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next up
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is mara herschensen
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uh who's going to talk about
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entrepreneurship come on out more
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mara's going to talk about creating
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successful founders please thank you
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[Music]
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in general uh my name is mar i'm one of
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the founders of pair vc
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and
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i am very fortunate i actually work
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with many startups i've worked for the
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last decade with 100 plus startups uh
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they're worth over 100 billion dollars
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and they all have one thing in common
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when i invest
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there's actually nothing
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i'm the first check there is no product
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there's no customers there's just the
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founders
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so it is no surprise
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that i often wonder are these founders
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born are my cards dealt as soon as i
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invest in one of these founders or is
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there anything
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i can do to change them that's a big
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question
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and i think many of you
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would say founders are born
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take for example
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palmer lucky he's talking tomorrow
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he was a prodigy
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he created the first prototype of the
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oculus rift at 17
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and he sold the company to facebook at
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22. clearly there's something special
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about him
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or melanie perkins she started her
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first business at 14
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then at 19 went on to build the largest
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yearbook business in australia
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and now she runs one of the most
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successful startups
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and then elon musk i don't think i need
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to say anything he's definitely someone
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special
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something in his dna right
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so you wouldn't be surprised many people
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ask me what makes a good founder and
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there's a bunch of characteristics you
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can google it
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people come up with a bunch of things
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like risk taking resilience ambition
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etc
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and in fact
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there's some research by academia that
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shows that people have some innate
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properties so uh researchers at
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northeastern surveyed 100 hundreds of
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entrepreneurs and they counted that 42
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of them had started a business as a kid
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so actually that's a good hint for
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anybody making angel investments maybe
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it's a question you can ask
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now there's also data that shows that
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founders can be made
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and while there are 37 percent of
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founders the repeat founders and
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companies today
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59
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repeat founders are in the top unicorns
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so that means at least you learned
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something from your first experience
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so
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it would be reasonable to believe that
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there is some relationship about you
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know what's your chances of being
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successful to how you're born
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however i do believe there's some form
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something you can do right there's some
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energy or some modification that would
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put you up in that chart and i think the
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wider arrow shows that the early parts
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of that chart you need a lot of effort
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and in fact this is what i've learned
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from being an investor
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roughly and these are all rough numbers
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out of the 10 companies we back
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two will fail
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no matter what we do that's just almost
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their destiny
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and jason wrote a blog post in 2015 so
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that's a long time ago
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that's titled you don't have what it
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takes i recommend you reading it and
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basically the summary is some people
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just don't have what it takes it would
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take so much effort to change them
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that you might as well give up right
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okay so out of 10 companies we back
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two will succeed no matter what you know
