking really far forward.
Unless you're driven to make something happen out of nothing, you'll go, what do I need this for? But, but if you're driven, those are just obstacles. My family might not do it.
Like my friends might think you're crazy.
To me, sort of the entrepreneur is sort of like the greatest force in society's food chain.
You have to grow psychologically. You have to learn how to work with other people, how to draw the best out of other people, how to let other people draw out of you. As an entrepreneur, you have to suspend this.
Most people are limited by what they think they can do, not by what they can do.
Entrepreneurs are the only people who create something out of nothing. Someone who has a psychological need to win. I don't mean a want to win. I mean an all-consuming, almost destructive need to win.
The story is told as if success has happened overnight. Yeah, Facebook's huge. Facebook took 7, 10 years.
What I think, you know, the movies, the TV shows don't recognize is that it's a startup grind.
Okay. I'm going to just tell you 3 quick things that I'm really proud that have come from Startup Grind that I could have never guessed. The first is this picture. On the left, you have Shahar, who's one of our directors in On the right, you have Ram, who is one of our other directors in Tel Aviv. This gentleman in the red shirt is Milad, who was our director in Tehran, Iran. And Neda Morar is our— or was our director in Ramallah, Palestine. And I, obviously, in Silicon Valley. And so, you know, with the United Nations, when people from these countries stand up, everybody else walks out. I think the beauty of entrepreneurship and commerce and business is that we can put those things aside for the betterment of our families and for the people that work in our companies. This embodies what Startup Grind is all about. Every month in May, we host all-female speaker events. This last May, just a few weeks ago, we hosted 150 women in 150 cities in 30 days, and telling thousands of hours worth of content and getting that online. We've been doing this for a long time, and I don't know any organization in the world that does that. One day I was browsing Instagram, And I saw these pictures from Bobble. Anybody know where Bobble is?
No.
I didn't either. And I was like, wow, look at these pictures. I mean, it looks— OK, there's too many men at this event, but other than that, it really looks incredible. I was like— I turned to the guy who was running the community. I said, Francisco, first of all, where is Bobble? And when did we start a chapter there? Do you know? Where is it? Is it in Iraq? It's in Iran.
Oh.
Yeah, close, close. Very far, but close. And so he's like, well, yeah, that does look amazing, but we don't have a chapter in Babel. I was like, we clearly have a chapter. Where do they get the art assets? Like, I don't know who those people are. So we reached out to them. So they grabbed— they saw what was going on, and they reproduced it totally independently of us. We reached out to them and figured it out. But that, I think, again, is like, how could you ever plan for something like that? You can't plan for that. I can't engineer that. Those sort of things happen with ideas that have unnatural momentum.
Yeah.
And I would say even at the earliest stage, like again, StarPrint, even when it was just a meetup with a few hundred people, you could feel something different. And I would tell you, with the ideas that you're working on, the things you're working on, it probably doesn't have that yet. But does it have anything? Does it have any sort of spark? And if it doesn't, then keep juggling some balls. Keep your eyes open.
Opportunity—
You know, you might wonder, like, why are successful people— like, why does Elon Musk keep having so many good ideas? Is he just a genius?
No.
What about Max Levchin, the co-founder of PayPal? He started a bunch of other things. What about Tim Draper? Does he just get lucky? Is he just a good picker of companies? Is he just good at that?
No.
He probably is now, but I would argue that's not why he's successful. The reason these people are successful is not because they're smarter. It's not because they have more money, more opportunity. It's because when opportunity knocks at their door, these people always open to take a look. They may not open for very long. They may close the door quickly, but they always open. The best, the most successful people I know Still read cold emails. If you ever put one of those stupid things on your email that says, I'm too busy because I got so many emails coming, sorry I won't respond, you totally don't get it. Because the most successful people in the world that I know, they still read and engage with those emails because they never know where opportunity is going to come from. That's something I try to emulate. I was on a call I was on a call 10 minutes ago and somebody said, hey, I have this guy I want you to meet and I think it could open these doors for you. I didn't agree with him. I don't think it will open those doors, but I just don't know for sure and I've got to talk to him just to make sure. Hopefully, when you all are wildly successful, you will still always let opportunity— open the door when opportunity knocks.
