What is Startup Grind | Startup Grind Founder Derek Andersen

These are the partners that we work with. We're a global partner of Google for Entrepreneurs, a group that I suggest you all check out. It helps empower entrepreneurs. It helps entrepreneurs. And we've done 2 years with them. We just renewed a 3-year contract with them. And we work with people like Salesforce and Intuit and Pivotal and everybody else. I wasn't born a CEO. Maybe some of you were. You know, when I first left EA— this is me. When I first left EA and I started building this product, this is what I thought me and my product looked like. I thought, boy, we're just— we're killing it. You know, every day I look in the mirror like, you're killing it, man. You know, right? Pump yourself up a little bit. And then I'd go and I'd go meet with investors, right, and I'd walk out of that and about 10 minutes into that meeting, you all of a sudden realize like you're actually not this guy, you're actually more like this guy, right? And guy or girl, it's interchangeable. So, well actually, if you're going to meet with investors, you're probably not the girl in this picture. But, and I would go back and I would get in my car and I would say to myself, what is wrong? Like what, what, What is wrong with me? I prepared. I got ready. I got the customers. I got the deck. I got everything lined up. And then this was the result. And as I look at— I'm not a perfect person. This is one of the first products I launched after I left EA. And it was a game called Steve Young Football. I put all of my time and energy and other people's money into this. And everything went perfect— not perfect, but it went well until we launched it and it was a total failure. And sometimes I would look at these investors and them thinking like, you're supposed to be perfect, like you're supposed to get everything right all the time. This is what I would think. But the thing that I have learned is that— Oh, yeah. Being an entrepreneur is actually a lot like this. It's like riding a unicycle down a full flight of stairs. And have you not experienced this yet? You will. It's coming. On a skateboard you have. Okay. You know, it's one series of failure after another. And what I have learned over time is that I have been successful because I have failed. And there's this whole debate, you know, well, should we celebrate failures, should we not celebrate failures? I've never like been really excited about failing. But what I have realized is that if I didn't fail, Startup Grind would have never happened. If I didn't fail, other things would have never happened. And it's the same thing with life, right? You can't find the person you need to marry unless you fail a lot with dating, right? You need to get to the right person. You need to get to the right fit. It's the same with products. It's the same with starting companies. Some of you are as cool as these guys, but I am not this cool. I am not this person. This is the founding team of Yik Yak. I'm 32. Anybody in their 30s in here? OK, yeah, what's up? Not past your prime, I promise, OK? What's that? It's your birthday today. It's your birthday today? I'll be in my 30s. Hey, all right. What's up? Come on, I won't leave you out of that. Happy birthday. Thank you. Did you turn 30? 31. Awesome. Crossed the bridge. Well, you did cross the bridge. I just like— if you look at this picture and you say, that's not me, you know, there's a lot of women in here, there's a very diverse crowd in here, feel good because I'm not this person either. I don't share hardly anything in common with these people. And if you do, good for you. Like maybe that's what some investors are looking for, but I would tell you that many of the great products are not started by people that look like this. Or that act like this. Some do. I have kids. This is my beautiful little girl. These are not my boys. Those are my boys there. Hire the right people, I guess, right, who make your slides. This is not— I'll deal with it later. But I'm balancing— who has kids? Anyone in here have kids? Okay. One. No. OK, I don't know if that was a question on the application or something. They rule out everyone with kids. But I'm trying to raise a family and trying to run a startup. That may be normal. That might not be normal. So what is your perception of normal? And what I'm telling you is after seeing entrepreneurs in 170 cities in 70 different countries, there is no normal. There is no one size fits all. Everyone has their own way of doing it. has their own backgrounds and their own strengths and weaknesses that they bring to it. But I look for people that do reflect my background and who I can relate to. This is somebody that's like that. This is another person that's like that. This is another person that's like that. This may be another person that's like that. This may be another person that's like that. This may be another person that's like that. I just spent a day with Michael. He's the founder of Socialcam and Twitch. And this dude is amazing. I mean amazing, amazing, brilliant guy. Brilliant, brilliant guy. Do we share a lot in common? We do. We share— I share way more in common with him than the other guys that you saw on the slide a minute ago. But at the end of the day, you know, as an entrepreneur, we want people to tell us that we're not crazy, right? Like you're not crazy. Well, put yourself— put the beard on. in the morning, put it on the mirror, because most people are going to tell you you're crazy for a long time. People still tell me I'm crazy. And not in the crazy like, this is never going to work. No, what we've done has worked to a degree. But where we want to go, what we want to do, there's always haters. There's always doubters. I had an entrepreneur in my office 2 days ago crying because someone had told her That what she was doing could not be done. And literally a few months later, they built exactly what they told her she could not do. Shit. It's messed up, first of all. But that's life. Like, that's it. Some of the smartest people in the world, they'll give me advice. And then they'll say— let me tell you 2 times I got advice from somebody. One time— this just happened to a very, very well-known person here in Silicon Valley. He said, one time somebody gave me advice and I didn't follow it and they were exactly right, but I pushed through and I took the company to the IPO. Another person gave me advice and he said, this is what's going to happen, and they were exactly right and I lost $35 million of someone else's money. It wasn't his money. But so you can take any— Ounce of advice. The most important advice is your customer's advice. But you seeing the world differently— this is how I see the world. When I see a dollar bill, this is what I see. OK? Oh, you're not— some of you are hair people. That's OK. Yeah. This is the thing with bald people. I'll just let you in on a little— bald people, they have this thing where they think they're kind of like they're brothers. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Like you'll walk by a bald guy, and he'll be like, hey, what's up, man? I'm like, dude, we have nothing in common except we're bald. We're not boys. So anyway, we could be boys. I'm not comparing you to this. My experience is that everyone gets a chance at what I call the opportunity merry-go-round. Everyone gets a chance. Everyone gets thrown off this thing viciously sometimes. I've gotten thrown off viciously. I've launched— when I launched that product that you saw and others, I've sat in the fetal position for 2 or 3 weeks and sulked and felt bad for myself, but I got back up, dusted myself off, and got ready to give it another shot. The people that aren't successful in my world are the ones that stop trying. That's so simple, and it may sound— I don't know, it may sound like canned advice, but Honestly, like, if you're here in 5 years, if you have found a way to survive for 5 years in this environment, you will— I know you will be successful. I just know it. Because everybody that's not, that started 5 years ago and is now here 5 years later, they're not here. They're gone. They're working for some— they're doing something else, or they've left the Valley. They've gone somewhere, whatever. Like, they're just not even here. They're not even doing it. The ones that figure it out, eventually everyone gets a chance. And it may be the idea you're working on today. It may be the one in 6 months. And maybe in 2 years, maybe in 5 years. Again, Startup Grind was a side project, which I'm going to tell you about in a second. Rovio, 52nd game. This is the 52nd game they worked on. They built 51 games before that. Many of them were not for themselves. They were a contractor. They built games for people like EA and other people. But the 52nd game was Angry Birds. What if they had stopped? These are my kids again. This is what it is. It's a roller coaster. It is a ride. It is you. It is your co-founders. It is your team members. And maybe you have a co-founder. Maybe you don't. Some of you don't, it sounds like. And I didn't for a long time. I've kind of had to force my way to co-founders at times to try and bring people in, be very inclusive. And other times it just hasn't worked. Startup Grind, I started with Spencer. He's worked on something else for 3 years. And I have another guy that I call my co-founder. He kind of is. He kind of isn't. He's a consultant. But, you know, we're in it together. It doesn't matter. It's not about me. It's not about him. It's about what we're trying to do collectively. So that's startup grind. Thank you.