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0:00 whether I blame VCS or conventional wisdom or Harvard Business School but like somehow sometimes I feel like Founders are being told you don't have superpowers yeah like your best superpowers to delegate as opposed to you can literally get things done that takes other people two three five 10x more effort to get done but you can't do a hundred things with your superpowers right like you can only choose a couple places to focus and focus seems to be the G of the [Music] game hello this is Dalton plus Michael and today we're going to talk about focus focus we both have been kind of reflecting on how companies especially in the past year have figured out how to succeed and we keep coming back to the same theme what do you think what have
0:46 you seen yeah it's almost like succeeding is focusing yes and when things don't go well it's it's we were not focused on the problem we weren't focused on the on the right things like that word Focus comes up so many times yes and I think it all goes back to um what we remember from elementary school or high school when we had homework which is when you have homework you would come up with all these great excuses y on why this was not the optimal time to do it I'll do it later I'll prepare later my favorite shows on oh dinner I don't have the right stuff like oh whatever it was and what we learned is you would never get the homework done nope until you actually focused and you stopped doing everything else and there was no other distraction
1:33 yeah and that was the only time that ever got done yes and we as humans this is the cycle that happens over and over and over again and what's funny is it goes all the way from an individual contributor trying to build a feature yep and needing to focus on just getting the feature ship to literally the CEOs of very large organizations yeah yeah like one way to think about this whole founder mode thing is focus is the founder being focused on the nuts and bolts of their business instead of being distracted with all this noise isn't that funny it's weird because I've been trying to figure out when did the idea that complexity equals winning get into people's heads cuz you know you remember like any of the business people who people admire like Warren Buffett right like simple investing strategy just like
2:19 clean Jeff Bezos his like big thing things that make Amazon work or looking at Google or it's like hey like all this decoration over here we're the biggest search engin yeah when did the idea that like complexity and being 80 products and 25 surfaces is the way to win where did that come from I think this is one of those debates where there's no one earnestly on the other side and everyone say no I'm focused I just you know right like I think this is one of those where there is no it's a bit of a straw man to be like oh focus is bad I believe in not focusing and instead it's um it's this Insidious thing where life creeps up on you and you say say to yourself I'm being focused um but that you're not really auditing where you're spending your time you're not auditing
3:06 what you're paying attention to and it kind of creeps up on you well I want to take a shot I don't agree with that okay I think perhaps and and test my my logic here as an organization gets bigger um people want to take credit for things and I think that like hey if we're only focusing on two or three things this year and there's like direct people responsible for those things well how do I look good I could I guess I could help those people with those things but can I really take credit for them let me try to get a fourth thing on the agenda but those people would argue they're being focused and the fourth thing is important and we must focus on the fourth things yes right well I think that's the funny thing is because I think that this whole founder mode conversation's happening perhaps in the beginning of the year the prevailing thought was like great my job is to manage a team of people who are focused
3:51 on things but I don't have to focus as a CEO or as a Founder yeah and now the mentality is like oh no whatever is the top three things on my list are the only things is going to move yeah I think the conventional wisdom was the founders should be focused but they should be focused on managing the managers like what's the old yeah what's the old uh thing I remember hearing this you know and again again I'm not saying it's wrong or anything but it was the CEO's job is to raise money yep um higher gr Talent yes and vision Vision yeah and communication with the yeah yeah and and basically to manage the managers and otherwise like that was the job and you can see that's actually that is antie the idea of being in all the details being in the weeds yes that is that is very antithetical is antithetical I
4:37 think the other thing that's interesting about focus is I I think that sometimes Founders forget how powerful of a force they are in a company um I'm going to give like a really specific example I've seen this with sales a lot I've now encountered maybe four or five YC companies that have between five and $10 million in sales and like less than two to four salespeople total including the founder which is way against conventional wisdom like how did you do that right and I have there's one company in my mind that has you know 50 plus million sales and has like less than five sales people well the only way to get more money is hire more sales people and da d d d and one of the things that keeps them coming up in conversation is that when the CEO is
