Mazes, mountains and jungles - Paul Egan

00:00

If I think back to earlier in my career, I would've been the engineer who would say something like, "The customer must be wrong if they don't understand that the product..." And I might be thinking about those algorithms or data structures and thinking about their perfection and how beautiful and simple and how I have generalized the complexity of the real world into something that perfectly encapsulates the challenge of trying to represent what's going on in the product. So the customer must be wrong, if there's some exception or condition that needs to be added in, that's going to ruin the perfection and resistance, therefore to delivering on user value and moving the business forward. And then what the startup experiences have very much taught me is that is the wrong place to put the emphasis.

00:52

For someone who now for a living helps create the pathways for others who are starting their own journey. Where did yours start?

01:04

Like many of my generation, I guess we could call it, who work in the tech space? I did start at a young age in front of a computer and was coding for a lot of my teenage years. I do fit into that stereotype. The way I thought about it early on was that was always going to be my hobby. And that what I really wanted to do with my career was proper science. Where proper science for me was maths, physics, chemistry, the ones that you don't have to take science onto the end to know that they're science.

01:40

Not political science.

01:42

Or well, computer sciences is the one that I was thinking of. But in university I began to change my mind. And if I'm honest, there was a little bit of the ego element that got me to think otherwise and that I quickly realized that to be great in the mathematics field or in physics, you do have to be absolutely exceptional. And at the same time, I could see my engagement with some of the computer science department. And of course my own experience playing around with computers for a decade at that stage, that was going to be an easier path. And I could, in some ways be great if I went that direction because the bar was lower. And this is, mid '90s, when maybe it was true that the bar was lower.

02:45

Well, I think they say the art to happiness is lowering your expectations. So perhaps the art to career progression is choosing the easier part.

02:53

So that was definitely a transition moment for me. When originally I was keeping the tech side of things as my hobby, very deliberately and very consciously, also realizing that playing around with computers was something that took up a lot of my time. So that's of course, again, like a lot who fit this stereotype loved that time and continued to feel it's not a burden, it's not a job. It's something that is a passion. And I realized that, of course, making my career and my hobby, the same thing would have its bad points. And they came to pass. It means that you, your work life by balance is much harder to manage. You are very happy to spend all of your time in front of the computer and working through all of those challenges, to the exclusion of other parts of your life.

03:54

And that will [crosstalk 00:03:57].

03:56

Yeah. That is a double edge, of course the positive parts and the work that you're doing is something that you love. And that is an amazing privilege to be in a career path that not only is it something that I love, but also there is a lot of opportunity in that space. There's plenty of people who maybe love, I don't know, writing novels, but, is there a lot of well paying jobs for that? Maybe not so much. So to know what I love, to have the opportunity to work in that and to have that valued by industry is an amazing privilege. And so once I started taking that path, there was definitely now going back.

04:48

Did you love it at the moment you chose to do it because it was the easier option or did it develop over time once you'd started it?

04:58

Maybe I'm still spending too much time and giving that example of the stereotype. But, I know a lot of engineers who in their very early childhood played with Lego and that was very much me. Why did I enjoy something like Lego because it's got that creative element with some constraints, of course, but what the creation that comes out at the end is something that you can take a lot of pride on. You can point at and say, "Look what I built." And that is the bit that always drove me, especially earlier on in my career, is to be able to build things that nobody else could. And to be able to point to that and say, "Hey, look." And get the feedback from others who might understand what went into building that, but quite often they didn't.

05:53

Again, I was lucky enough that the earlier parts of my career were just as the web was being invented and becoming a thing. And so building an expertise in that area was something that could help me stand out from, from others around and to be able to showcase that creativity in a way that was much more accessible than let's say maybe, five years beforehand where, a lot of systems development might have been hidden away in companies and businesses and not really seen by the either friends or family, or certainly even the whole of the company.

06:35

You said that you felt extraordinarily lucky that your skillset matched the need of the market. Were there any skillsets as you were coming of age that you had that didn't fit the market?