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us people in venture like to take credit
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um
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but truly the founders there's a
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percentage of founders that
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work independently of us um we back
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doordash early on there's a picture of
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their founders and i can tell you that
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tony hsu the ceo would have made it with
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or without any of his investors
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and then there are six companies that i
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think we can influence okay there's
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something we can do
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um and the question is perhaps
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what can you do with that sixty percent
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how can you make them more successful
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or maybe better if you're at the top ten
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percent can you accelerate their success
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that's a big question
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and that's what i'm really passionate
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about can you create more successful
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entrepreneurs
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and why is it important why should you
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care
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a king i think this is the right
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audience you don't have to say there are
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many numbers to show that having more
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entrepreneurs is good for the economy
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you can read them but just more
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entrepreneurs means a better world
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so the question is
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how can you build this entrepreneurs is
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there a magic machine where you can
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actually take a regular founder or a
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regular person that outcomes a
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successful founder
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okay
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so at the risk of being elitist i am
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going to say
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that one of the closest machines of
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entrepreneurship stanford university
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and the numbers actually show it
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10
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of unicorns have founders that attend at
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stanford
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and what's even more
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in the all-in summit i actually went
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through all the linkedins
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40 of the speakers
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at stanford and i think all of us have
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started something whether it's 538 like
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made or a venture firm or a company or
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multiple companies so there's some
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special gene right
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and the question is
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what does stanford have that other
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people don't have
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right it's a higher ed institution
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so for sure you're going to go and take
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some classes gain some skill sets
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they put you around people that are
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like you and they have a brand so you
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have access to capital network etc
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having been there though i will tell you
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that the skill set doesn't quite matter
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as much you can go online and learn some
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of that
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but your peers around you and the next
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degree around you actually really really
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matter
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and in a way what these people are doing
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is transforming your character and i i
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can tell you that firsthand
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just imagine
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yourself you may be a founder or an
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investor i don't know you are dropped in
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a world where you're basically are
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surrounded by people that are constantly
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thinking about starting new companies
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this is smart people
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the ambition is very very high
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there's innovation almost
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breathing everywhere and nerding out is
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very okay right so
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by doing this throughout years you
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actually become one of them
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and your peers are really fundamentally
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changing your character you become
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somebody that starts to believe in
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themselves you can do it
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uh you learn
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basically to expand your own ambition
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right you may think 100 million exit is
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good but if you go to stanford you know
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that's not good enough right so you're
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setting your own bar
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um it's a really interesting process
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and the question is
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are there other machines like this
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or is stamford just the only way to do