5:22 focused on sales the people that the CEO can meet with at the company trying to sell are always bigger better decision makers people who can move fast people can can can actually decide things where when you get like Junior salesperson number 25 trying to sell something they end up talking to PM disempowered bullshitter who has to get like 80 levels of approval and so it's been amazing to see Founders who decide focusing on sales is the number one thing and then being able to produce the work of like so many sales people and it keeps come down it's like Founders have superpowers I don't know whether I blame VCS or conventional wisdom or Harvard Business School but like somehow sometimes I feel like Founders are being told you don't have superpowers like
6:10 your best superpowers is to delegate as opposed to you can literally get things done that takes other people two three five 10 x more effort to get done but you can't do a hundred things with your superpowers right like you can only choose a couple places to focus and I think that's always been so interesting to for to me see whether it's product and being like I'm actually going to be in the product and see how it works or doesn't work and try to fix it or sales it's like focus seems to be the G of the game what do you think is the Counterpoint though like someone who's listening right now is like I am Focus but if we were to like audit their calendar we would basically say their number one priority is getting 20% of their time yeah maybe let's give some examples let's give some personas so
6:55 let's give the Persona of we're talking to someone and they want to start a startup Fair say they're a student or they have a job and they're like oh I want to do a startup you know I'm so happy to meet you whatever and and you talk to them and the conversations usually go a couple of ways but the the most common path is I'll say great do you have a co-founder and they're like well no not exact you know the answer is not a simple yes or no and I'm like well first thing is you would you should think about that you should walk down your co-founder yes I would argue that's a very focused response yes and then second it would be like cool what are you going to build and who will the first customer be yep and often the answer to that is very complicated Y and it's like well this and well that and I
7:41 if or if they do have an idea I'll say okay well have you built anything and given it to people in any form yeah and what do they say oh not yet like I don't know exactly what they need I got to talk to more people first yeah I've been doing research on the market yeah which which is all totally fair I think the advice here though around Focus is just do that checklist yeah get through it yeah do you have a co-founder do you have an idea have you built a thing and given it anyone and if you can just say yes to those you're ahead of the game and I would argue you are focused yes but if the answer to those questions are like pretty complicated I would use the word complicated where I couldn't even summarize yeah like it'll it's like several paragraphs of explanation yeah I think another Persona would be someone that that's a YC Alum yes y so were in
8:29 YC they know us you know they did the batch focused during the bat they were super focused they were growing and then you talk to them and you know what do they say like let's walk us through that well you know the thing that worked during the batch you know I'm trying to figure out can we do it better can I hire more people to help me scale faster there are these features that users want I feel like I should build them oh we have board meeting now and so I got to figure out how to do that well oh what about PR oh like this other kind of esoteric part of organ oration is not working really great yeah it's causing me headaches like customer service causing me headaches and becomes this menu ofu I have to do these 15 things yes you know actually and what even comes up more often is like this like this thing worked on the batch and here's the reason why I can't do what
9:15 worked anymore instead of like hey how about a simple strategy of like keep doing the thing that works that comes up a lot how do we shake them out of that well well how about this I think the big gotcha when this comes up SS would be like should I focus on growth or retention oh that's a fun one or should I focus on building the product or sales yeah and so you guys told me to focus right oh you guys said to focus but I have um yeah should I be doing sales or building and again totally fair point by the way yes but that's feels that's like the gotcha response to what we're saying yes yes when I actually think about a Founder that I have that conversation with like there's almost always no nothing burning
10:00 going wrong in the company it's like kind of a fake crisis you know it's like when you talk to a Founder where like something is burning like oh our product went down yesterday based on usage the conversation is never like but should I be selling or they're like how do I get the product to not die whereas before that it's like their job is to make something people want and The Meta thing is that like they're not making something people want yeah and like they're coming up with other reasons why not working on making something people want it's important and especially it's hard because then when they hire more people it becomes even more distracting so they can't work on making something people want here's how I try to cut through the does anyone love your product like how do I make a to-do list can you get one person to love the