06:49

I think the answer to that is no, in that my sole interest really, once I had particular literally decided to leave the more core hard sciences behind was in the tech world. And building product, delivering something to users, but probably more importantly, at least in those early days, just exploring the data structures and algorithms and the infrastructure and the networking, and I would be fair to say that in early on, I was much more interested in the pure tech rather than, the business, our customer value.

07:42

We could touch upon that later, because that is different to how I think about things these days. But your question was around, whether what I was interested in and capable of matched either market needs at the time, I think very much so. I actually started working in industry before I graduated. And the reason why that came about is because it was such a high demand for people with experience in web, and I was lucky enough to be, introduced to a company that was looking for that skillset and even though I had not yet graduated, they were very eager to get me in.

08:26

And once I quickly showcased, what I could do then very quickly, a team grew around me as well. So there again is another, I think bit of a luck of timing, that was around mid to late '90s when the dot-com boom was really kicking off. And therefore, the demand for talent was such that you could take it and not even graduate yet and begin to empower them to go and do something completely independent with their own team. And I think it would be fair to say that I've been continuing to ride that wave, people who maybe graduate into an economic downturn, find it very hard to come back up out of that. You were always left a little bit behind, and I was very lucky to have the opposite experience.

09:23

There are parts to your background, the way you can tell some of that working for companies like Motorola and Disney, different types of companies, the ones that you would work for now, how did you try transition from those companies to ultimately Founders Factory?

09:40

Reluctantly. So I spent a lot of the early part of my career in more short term contracts. And I spent a lot of time in those contracts not working. So traveling and moving around. That was my work life balance at the time. I Felt incapable of doing a 9:00 to 5:00 job. I said earlier that mixing hobby and work was something that I struggled with. I was either all on or all off. And so the contract set up actually suited me well. So maybe I might do, a three month contract and then take three months off, or maybe a six month contract. And then sometimes, a longer gap.

10:35

And I did that in a few different parts of the world as well. And so like a lot of my engagement with Disney was for example, in that setup. And I was planning to go off and do another bit of traveling in between contracts around the time that my co-founders were persuading me to go and take the leap into the startup world. And, I'm not joking when I said I was reluctant. My first reaction was absolutely not. I am very happy with this work life balance and the commitment to a startup is not something that I'm ready to take on.

11:21

But as they worked in me and we worked together talking around the opportunity, eventually I did think, "Actually, you know what? I do really enjoy the sense of ownership." Shall we say, both strategically and otherwise in that the small team configuration and the startup world is the ultimate expression of that. And particularly my two co-founders were two fellow engineers that I've worked together with over many years. And so had a lot of confidence in what we were capable of as three co-founders. Although that might have been misplaced confidence, if I think about what happened next. But, that is how I shifted from the more corporate setup into the startup world.

12:21

What did happen next?

12:23

Oh, well founding a business with three engineers is not something that I would recommend because we did find ourselves spending way too much time concentrating on playing around with new technologies, focused more on solutions rather than problems. And we very much needed somebody with more of a commercial lens and maybe a starting point around this specific customer segment that we should go after. So we did lose our way because we were so engineering focused.

13:03

Was that a lesson that you took into your next endeavors?

13:07

Yes. All of the startups from there on, there was a commercial CEO that I was working with that was bringing that mindset. And it took me a bit longer as well to let go of too much of the engineering focus. Again, a little anecdote here. If I think back to earlier in my career, I would've been the engineer who would say something like, "A customer must be wrong, if they don't understand that the product." And I might be thinking about those algorithms or data structures and thinking about their perfection and how beautiful and simple and how I generalize the complexity of the real world into something that perfectly encapsulates the challenge of trying to represent what's going on in the product.

14:13

So the customer must be wrong if there's some or condition that needs to be added in, that's going to ruin the perfection and resistance, therefore, to delivering on user value and moving the business forward. And then what the startup experiences have very much taught me is, that is the wrong place to put the emphasis. Well, let me restate that. I think it's the right place to put the emphasis, depending on the context. If you are in a more mature organization that you worked where you know what the product should looks like, much more about your customer, then of course, we're paying attention to the engineering challenge, whether that be from infrastructure all the way down to the animations on a button, that is worthwhile.