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it
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well the good news is there are other
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places that do this or the other forms
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of doing this i would say and one of
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them perhaps is the paypal mafia i think
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a lot of them running around here in the
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next couple of days
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you all know that they started many
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successful companies tesla linkedin
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palantir firm
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youtube yelp yammer et cetera et cetera
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et cetera right
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there's something magic about having
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been there at that point in time
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i haven't researched them and i don't
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have that much direct contact but
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according to sarah lacy who's a
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journalist and she spent a lot of time
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researching them
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she concluded there was the confidence
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that they gained when they were there
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now i'm not sure but maybe in the q a
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they will reveal the secret
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there's other mafias this one i'm more
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familiar with this is rapi rapi is a
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company that was founded in 2015 so not
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not that long ago in colombia and it
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really transformed the latinum startup
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environment there's been a hundred plus
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companies created by rappy employees
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it's crazy even almost 50 in colombia it
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almost it literally changed the country
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which is a big deal i have uh the
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privilege of working with a few of these
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founders
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and there's something common in them
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they all have this
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sense of ambition that you know super
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fast growth it's it's really interesting
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how they're almost cut from the same
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cloth
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so there are other places and i think we
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had the mayor here earlier um i guess he
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would claim that miami is on its way to
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doing some of that
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so there are places
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so
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i want to tell you about a couple of
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experiments that are personal to me that
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i've been running and hopefully will
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inspire you
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to do something on your own
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okay
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the first one is i teach a class at
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stanford it's a startup simulation class
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uh you have to for one sec forget is at
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stanford i'm actually taking it to other
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colleges as well it's not your usual
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class okay so it's actually not your
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usual class in the sense that
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i never lecture there's no lectures for
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me there's almost no communication from
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me
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so
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i've been teaching this class for six
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years we will take eight teams
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these teams have four to five people
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and
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you cannot have a startup when you come
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to this class in fact you must be way
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earlier you only have an idea or you may
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have a couple of ideas but if you have
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something that you've been working on
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for a while you're automatically
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disqualified okay so everybody that
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comes in
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knows very very little
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um
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and then
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what the class is designed to do is to
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just maximize your peers interaction
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because i believe that
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that's the way that you can create
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founders so how do we do that first
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we're very lucky that i can actually
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craft the class so even within stanford
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you have to get admitted to this class
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there's only 20 percent acceptance so
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i'm able to figure out who do we want to
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get get in
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and then the trick is to force each of
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the teams to present to each other every
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week and i know it sounds really simple
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but just by doing that you're actually
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motivating and teaching by example
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and the results are pretty incredible we
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actually have one to three companies per
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year that get started
