I think I like mayhem - Sasha Haco

00:00

You have the first couple of months of, really, exploratory to meet lots of different potential co-founders and discuss different ideas. And you actually are encouraged to partner up with somebody, start working on something and then break up, they kind of celebrate breakups.

00:18

And so through that process you realize what you don't want in a way, or what's not quite right for you or what doesn't align so well with your skillset or your vision for things. And that's actually a quite helpful way of figuring out what you do want, I think, by understanding what doesn't work.

00:35

How do you go about making decisions as an unstructured thinker when it comes to work?

00:39

I think I try and not worry about decision if it's reversible. So try and only put a lot of time or angst, mental energy into worrying about decisions that I can't go back on. So in general, if I'm thinking, "Should I do this? Is this a good step for me?" I feel like, why not give it a go, unless it's going to lead to something I can't change in the future.

01:08

How do you work out whether it's irreversible or reversible?

01:11

I think I felt like joining EF, for example, I wasn't at that point committing to doing a start-up for the rest of my life. So that felt like a good thing to do.

01:27

And I guess a much bigger decision was like, is this the company I want to build, is this the co-founder I want to build it with? And those things that took much more thought. I had to have much more conviction, like, "Yes, this is definitely right for me." But other decisions, like what's the best thing to work on today? I've got a list of whole loads of things to do. Ultimately, they all need to happen. It's not worth agonizing over it, you need to crack on. Or, when there's a choice, A or B, when it's, ultimately, you could go back on it, I try and be quick about it.

02:07

It's interesting that EF lowers the barrier to entry by allowing people who want to distinguish between those two different types of decisions. If it is the two-way door, then all of a sudden you have so many more people who could start a company that way, because you de-risk the decision.

02:28

Definitely. They pay you for the time that you're on the program, so it's not like you're suddenly not having any money. So I think it's really opened up a lot of opportunities. It's really great, a really great thing. I'm a big supporter of EF, having gone through it. Yeah.

02:49

When was the first time that you thought about what you wanted to become? Can you remember that first memory that you went through?

02:59

I'm not sure. I feel like I've always been the kind of person that's not been so driven by one thing. It's not like I thought I really want to be like a ballerina and that's why I set my heart on, or like I'm fascinated by whatever. I've always been more of a generalist and more... Like there are lots of things I'd like to do. I used to think that was a problem in some way. Like I didn't have a ambition to do one specific thing, and so how was I going to find my calling? And what it's meant in some ways is that I've been quite varied. I mean, I'm still at the beginning of my career really, but, I sort of just followed my nose and ended up pursuing academia for a bit and then realizing I wanted to change track and doing something else. So I don't think I had a good sense of what I want to become, but I feel like I'm quite an ambitious person, generally, even if I didn't know exactly what that looked like.

03:57

It's not that there were negative connotations with following your nose that way. You are, by so many accounts, wildly successful so early on in your career. And the pace at which you've moved through things is so fast. But the traditional way that we would look at that is like, "Ah, yeah, goodness, Sasha knew exactly what she wanted to do there. And she was super focused." But it sounds like that wasn't the case.

04:22

No, not at all. I think I had no idea what I want to do most of the time. Even going from school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then ended up picking, I studied natural sciences at uni, which is like a broad science program and that appealed, kind of kept my options open. So I felt like, "Oh, that's good strategy." Did that. And then each year I was like, "Oh, what do I like the most?" And then I kind of specialized more and more into things I enjoyed most at that time. And so then ended up in a maths department, looking at physics-y things, and did a PhD. But that way. But I definitely didn't set out wanting to do that at the beginning, I never would've guessed that that's what I would've done. And then I really enjoyed it, had great experiences, went to America for a year, loved that. And just depending on who I... Because the people I've met and situations I found myself in, it's kind of always led to the next thing that I thought like, "Oh, I want to give that a go." Yeah.

05:23

When was the first time that you felt like you were, I mean, inevitably on that journey the options are going to restrict at some point and the road's going to narrow. When was the first time you made a decision where you felt like, probably after university, where you felt like, actually, I'm going to make a decision here that's going to limit my options rather than make them broader?

05:44

I don't know if it was limit, but I had to have a real kind of decision to leave academia, at the end of my PhD. I mean, I really enjoyed research, but I started to feel that it wasn't maybe for me. And so I did apply for some academic positions. And then I had to sort of make that call, where am I going to turn down this, or move away from this path that I'm already on, that I already know, and into this complete unknown and join EF or do something like start a start-up, which, to be honest, probably will fail.

06:24

And that felt like a very big decision, because I really knew nothing about start-ups and was quite comfortable in some ways and in my research-y life. So that felt like maybe the first time I had to make a sort of life choice, I guess, in that work environment and work context.

06:48

Where did you begin? There's so many inputs that go into that decision. Where did you start?

06:58

Yeah, it's a hard question. I think I try to kind of imagine or explore what it would be like to have different roles. Trying to talk to lots of people who had these different roles and just meet people and see what resonated with me.