15:15

But in the early stage startup world, it's the wrong thing to focus on. And your focus to have much more of a priority on the customer and the user is the thing that will really move the business forward and have the greatest impact. And I think this is the key point, I guess, that maybe makes the distinction is about, where does your impact lie? What is the thing that you're going to be pointing at? Back to the Lego example of like, "Hey, look, what I built?" For someone who's working in maybe a bigger team where you are managing a more mature product then yes, maybe the thing that you're pointing at is, "Look at how it scales or look at the beauty of that algorithm." For early stage startup the thing that you're pointing at is probably more about the product as a whole, the business as a whole, the team as a whole, that's probably where you are going to take your sense of satisfaction from so that the mindset is different, of course.

16:22

When you were assessing Founders Factory, what were you pointing at then just before you joined? What was it that you were pointing at?

16:33

So I know that pretty well because it was very much something that I did both think about quite a bit, but also did not take me long to make a decision about. So at the time, the last startup that I had just worked on that failed, which is a long string of failed startups. And I was thinking maybe I give up on the startup world, or at least the very early stage one, and maybe join something a bit more mature where there's less risk and more of, I call it a stable environment. Particularly maybe from the financial perspective continuing to take multiple bets and early stage startup does come with a financial penalty.

17:30

And I was chatting to a few different CEOs at later stage businesses. And those conversations were going well, and I felt confident to take on a CTO role in some of those businesses, but then I do know particularly our chairman and Founders Factory, Brent Hoberman, I had worked with him before. So that is where the connection came from when we were chatting and reminiscing about previous opportunities that we had worked on maybe had worked out or not. And he mentioned, "Hey, we're thinking about a incubator accelerator type setup. You should have a chat with Henry. Henry is our CEO." And as soon as we started talking about that together, I realized a few things which meant that I really had no choice, but to work on Founders Factory.

18:31

Number one was the point around team. When a startup fails, I wasn't too worried that the product didn't succeed or that the business didn't succeed, because that's the nature of the startup world, where you're taking risks and that things aren't going to work out. But, as a technical leader in a startup world, a lot of your focus does go into building that team. And quite often in most tech startups, maybe half or more of the team sits under the CTO. And that was something that I took quite a lot of pride in. And then a lot of frustration when you lose that, when the startup fails. And so the incubator accelerator set up did feel like a solution to my specific problem.

19:22

Then also I felt like the learnings that I had taken as a technical in multiple startups, I could apply them in a much broader way than I had in the past, particularly given that, sometimes those learnings come over a few years and then the next role might last a few years. It's slower, maybe it just that I'm a slow learner, but if I look back, I was slow maybe to apply those lessons, but in this environment, I could apply them in a much broader scale. And then the last reason which was very much on my mind too, is probably a little bit selfish. Whatever role you've got in an early stage startup founder or founding team or early employee, it can be quite frustrating because there's a lot of stress and challenge and frustration.

20:26

It's not an easy environment to work in. And so I did think somewhat selfishly, "Hey, I can sidestep maybe the worst of the startup world and just pay attention to the fun parts. So, I could look across our portfolio and those bits that are playing with cool tech or have an interesting tech challenge. I can dip into that and play with that a little bit, and then I can step away when there are some of the other more frustrating parts of early stage startup."

21:02

Turns out is not like that at all. But that's certainly what was a motivator for me when thinking about the commitment to Founders Factory. But I would say it was the team part was the bit that was most on my mind. Which is reasonable enough since I was just in the process of disbanding once again, another team that I had built and that's never a fun experience.

21:25

That's interesting to think how different the story could have been had you not decided to stay in startups and in some way, those failed startups wouldn't have made the contextual sense that they do now. But it almost feels like they were just one side of the coin. And now you've turned it over all of those difficulties that you went through at the time made no sense, but now seemed like the founding of what came next.