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i think we have two unicorns there's 600
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million capital raised and i think
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what's really really interesting is that
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every year i'll get some pretty nerdy
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phd
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student that goes off to be a successful
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founder so it's it's very impressive
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and
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this one which is really interesting uh
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when i first started 20 of the kids
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were
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females and i said well we need we i bet
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we can shape the class so throughout the
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years we've been increasing female
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enrollment and i can tell you that the
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results have not changed we actually now
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have more female-founded companies and
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this is actually something i care about
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so i went thank you
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okay so this takes me to my second
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experiment which is actually even
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more successful and has nothing to do
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with stanford okay so there's no
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stanford involved
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okay
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so
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um about a year ago a year and a half
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ago i decided
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let's get a group of women together
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artificially and again the same idea
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these women cannot be founders okay
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these are women that are just high
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potential okay
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and we actually have 30 to 40 women per
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cohort we've done it twice
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um
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and the goal is like hey can we teach
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them about being a founder
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increase their confidence their ambition
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their risk-taking etc etc so how do we
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do it
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same thing first thing is we inspire
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them with great leaders so we would
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bring women
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that are successful in their own right
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to tell them that it is possible to be
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like them right i think in many
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occasions we just lack that role model
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and the next is we force them to connect
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with each other so sometimes it's talks
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sometimes it's fun events or dinners we
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even had a manicure pedicure session the
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point is like can you get them to talk
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to each other
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and the results are
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literally insane so we had 78 women
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through the process
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i think they've incorporated 45 plus
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companies
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35 of them have raised more than a
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million dollars and they're backed by
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people like sequoia and recent
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paradigm dragonfly of course pear
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so
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i mean it's incredible numbers these are
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not regular numbers that you would see
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in a random group of people
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and i think again it's important because
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i think we have something to say
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about what
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thank you about what the next generation
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looks right i mean it's for all of us in
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the audience two percent of all
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companies have an all-female founder
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team that is very crazy if you can
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imagine if you can do the numbers
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so
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um
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you know i think perhaps richard branson
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said it better
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everyone is born an entrepreneur and
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everyone has the potential to learn to
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be an entrepreneur it's just that not
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everyone gets the opportunity right so i
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think my quest is about making those
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opportunities
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and
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i will say
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that you as an individual have your
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first responsibility about doing that
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right you have to create opportunities
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for yourself and i would say the most
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important is to surround yourself
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by the best people so you have to play
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up and challenge yourself and sometimes
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uh you know people don't go to places
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that have the best people because they
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have a
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um the worst job at the company and
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that's the wrong attitude you should go
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to wherever the best people are so you