10:46 product how about this this is something I'll often ask um in interviews for YC yeah are you using your product yeah yes yeah yeah and a lot of times people are like they weren't expecting that well it they it never occurred to them they could be a judge of whether the product is good or not no again like for a lot of developer tools like no joke yes you could be the first user yes and it's a good sign if you if you're like yeah yeah and and when you think about it that's the easiest sell in the world to sell yourself and so is it though is it though I I think I think that you should try to make yourself happy with a prod again this doesn't apply to all startup ideas but there the whole category of startup ideas where you can just be your first user and there's no barrier there is no sales
11:33 risk cuz the customer is you but you have to build something that you're excited about you know what's funny when I see people talking about that the number one comeback is like but how do I know that other people will like what I like and the first assumption is that like even though I'm starting a company I'm not a good Arbiter of what's good yeah which I love is how do you well how do you expect to build a huge company like I can't tell what's good like I have no idea how it's good like you kind of have to believe you have some sense of what's going I think my usual response is like maybe but you got to start somewhere fair fair one of things I think about a lot you know recording this towards the end of the year is that like year end is a really good time to reflect on these kinds of questions right you have enough time hopefully
12:18 separated from the day-to-day work from the meeting schedule and da d d da and also the people around you you know you mentioned this as we were talking like they expect change right like people in the new or they expect things to get mixed up you're not screwing with them if you change the calendar change your schedule change the DU list over the course of the holidays and I think that really good Founders take advantage of the holidays not only to recharge but to almost um I mean to refocus to to audit what isn't important yeah and get rid of it if you think about that if you can't even name or articulate the goal yeah how you ever going to hit it yeah and so Step Zero is to take the time to breathe and think and set the goal this is what I want to
13:04 accomplish this year yeah and then put all of your energy into focusing on that to manifesting and to make it happen one thing I love in this kind of exercise is also like what am I willing to give up what am I willing to divest from I think people don't give themselves permission to say I'm going to be bad at these things I'm going to not focus on these things like aren't I supposed to be able to do everything really well right yeah I think my final takeaway from this conversation is that so much of the power to do this is in the Founder's hands there's no one you need to get permission from to focus there's no that's right you have to have you don't there's not an authority figure that's like you you
13:49 are bestowed with Focus yeah no this is completely something you can do and if you do it you'll Inspire others to do it um which is kind kind of neat so many things in companies you kind of have to like build a coalition no Coalition needed any final thoughts on this I've been meeting with a lot of companies over the past few weeks and it's crazy for the folks that are doing the best it's often the shortest meetings yeah yes yes and it's the simplest explanation of what's going on with the business yes the and that's what good looks like isn't that funny and again every business goes through ups and down sound but one of the signs that you're really in there you're really in the slot yeah you know you're in your your
14:35 happy place is that the problems are clear in front of you what you're doing is clear and you can really feel like you're you're putting all of your effort into that one thing I'm so happy you said that because it's for me when I'm having those conversations the words and the concepts are simple yeah right it's like this is my customer this is what I do for them this is what we learned yeah this is what we're going to do to help solve problems for them better this is how I make their business better the sentences the founders say are just not complicated semicolon up question they just simple like you know a high school kid could clearly understand everything being said and be like yeah that makes sense what's the opposite look like not like that again it's hard we've all we've all been there God knows I have I think it's where you just feel like you're in the fog of war and
15:21 everything's confusing you're not really sure what's going on you don't know what's going on in your business you're confused you feel pulled multiple Direction you just wake up every day unsure in this like gray murky uh area you know what's funny cuz when I talk to Founders like that the uncomfortable truth that feels like it comes out is we're not really helping anyone as much as we need to like we're like our product really isn't making any customers life good enough so that um we get direction the customers pulling it out of our hands like it's we're not helping enough yeah and I really wish you know we're talking
16:06 about your Reflections man the companies that really help their customers they know it things get a lot easier things get a lot simpler it's a lot easier to focus when you're like I really help my my customer really appreciates when this is done this way and I can do it this way and it makes their business much better when you're like oh like you know like it's like a decoration it's like oh like well but they're not using it the right way they like when when you're not making your customers lives better it's easy to be in the fog of war and maybe it's time to step back and be like maybe we need to make a product that makes our customers lives 10x better so anyways focus is winning good luck great shot man thanks
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