22:04

I think that's fair. I think it's also probably true to say, an unreasonable conclusion would be that, that was a very distinct narrative, like a distinct path that was leading to a clear goal. I think that would be a lie if you took away that line of thought because it really wasn't that deliberate. If I'm honest, actually a lot of those commitments to different startups or choices that I made were much more on the opportunistic end of the spectrum more, rather than on the back of like thoughtful reflection and deliberate direction on my behalf. There are times where I do think if I was to go back and tell my younger self or give him some advice, there's plenty of examples like that, but we're one might be to be a little bit more deliberate, to be a little bit more self-conscious about, where do I want to go?

23:17

Has your perspectives on starting startups changed since you've joined, Founders Factory?

23:25

I'm not sure how I would answer that question. Well, the reality is that yes, because particularly in our incubator studio, I've now had my hands involved in around 50 businesses that have come out of our studio. And so very naturally there's a whole lot of learnings that are associated with that. And we have continued to refine how we do that. So very naturally, yes. How I think about creating a startup has changed because of course we've learned lots. I think though the fundamentals are still pretty much the same. Maybe if I look back at the past, I was maybe less worried about commercial opportunity and more thinking about, "Is this just going to be fun?" Naturally given the role that I have these days, I pay more attention to, "Is this something that's really going to succeed?" Part of that is because a lot of the time I do have to put an investor hat on these days.

24:34

The founders that you see, is there any similarity between the successful ones and how they would define what it means to them to do their best work?

24:46

I'm going to sidestep the similarity question because I do think it sometimes is a little bit of a trap to think of, common traits that might inform whether somebody's going to be a great founder or not. But let me pick up the point in a slightly different way, because I think it is absolutely relevant to your, to your question around, doing great work, doing your best work. One of the key elements to that for a founder and for pretty much any role and I certainly would include this or any technical role, it is your motivations. What is it that you're trying to achieve? Let me contrast some of the examples that I gave earlier.

25:40

I talked about earlier me caring much more about the algorithms and data structures. That was a motivator for me. And that was something that I cared about. And therefore that's, to me at the time, what my best work looked like. It was the thing that I was happy to step back and look with pride and to ask others to share in that sense of pride. And I contrasted that with how as a startup founder, you're pointing at different things, but underlying that is, what is motivating you? What it is that you're trying to achieve. And certainly for founders, this is the one thing that needs to be very clear. And, sometimes we express this in terms of the mission for the business and for a founder, that mission is completely intertwined with their own mission.

26:42

Your own personal sense of satisfaction and achievement is the same as the business. Of course, for an employee that becomes a little bit more decoupled and the motivators can be not misaligned but certainly, maybe operating at a slightly different level. But that for me is the key element that maybe answers your question about founders, but certainly answers how I think about what some of these best work looks like.

27:17

Sounds like there's a lot that, not just founders, but employees could learn from the typical VC advice that you should have a really clear motivation. In some ways, in order to achieve that motivation, you need to have a really clear view of yourself and what is motivating you.

27:41

Just to jump in there, I think this is what I was getting at earlier, when thinking about the advice I might give my younger self when talking about that potential to be more thoughtful about career direction. It's not step back and plan the next 10 years and then go and execute on that. It is that on each of those times when I was considering something new, to be more thoughtful about the motivations and whether that made sense at that time. And I think if I'm honest, that was not always the case. And that is where I wish I could go back and tweak that part.

28:32

I'm sure you've seen this as well then, like when you ask somebody a question, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" And try to do some career planning with somebody like that? Most of the time, people don't really know. And even if they did, they're probably going to go on that straight path anyway. But asking yourself today, what is the thing that motivates you and that you would like to be able to point at and say, "Hey, look what I have achieved." That's a much easier question to answer. And certainly when helping others I figure out what's next for them, that I had much more fruit in asking that question.

29:08

What tools do you think people can use independently to get to the core of that motivation for themselves?

29:16

So you mean like a framework or mental model in order to explore that question? One that I use quite often, I don't know whether it's a good one, but is to think ahead to that next interview and imagine it theoretically, and to do this little play in your head where you begin to pencil in who is that person that's interviewing, is it a corporate, super wearing-

29:47

Contextualization?