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can learn you know transform yourself
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i have two very practical pieces of
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advice that i give my founders
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first
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this is very simple but you can actually
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read you can read a lot um one of my
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founders asked drew
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who's the founder of dropbox how he
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became a great ceo and he said i read a
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lot
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but then i have actually gone and looked
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at our top ten percent of our portfolio
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and there's one thing those ceos have in
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common they are reading machines so i
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don't know if reading will make you
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a great ceo but i know it won't hurt you
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so and the second one is get a coach i
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say even steve jobs had a coach if you
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don't have money to get a coach get a
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peer group because again it's about
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character
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building i think what investors can do
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so if you're an investor in the room
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um
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i know it's a very ego-high business but
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it is not about us you know we are not
00:15:50
the ones who make the companies i think
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our role is to have
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create opportunities for our founders to
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grow
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and that actually will help the
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portfolio
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and i think
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for society perhaps we should have an
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early intervention program much like a
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gifted program in schools if you detect
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that there are kids that have that gene
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in them
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why not pull them aside and create an
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early intervention program and i'll give
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you an analogy which you'll understand
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i'm from barcelona spain
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my fellow country woman is monserrat
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caballer she was a great opera singer
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and of course today
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probably i'm too old to become a great
00:16:29
opera singer but perhaps i wouldn't
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i would have had some chance right
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maybe to just sing opera in the bathroom
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at some point if i had been taught early
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on so that's the thought
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and you know just imagine a world where
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you can actually increase the total
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founder potential by just 10
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or even shape who becomes to be a
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founder so with that
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i guess i'll go to the q a
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wow
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[Applause]
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awesome
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in the middle you're in the middle yeah
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that's amazing
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what a great talk that's amazing this is
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very intimidating
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i know but somehow the four of us are
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gonna get through it
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it was an incredible talk
00:17:16
somehow god you're good
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i have to say you know we're watching
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the talk backstage
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and
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the nodding that we were each having and
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you know collectively we've invested in
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you know i would say closer to a
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thousand companies now and we're nodding
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and
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thank you for putting my blog post up
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there from from years ago you don't have
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what it takes and i just realized you
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know wow
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one of the fundamental problems we have
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and i think having david here from the
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paypal mafia speaks volumes
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one of the fundamental problems in
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entrepreneurship is
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that you pointed out is people have to
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see it
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in order to be it
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and
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you know when you look at what happened
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at paypal and i'm really interested in
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hearing david's perspective on this
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they got to see each other at stanford
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and 40 of the speakers have been to
00:18:12
stanford here at this event i didn't
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even know that thank you for doing that
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statistic
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but it seems like the fundamental
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problem we have in society you can
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expand this and we were talking about
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how
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the mayor being are you getting into a
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question