29:49

Is it a startup founder? And then as you begin to fill in those blanks, you imagine what questions they're asking. And let's think of some examples, like on an engineering career path. Maybe they're asking, "Have you worked in DevOps and infrastructure before?" And maybe if you are thinking about the answer to that question, you're confident to say, "No, that's not an area of focus for me. Actually, I get much more excitement and interest in the front end side of things." Or, as you go through this mental exercise, you find yourself almost squirming in your seat, if you're like, "Not as much as I might like." And almost trying to invent examples. And the reason why I think this exercise works is because you can almost feel where the holes are.

30:51

And then that can help to inform where you might like to fill some holes. The other really common example on this is whether people find themselves wanting to talk with pride around their engineering output, or whether they want to talk a little bit more about their engagement with team, maybe leadership of team or stakeholder management or those things. And that often helps to determine whether somebody should be on an like individual contributor track or whether they should be on a leadership track. So that's one mental exercise that springs to mind for me. I think there are probably others that I've tried to, but that is the first one, as I said, that one has borne fruit for me quite a few times. Not for me, personally if I'm honest, more with team members.

31:46

It's interesting when you started speaking about different tracks and identifying what track you should be on. And one thing that a lot of people struggle to work through is, "How big should the challenge be that I take on next?" You see some entrepreneurs take on challenges that are just so huge to a typical flow definition, it's so far out that it would be such a difficult thing to get their head around that. It would be perhaps too big for someone else, but yet someone else might want that challenge. How do you go about figuring out the size of challenge that you should take on next?

32:26

I guess the way that I would think about this is not dissimilar to my point earlier about like five year career planning in that I do find it much more helpful to think more shorter term. When thinking about the direction that you might want to take and in particular, the disconnection between that bigger goal and your first step, the metaphor that I like to use is, when you're going to over a hike and climb a mountain, you can see the mountain up there in the distance. You have a sense of what it looks like. You don't really know the detail, but you are confident that this is something that you want to head towards. On the other hand, everything between you and there is probably something that is an unknown.

33:21

In fact, actually if it's literally a walk in the park and you do know everything, you're probably not that excited about that. You do want that sense of adventure in front of you, the sense of unknown, because that's where you're going to learn. Most people have lots of different motivations, but most people will have some core part where learning is a really strong motivator and you learn from the unknown. And so that metaphor I think is good in that you can almost look for those examples where you know that there's this big mountain over there, but you've got this jungle to walk through, to get there. And so really, it's just a matter of taking that first step and a couple of steps in, maybe you're going to be shoved off in the direction that you didn't expect.

34:16

There's going to be some challenges that you have to go around or overcome. But that's how I think about this balance between the big thing that you want to undertake versus how do you get moving on? It is just reminding yourself that you can think about that big thing, but actually you're going to act small and just take those first few steps and see where it goes. This is where I guess probably my more opportunistic viewpoint does kick in. And it comes as well with an absolute aversion to can to charts and that planning where you're trying to map out everything that's going to take you to that end big result.

35:09

Again, in the engineering world, we all recognize that product release, that's scheduled for a year ahead or six months ahead, that's not really reflecting reality. You look much more at your weekly sprint or biweekly sprint or whatever it is, and just make progress on that and then look lift up your head every now and then and check, "Are we still going in the direction of that big goal?" Sometimes you might change your mind and decide to go for a different mountain, but that is definitely the way to break down that challenge of having a big goal, but it feeling very far away.

35:49

If all that's the case. And we assume that you're in that project, maybe the question to ask is, when do you give up?

35:58

Ooh, that is a good question. Now there's loads of different ways that we could unpack that question because it would probably depend on context. I'll pick on maybe some things that feel meaningful to me, but they might not be how everybody else would think about giving up. The first one would be for me to go back to that point of learning. So if you really feel like you're not learning, then I would have a sense of lack of progression, lack of movement and that might be the time to give up and to do something else. And that is certainly a conversation I've had with plenty of my team in the past when they feel like that they're not progressing. And maybe there isn't that room for growth, they've explored the whole jungle in front of them, it's time to go somewhere else.

36:55

And that is an element of giving up on, not on obviously a whole career path, but certainly on a particular section of it. For a founder that is more difficult again. But the reality is that most of it boils down to whether you've explored all those parts of the jungle and come across obstacles and blockers in every path that you've taken. Sometimes a visual metaphor for a startup is a little maze and that you're exploring it. A maze, it's never again, a linear path. And this reflects the reality that a startup, as opposed to a more mature organization, is searching for something that works. And the conclusion that it isn't something that's going to work. Often comes when you've explored the maze in its entirety, at least to your capacity to do so and have not found, that path which leads to a successful business. And so that's a very natural place to conclude, it is time to give up.

38:08

There's another more subtle way of thinking about giving up as well, which maybe comes back more to the people side of things. I do think a lot about responsiveness to feedback in all different directions and whether that be feedback to me or feedback that I might give to others, that is always something that if that is free flowing and people are reacting to it and growing with that, then always continue to work with that. If that's not there or you run into obstacles with that, or people are resistant to feedback either yourself or otherwise are others around you, and that's also a time to give up, I think.

38:57

This reflects a little bit my earlier thought of the learning aspects. If I go back to my hiking to a mountain metaphor in all of them, you're getting stuck, there's no more progress. And so it's a very natural example of where, if you're trying to hike to the mountain and everywhere you turn, there's a ravine, there's something that you can't cross well, that is the time that you give up. But if there's any movement, room for growth, room to take on that feedback, avoid not to try this or new corner in the maze to turn to, and you still have capacity to do so then you absolutely keep moving forward.

39:45

Maze is an amazing analogy for that because you can be bamboozled by a maze. And you can think that you are a lot further away from the center of the maze than you actually are.

40:01

There's another bit there too, which is worth remembering when you are striving to do something that is challenging. And therefore requires that search is that you might have crossed a lot of ground and taken a lot of to get there. And others potentially then are looking at you thinking, "Well, how come I took you this long to go from here to there?" But you know what you are carrying with you is the knowledge of how this whole maze works, not just how to get to this specific point.

40:35

What do you mean by that?

40:36

Again, I'm really anchoring this point back on the strength of the knowledge that you build up, the learnings that you gain. That really comes from the whole exploration of the maze. You don't really get that if you luckily are cheating or otherwise manage to take direct path straight through.

41:01

So it's almost like you need to go through that maze in some way.

41:04

Yes. And that is actually where a lot of the value is created.

41:08

I'd take your own journey. Would it have ended in... Hasn't ended, but got to this point yet, if the maze hadn't been so treacherous to begin with.

41:20

The way that I would think about that is I think I am a much stronger leader and whether that be technical leader or otherwise, and a much stronger product person, a much stronger builder than I ever was if I had much more of a linear path than if I didn't have to stop and question whether I was going the right way.

41:55

Has your own personal definition of your own best work changed along that journey? And if so, how?

42:03

Yeah. I touched upon this earlier where I had talked about how earlier in my career I was much more anchored in the tech side and these days I'm much more both product and people focused. And part of that is about scale of ambition. I would say. When I was 11 or 12 and writing some code, I was really happy just to get a little game level together or something like that, or get a ball bouncing around the screen. Not very ambitious for me today, but for a 12 year old something to be proud of. And so, that was my best work at that time. As you grow and mature, again, this isn't everybody's path, but certainly mine is to continue to look up higher and higher and think, "What's that next mountain that we could scale?"

43:11

And it's very natural to think that the way to achieve that is less about you being in front of the keyboard and writing that code and more about bringing others around you. And then ever more about empowering them to go and scale that mountain. And that's really, where did the shift on my perspective on best work has been most dramatic, in the past it probably was more about what I achieved and nowadays it is much more about well, actually let me even go further. Maybe even if I look a few years ago was more about what we achieved. And if I think today, it's more about what others have achieved and what I've enabled others to do. And that is immensely rewarding for me today, but wouldn't have been rewarding and something that I felt was my best work if I went back 20 years.