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yeah
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but
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this is the fundamental problem we need
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people to understand that
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entrepreneurship and opportunity in this
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country is available to 100
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of the people here they have that
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opportunity
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but because they don't see someone like
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themselves a woman a person of color a
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person of a woman who is a person of
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color et cetera et cetera et cetera they
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need to see it to be it that's the
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problem isn't it
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well you summarized it really well it
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allows you to do the talk next time
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yes when you when you started this
00:19:01
program what was your goal what did you
00:19:03
think was going to happen
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honestly i didn't think it was going to
00:19:07
be i didn't think that conclusion was
00:19:09
soon as bs as big right i mean if you
00:19:12
get 20 of women to start a business that
00:19:15
would have been amazing but we're
00:19:16
getting almost
00:19:17
i would say
00:19:18
60 of them or 70 of them are going off
00:19:21
and starting a business it's crazy i
00:19:23
mean when you take both of those two
00:19:25
programs together the the results are
00:19:27
pretty
00:19:28
crazy they're pretty crazy yes um
00:19:31
so okay take it out of the stanford
00:19:33
context for a second
00:19:34
um
00:19:36
how do people
00:19:38
i'll pick a city you know you're you're
00:19:40
in cincinnati
00:19:42
what does it mean to have a peer group
00:19:44
and a network that
00:19:45
can create or catalyze like a paypal
00:19:47
like mafia there or even if it's in
00:19:49
miami or in la or wherever you are that
00:19:52
seems like a really hard
00:19:55
it's a really hard problem so
00:19:57
luckily i'm young enough that i'll i'll
00:19:59
be able to read but zoom may make that a
00:20:01
little bit easier too right i think you
00:20:03
need that
00:20:04
you know it's not just enough to get a
00:20:07
bunch of people together right you have
00:20:09
to seat it the right way so that's why i
00:20:11
said you know even for the female
00:20:14
program we'll get
00:20:15
hundreds of applications and we have to
00:20:17
go and interview everybody and see who
00:20:19
can have high potential right so again
00:20:22
there's a little bit on the choosing of
00:20:24
who goes into that program and then you
00:20:26
can shape them so again it's that curve
00:20:28
if you are too far to the left then your
00:20:31
job is really really high i used to
00:20:34
probably once a week
00:20:36
read business insider or insider
00:20:39
and then i stopped about seven months
00:20:41
ago or no maybe like in the last few
00:20:43
months and i'll tell you why i stopped
00:20:44
it was for two reasons
00:20:46
there was this article that they kept
00:20:48
running basically bashing the founder of
00:20:50
glossier
00:20:52
and to me it just didn't make any sense
00:20:55
because it's like there are lots of
00:20:56
people who you know go through trials
00:20:58
and tribulations at startups and when
00:20:59
you read about her journey it didn't
00:21:01
seem particularly different than anybody
00:21:02
else you try products some of them work
00:21:04
some of them fail you learn and you move
00:21:06
on
00:21:07
but they would run it and they were just
00:21:09
hammering hammering hammering they did
00:21:11
it with the away founder too and you
00:21:12
know there's a toy luggage thing which
00:21:13
was the craziest story unbelievable
00:21:15
stewart so i read that story i was like
00:21:17
what did she do wrong i never really
00:21:19
understood everybody work harder yeah
00:21:21
she was like work harder let's make this
00:21:22
company successful
00:21:24
yeah well i mean i think
00:21:27
can i give you more equity yeah well i
00:21:29
think honestly that happens even to me i
00:21:31
mean on board meetings i look you know
00:21:33
i'm not an [ __ ] i'm a [ __ ] right
00:21:35
that's the yeah that's the summary of
00:21:37
the situation welcome to the club we're
00:21:39
[ __ ] well i'm not i'm a [ __ ]
00:21:42
but anyway so that's why i stopped
00:21:44
reading it because i was like this is
00:21:45
really ridiculous because what is it
00:21:46
telling people and then separately they
00:21:48
kept running this ad promoting this
00:21:50
company called cerebral which last week
00:21:53
got a doj subpoena for selling adderall
00:21:55
illegally to people and so it's like
00:21:57
this is the imbalance that you see when
00:22:00
things are presented that don't really
00:22:02
make a lot of sense there's a term for
00:22:03
in the industry um and i didn't come up
00:22:05
with the term chicks for clicks and so
00:22:07
they will look for a female founder and
00:22:09
no chicks four clicks ticks for click
00:22:12
chicks as in a worm for a word for
00:22:14
females chicks four clicks they're
00:22:15
they're all trying to get clicks if you
00:22:17
go after a female founder you're going
00:22:19
to get 10 times as many clicks oh really
00:22:21
it's just more exciting of course um the
00:22:23
therapist story i think like was such a
00:22:25
great example of that it was like a
00:22:27
failed biotech company i'm not saying
00:22:29
that there wasn't fraud and stuff that
00:22:30
happened there but man i mean the way
00:22:32
that that that escalated the storyline
00:22:35
yeah it was as well i mean it's a
00:22:37
founder plus a female founder you know a
00:22:41
founder of misbehaving quote-unquote
00:22:43
plus a female founder just equals a
00:22:44
little more
00:22:45
the wife of the founder of wework is
00:22:47
more famous in some circles she seemed
00:22:50
more talented
00:22:51
yeah i'm curious what your questions are
00:22:53
for david about the magical moment
00:22:56
of the paypal mafia
00:22:59
yeah what was the what was the secret
00:23:01
sauce like being the 17th most important
00:23:03
guy paypal
00:23:05
hey hey he's now the ninth
00:23:15
don't try and resuscitate it now you had
00:23:17
your chance on the pod okay that was
00:23:19
brutal yeah i know
00:23:26
look i'll tell you something every guy
00:23:27
on the stage
00:23:28
no one will ever tell them what i said
00:23:31
because everyone works for him or wants
00:23:32
money from him so we can only do it to
00:23:34
each other
00:23:35
we can only do it to each other
00:23:38
all right all right so so the and the
00:23:40
the answer is that at paypal we
00:23:43
recruited our friends to work at the
00:23:44
company because literally nobody else
00:23:47
like was willing to come work at this
00:23:49
crazy startup peter recruited his
00:23:51
friends who he had gone to college with
00:23:52
at stanford max recruited his friends
00:23:55
from u of i that's how the initial team
00:23:57
was recruited is through friendship
00:23:58
networks but it wasn't like this was
00:24:00
some exclusive club it's just that
00:24:03
nobody else wanted to be a member
00:24:05
and
00:24:08
well sorry can i just say at facebook
00:24:09
early days it was exactly like that as
00:24:11
well it's like we had like really
00:24:13
qualified people from great schools but
00:24:16
it would not be the people that you
00:24:17
would have thought it's like the folks
00:24:18
that like spun out at microsoft you know
00:24:20
couldn't succeed and all of a sudden we
00:24:22
were like oh or like boss used to teach
00:24:24
zuck cs and it's like yeah why don't you
00:24:26
just come in as like the ta of the class
00:24:28
it was not it was a very rag tag did the