44:22

Do you think that that desire you now have to empower others is something that you had innately to begin with, or is it something that you've learned along the way?

44:34

Yeah, I think more the latter. And I think if you asked anybody who worked with me, even those... I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that I was in a lucky place where very early I had the opportunity to grow team. So, I did have that management responsibility early on and was not very good at it because I had not learned yet. So my answer to that question is quite simply, yes, I had to learn it. And I was a slow learner first, too.

45:12

Could I ask you some, a question that I really wanted to ask you about early stage employees and founders? I think it's early stage employees get a bit of a bad rep quite a bit of the time, and don't get the air time that they deserve there. And I guess on a personal level, I wonder if you think there's any particular reason for that, and if there's a way of us getting over it?

45:44

I think I know what you mean, but let me share some thoughts on it, and then you can correct me if you meant something else. So one of the challenges in an early stage business, and you can also see it in a Greenfield projects and bigger organizations too. Where there is uncertainty and your own performance is tied to a lot of other factors that you don't really have control of, let's take your example of that early stage startup, where you were trying to figure out, does this product actually deliver value to these customers? And there's many different components to that go into that, from the engineers' perspective, you're thinking about the different points of functionality and how that is implemented. But of course, design has a big factor into it, marketing component, how you actually message that the whole team has to work together effectively.

46:50

And because you're exploring that maze quite often, you will go down dead ends and have to retreat and come back, and sometimes those paths will be ones that other members of your team are taking not necessarily you. And so when thinking about performance of somebody in that role, you can't really hold them to account for having delivered value to a customer or delivered a particular feature, because quite often, you're shifting direction as you figure out, how to navigate that maze. And so the way that I often think about trying to judge somebody in that early stage role is much less about performance like their technical capability or their specific expertise, and much more so about their alignment to the mission. That lofty goal that we're aiming at and their alignment to cultural values. If they're getting those right, then both their role should be fulfilling for them, and they should be enjoying that. But also their impact on the business should be in the right place. Is that what you meant or did you have-

48:12

That was really interesting. Yeah, it almost just as you described it, it sound a bit like an engine with bits popping up out of it, but they're going back in. And it's almost as if the founders are that engine, but they're utilizing those different specialties as they go. And I think you're right to say that the way that you navigate that maze, you need different people at different times, but ultimately the information then flows back to the founder to make the decision about where to go next.

48:44

Well, the specific point that, again, it was a learning for me, was not to be too focused on the performance as measured by a display of expertise again, whether that be technical design, product marketing, or whatever other functional expertise somebody might be bringing, and to pay more attention to mission and value alignment. And that will be a better measure of success for the business, but for the team as well.

49:17

And lastly, you referred to a couple of bits of advice that you might want to give yourself if you were to go back and we touched upon a couple of them. Are there any others that you would want to share with young Paul?

49:32

Well, there are some of those opportunistic conversations that I've had over the years that would have maybe led to what are now unicorn businesses. And there's part of me that does think, "Oh, if you had taken that role, maybe that would have led to a lot of financial and personal success." But I don't think I would honestly go back and try.

50:03

It's not a time machine.

50:08

The point of advice that I suggested I would earlier of being a little bit less opportunistic and being a little bit more thoughtful at that time of committing to a particular role or not, if I'm honest, I think my earlier self would just have rejected that advice and would've gone and done his own thing anyway. I think my conclusion there is that yes, there's always be reminiscing a little bit, potentially I could have gone in some slightly different directions, but do I have some advice from my earlier self? It probably would end up being the exact same path. I said earlier that I do believe that it would not be right to, let's call it cheating, to step up from the maze, look at the path and then just zoom down and just walk through the path and that maze in the quickest group possible. I do think that you grow from exploring that maze in its fullest. So any advice I would give my younger self would almost be cheating.

51:25

Paul, thank you so much for uncovering your own story. I've loved it.