00:24:31
trust make everyone because they all
00:24:32
knew each other from before did the
00:24:33
trust give everyone like a stronger
00:24:36
sense of like being vulnerable and then
00:24:38
developing themselves better because i
00:24:39
do see like a lot of horrible well i
00:24:40
mean i see a lot of these companies and
00:24:42
everyone it's all like it's like you see
00:24:43
early stage companies and it's very
00:24:45
political who's going to last who's not
00:24:46
because you don't really trust each
00:24:47
other you never work together well each
00:24:49
other yeah what i'd say is that you you
00:24:52
would think that the the friendships
00:24:53
would would make it like this sort of um
00:24:56
calm friendly environment uh paypal was
00:24:58
actually a very um frictional
00:25:01
contentious environment and but i do
00:25:03
think that there is a trust element to
00:25:05
it which is
00:25:06
we were
00:25:07
constantly debating what the truth was
00:25:10
right and what we needed to do and what
00:25:11
the big risks to the big business were
00:25:13
and so we were yelling in fact peter
00:25:15
when he hired me
00:25:17
he told some of the other people on the
00:25:18
team look i want to hire dave because i
00:25:19
need someone here who i can yell at
00:25:23
meaning like he didn't have to worry
00:25:25
about hurting my feelings he could just
00:25:26
say what he really thought and we could
00:25:28
have an open conversation about what we
00:25:31
needed to do as a company even if it
00:25:32
meant yelling so was it a culture of
00:25:34
brutal honesty yes absolutely that's
00:25:36
what the node talks about a lot right
00:25:38
yeah yeah can i ask you guys a question
00:25:39
mark david you use rappy so the last
00:25:42
time i was here in miami was to meet the
00:25:44
rappy founders and i spent a couple of
00:25:45
days with them and i came away stunned
00:25:48
kind of like what you said i didn't
00:25:50
realize it was that extensive but
00:25:52
there's a really special culture there
00:25:53
yes
00:25:54
paypal obviously had that as well but do
00:25:56
you guys and don't don't take this wrong
00:25:58
way but do you have to have somewhat
00:26:00
more of a bounded outcome
00:26:02
for them these networks to really
00:26:04
explode meaning if you look at a google
00:26:06
or a facebook
00:26:08
or even a microsoft when companies
00:26:10
become almost too successful it almost
00:26:12
just locks these folks in
00:26:14
and
00:26:15
the incentive to go off
00:26:17
with that toolkit the pure network goes
00:26:19
to zero because you're just too
00:26:20
incentivized it's an interesting
00:26:22
evolutionary trait right or people make
00:26:24
so much money that they just retire
00:26:26
you're totally right the companies that
00:26:29
they come from have to be a little hard
00:26:31
i don't think paypal was easy right no
00:26:33
it's super hard yeah um
00:26:35
and when it's hard you learn to be you
00:26:38
know to overcome hard things and the
00:26:40
whole company learns if there's brutal
00:26:41
honesty right if it's hidden at the top
00:26:43
and you think it's all right nobody
00:26:45
learns
00:26:46
but if you do you do and actually i
00:26:48
think the the rate of success of people
00:26:51
that came out a founder of google
00:26:52
relatively speaking it's not that high
00:26:54
it's not that high it's not that high
00:26:55
because everything works and everything
00:26:57
no offense everything is easy
00:26:59
but no freeburg you run well he's like
00:27:02
oh [ __ ] yeah you're right i'm sorry okay
00:27:03
but you're saying to google people mar
00:27:05
to be clear it got very soft
00:27:07
because it was too easy to learn they
00:27:09
never learned anything
00:27:13
right
00:27:14
there are more this is actually
00:27:14
interesting there are more
00:27:16
unicorns founded
00:27:18
by
00:27:19
paypal people than ex google people even
00:27:22
though
00:27:23
at the sort of the paypal mafia if you
00:27:25
defined it as the pre-ipo
00:27:28
uh group of people who worked at paypal
00:27:30
there were only a couple of hundred in
00:27:32
the bay area whereas google had like 10
00:27:35
000. so my theory on this having
00:27:36
observed it at the early days of google
00:27:39
the the organization grew the success of
00:27:42
the company was exponential out of the
00:27:44
[ __ ] gate i mean like more than
00:27:46
most companies we talk about nowadays
00:27:49
um and as a result all of the success
00:27:51
was baked in the the monopoly machine
00:27:53
started rolling right away so then the
00:27:55
hires started being safer hires people
00:27:57
that could be more analytical people
00:27:59
that could be more execution oriented
00:28:00
not risk takers and so a lot of people
00:28:02
were hired and i forgive i went to cal
00:28:05
but forgive me for saying but all the
00:28:06
stanford people who um basically had
00:28:10
always done really well on their sats
00:28:11
got great grades they'd always been
00:28:13
successful they'd always you know kind
00:28:14
of been given that thumbs up you're
00:28:16
awesome you're smart come here and do
00:28:18
this job they weren't the risk takers
00:28:19
they weren't the people who were willing
00:28:21
to take risk to fail and so the
00:28:23
orientation was built a culture of
00:28:24
people that just took didn't take a lot
00:28:26
of risk executed and then those people
00:28:28
they had this false sense of
00:28:30
entrepreneurial success by working at
00:28:32
google because they were already on a
00:28:33
rocket ship then a bunch of them left
00:28:35
and tried to start companies and they're
00:28:36
like oh yeah you just build an app and a
00:28:38
hundred million people use it it's like
00:28:40
dude failure failure failure failure
00:28:42
failure failure failure and by the way
00:28:43
if you make it to 87 failures then
00:28:44
you'll have your moment of success and
00:28:46
none of it make it past 0.30 right and
00:28:48
so i think like my observation with so
00:28:50
many google people i knew that left and
00:28:52
started companies they either weren't
00:28:53
risk takers or they didn't have the the
00:28:55
grit and persistence needed to go
00:28:57
through the failure to get there and it
00:28:58
was because that culture was defined by
00:29:00
early success and then everyone that
00:29:02
joined was just execution operations
00:29:04
100 yeah you mentioned something
00:29:07
maybe you can just speak a little bit
00:29:08
more about it but we used to do these
00:29:09
things which you talked about where
00:29:11
every week you would force people
00:29:13
basically to present
00:29:14
and what you're almost doing and i think
00:29:16
what we learned was you're desensitizing
00:29:19
people to failure itself and it just
00:29:21
becomes a nothing burger because you're
00:29:23
just seeing this litany of just randomly
00:29:25
bad ideas almost
00:29:29
but that's what becomes so powerful
00:29:30
because then these random little things
00:29:32
just become enormous
00:29:34
they shape you they shape you and you
00:29:36
get very very lucky i remember like when
00:29:38
you know at facebook we created i
00:29:40
created this thing called growth circle
00:29:41
we used to run thousands of experiments
00:29:43
a week and we used to have folks present
00:29:45
every week and it was just three hours
00:29:48
of monotonous failure
00:29:50
right it was just one after another
00:29:52
after another but i think what it really
00:29:54
did was allow people to feel okay trying
00:29:57
the crazy idea yeah because they would
00:29:59
see the 15 people in front of them
00:30:01
wouldn't do it totally is that was that
00:30:03
the key is that that is the key that is
00:30:05
actually the key and actually it makes a
00:30:07
huge difference right if you yeah hear
00:30:10
every and and you they also inspire you
00:30:12
whoever is actually doing great you're
00:30:13
like i don't want to be the last person
00:30:16
you know the next week when i have to
00:30:17
present i want to be better than the
00:30:19
person that presented last week in the
00:30:21
great but how do you motivate you but
00:30:22
how do you get people that are those
00:30:25
high sat over achiever types to be okay
00:30:29
yeah you have to put them in a position
00:30:31
so i'll tell you like one
00:30:32
for example in the class one exercise
00:30:34
you can tell people towards the end
00:30:37
it's like you know they're all having
00:30:39
some startup or have some users or
00:30:41
whatever they don't have a startup they
00:30:42
have a project um i'll say okay your
00:30:45
homework for next week is to 10x your
00:30:47
sales you have one week to do it and
00:30:50
people get really really creative when
00:30:52
you actually tell them that and
00:30:55
maybe they don't get to ten but they'll
00:30:57
get to two or three in a week
00:30:59
and i think that inspiration is enough
00:31:01
for people to make the best out of
00:31:03
themselves i think great leaders do that
00:31:05
right they ask for more than you think
00:31:07
escape you're capable people are capable
00:31:09
what about learning failure right we
00:31:11
were talking about this on the
00:31:12
the yesterday we were having a
00:31:14
conversation about
00:31:16
you know how do we make sure that our
00:31:17
kids
00:31:18
grow up and learn failure like we all
00:31:20
learned and failure ultimately i think
00:31:22
and persistent failure i think really
00:31:25
taught me a lot about you know putting
00:31:28
up with failure knowing that there's as
00:31:29
long as you're doing the right thing
00:31:30
you'll get their probabilistically
00:31:33
how do you teach that because you know
00:31:34
folks especially in an environment where
00:31:36
they've always been successful
00:31:39
and how do you keep them from saying you
00:31:40
know what i don't want to fail i want to
00:31:41
succeed because my orientation is to
00:31:43
succeed so when they start to fail they
00:31:44
run and they go do something easy which
00:31:46
they can be actually at stanford
00:31:48
specifically right yeah exactly if you
00:31:51
made it to stanford
00:31:52
stanford but yeah no yeah
00:31:54
i'm just i'm just i want to tell you
00:31:56
um
00:31:57
but you are very i mean you've you've
00:31:58
been an incredible student i mean you
00:32:00
probably cured cancer or something if
00:32:02
you had to if you got into stanford
00:32:04
today right so you're
00:32:05
any they've they've never really failed
00:32:07
at life this is an 18 year old has never
00:32:09
suffered failure
00:32:11
uh at least um
00:32:14
as we understand it
00:32:15
you have to put them you have to learn
00:32:18
each of the students what is their weak
00:32:19
point and make them actually do that
00:32:22
right so one of the things i will do
00:32:24
yeah you provoke failure as quickly as
00:32:27
you can so
00:32:29
you know if you're a
00:32:30
typical
00:32:32
uh
00:32:32
you know computer science student you
00:32:34
probably can create an app well these
00:32:36
days within an hour you'll have
00:32:37
something great right
00:32:39
try to get a thousand users yeah without
00:32:42
spending a single dollar let them fail
00:32:44
can you do it yeah it's hard yeah
00:32:47
and then do it again and some of them
00:32:48
you know the mental health problem is
00:32:50
very very high right i think a lot of
00:32:52
this people the first time they fail
00:32:54
they can't take it let me ask you one
00:32:55
more because my
00:32:57
i'm sorry jacob but my my big three
00:32:59
predictors of entrepreneurial success
00:33:00
are grit persisting through failure bias
00:33:03
to action like you don't have an
00:33:05
orientation being analytical you have an
00:33:06
orientation to taking action
00:33:08
um
00:33:09
and uh a narrative because i think that
00:33:11
the greatest entrepreneur is that we all
00:33:13
know elon's obviously the penultimate
00:33:14
example
00:33:16
someone told me i use that word wrong so
00:33:17
i want you penultimate means second
00:33:20
ultimate ultimate is what you're going
00:33:22
for i feel like you're wrong on that but
00:33:23
i'll accept it
00:33:24
um it may be the quinoa getting to your
00:33:27
brain yeah go ahead yeah
00:33:29
you may want some protein yeah the
00:33:30
ultimate definition you had the penalty
00:33:32
more like make stakes so um
00:33:36
how does narrative get learned because
00:33:37
we've seen that the best entrepreneurs
00:33:39
are incredible storytellers yeah they
00:33:42
tell the story and they tell the vision
00:33:43
before it's built as a way of attracting
00:33:45
the best talent and then as a way of
00:33:47
attracting the capital and then as a way
00:33:49
of attracting customers and that ability
00:33:51
is key to success and how do you
00:33:53
actually is there a way to develop the
00:33:54
importance um you know
00:33:57
and i'm gonna even elevate it one more
00:33:59
sales you have to be a great sales
00:34:00
person your narrative you're selling the
00:34:02
story of your company but you may be
00:34:04
selling to a fat to an employee
00:34:06
to an investor or whatever you need to
00:34:08
be a good salesperson unfortunately
00:34:11
teaching sales at a higher educational
00:34:14
institution is considered like dirty
00:34:16
work so we don't even teach it right but
00:34:18
it's the most important thing so you
00:34:20
know i run a little accelerator and we
00:34:22
it's like jason
00:34:24
and we spend the last few weeks just
00:34:25
teaching people how to talk you know how
00:34:28
do you explain what you do
00:34:30
and
00:34:31
you know i tell people there's nothing
00:34:32
like practice you have to practice
00:34:34
practice get coach et cetera some people
00:34:36
are born with that some people you
00:34:38
actually have to learn you think you
00:34:39
think it is learning though it is it is
00:34:41
well you can definitely get better yeah
00:34:43
right
00:34:44
if not the world would be a better a sad
00:34:46
place mars we were up here yes uh we
00:34:48
have ten daughters between the four of
00:34:50
us i love that girl that yeah three two
00:34:54
two
00:34:55
three three
00:34:56
whatever
00:34:59
you can remind david of the names of his
00:35:01
daughters um
00:35:03
they're on your watch i'll look them up
00:35:05
um
00:35:06
look he's got a little card in here
00:35:08
i'd like to my wife's name is
00:35:12
he's got a picture
00:35:14
mark um
00:35:17
what have you learned uh about
00:35:19
uh women in terms of entrepreneurship
00:35:22
what what do we need to know about
00:35:24
encouraging them
00:35:26
to become entrepreneurs and to create
00:35:28
companies
00:35:30
um you know i think the most important
00:35:32
is
00:35:35
for women to believe in themselves i
00:35:37
think a lot of us don't i think you
00:35:39
google imposter syndrome and we all have
00:35:40
it even myself coming here today i was
00:35:42
probably the person that practiced the
00:35:43
most because i have that in poster
00:35:45
syndrome
00:35:48
that is the most important you have to
00:35:49
overcome that because
00:35:51
for most men it comes naturally right
00:35:53
and us we have to work a little harder
00:35:56
to do that but with confidence we make
00:35:58
amazing founders i would say and
00:36:00
you know i am fortunate to work
00:36:03
with many of them this year our
00:36:04
accelerator this session would present
00:36:07
on wednesday we'll have two thirds of
00:36:09
the founders are women that's very
00:36:10
impressive um and they're amazing i'm
00:36:13
not you know they're not
00:36:16
there's no cutting corners that we're
00:36:17
the best people but we as a society have
00:36:19
to do a better job of uh stop clicking
00:36:22
on those clicks you know chicks for
00:36:23
click exactly stop clicking well and i
00:36:26
think maybe uh you know them seeing more
00:36:29
role models like you
00:36:31
and i think very specifically you know
00:36:34
we as all girl dads appreciate the work
00:36:36
you're doing oh thank you let's give it
00:36:38
up for mark
00:36:44
let your winners ride
00:36:47
rain man david sacks
00:36:51
and it said we open source it to the
00:36:53
fans and they've just gone crazy with it
00:36:57
[Music]
00:37:04
besties
00:37:07
[Music]
00:37:14
we should all just get a room and just
00:37:16
have one big huge orgy because they're
00:37:17
all just useless it's like this like
00:37:19
sexual tension that they just need to
00:37:20
release
00:37:21
[Music]
00:37:27
we need to get
00:37:29
back
00:37:32
[Music]
00:37:37
i'm going on
00:37:39
[Music]