07:20

I think I got quite into start-ups by reading some start-up-y books and just thought it sounded so exciting and had a kind of pace and energy and like raw drive, or maybe that's the wrong word, but a kind of excitement that I just wasn't getting in academia. And I found like, I really love learning, like learning new things, and I kind of, it's a bit counterintuitive, but I found that, actually, moving into a start-up, I would actually learn at faster pace than in research.

07:51

Even though the goal of research is to learn new things, the pace of it is slower. And I feel like now I'm learning something every day, it's like a big challenge. And it's different kind of learning, but I feel... What I worked out was what was important to me is being challenged and solving difficult problems. But it, actually, it didn't matter so much that that was an academic problem. I realized that was why I enjoyed kind of the research-y stuff, but it didn't have to be research. And that was quite liberating for me, to then go and think about what else I might want to do that would continue to be sort of challenging in that way.

08:35

Was there a particular moment where it became clearer to you or was it gradual?

08:38

I think it was gradual. I think... Yeah, I think it was a gradual process of like talking to people and getting more excited about things and thinking... I don't think I ever at that point thought, yes, this is definitely what I'm going to do. I didn't have that kind of conviction, but I definitely thought this is worth exploring very seriously. And then over time realized, yeah, this is definitely what I want to do.

09:02

When you're thinking through those, almost as you explained, it sounded like there was this kind of bank inside you, that you were kind of constantly putting money into or like, this is a terrible analogy, but it would give this kind of, you were collecting these bits of information as you went through this process that would eventually help you make the decision.

09:25

Is there... How do you balance both taking in these bits of information at all at the same time, whilst also making sure that you don't necessarily make this decision at that level and make it on a whim, but instead you used the, kind of a... I guess what I'm trying to ask, like what part of your brain are you using there to make that decision? And like, some people use a part of their body almost to make it. They would use their heart or they would use their gut. And I wonder, like what of you made that decision ultimately?

10:00

I think... Yeah, I feel like it was my gut feel that it was the right choice to leave academia and pursue a start-up. And then it was the, again, gut feel that this is the right company for me. So less rigorous I think, more of a gut feel. And also feeling that I might as well, like I want to give it a go. There's never the perfect time to start a company, or it's never going to be perfectly aligned where I say, okay, everything's in order, now is the right moment. It was just that if I'm going to the go, I might as well now.

10:40

So you enter EF and you're in this, like if I'm going to do it, I should do it now, you end up in that circumstance. And you said that perhaps the decision to go to EF was slightly easier than the decision to then make sure that you were choosing the right thing to work on with the right people. How did you go about that decision-making process?

11:02

Well, at EF, you have the first couple of months of really exploratory to meet lots of different potential co-founders and discuss different ideas. And you actually are encouraged to partner up with somebody, start working on something, and then break up. They kind of celebrate breakups. And so through that process you realize like what you don't want in a way, or what's not quite right for you or what doesn't align so well with your skillset or your vision for things. And that's actually quite a helpful way of figuring out what you do want I think, by understanding what doesn't work.

11:39

So during those couple of months, I had a few different projects that I was working on with different people and realized like, actually, where do my skills lie? What does that mean then for the kind of person I want to work with and the kind of project I want to work on? And what do I feel passionately about? It was quite useful. It was quite useful exercise, I guess.

12:01

Yeah. And what happened?

12:03

I found my co-founder, James, who's a brilliant computer vision engineer. And we started working on the problem online content moderation and automating the process of removing harmful content from the internet, looking mostly at videos at the moment.

12:21

And was that something that... It's almost like you've got these two things competing. One is you have this... You want to make sure that you are on whatever project it is with people who you connect with deeply. Then the other is you want to make sure that you're working on the right idea. And that idea is, in some ways, so important for, for example, the two of us, because we have to have a founder market fit, it has to be something that, for us as individuals, there is some particular reason way we work on that problem. How did you go about aligning that?

12:58

I think I always knew that if I was going to start a start-up, it had to be something that I felt passionately about and something that I felt that was somehow good for the world. So I came in thinking like, oh, maybe I'll work in healthcare or in green energy or something that I felt was tech for good, felt important. So I feel like I was always going to do something in the tech for good space and could never have done something, I don't know, to do with something that just makes a process more efficient, for example.

13:37

So I think I was really well aligned in kind of this making the internet safer as a mission. And then the more I started looking into it, the more I read about it, the more I realized that it is super important to me. And also, I mean, a part of my, it was a very bizarre part of my PhD was filmed and put online. And I was in this weird documentary. And this is actually after I started Unitary, but then as soon as it was online, I started getting all these messages from all these random people. And it really just hit home for me, how people feel like the internet, they're anonymous, they can do whatever they want, or they can get in touch with whoever they want, even if they don't know them, and say whatever they want.

14:29

And it was a very weird thing. I mean, I had a whole range of strange messages that were completely unsolicited. You know, nothing terrible, but then like soon after that there was the incident with footballers and there was the penalties in the England game and the death threats that footballers were receiving, which were essentially racist. And kind of made me realize, this is so prevalent, this problem is not confined to just parts of the world where... Just because we don't necessarily see it on a day-to-day basis doesn't mean it's not there and actually people are experiencing this kind of thing on a day-to-day basis.

15:16

Do you think we'll end up with an internet where we all have a pseudonym?

15:21

So we're all, like are sort of fake people online. I don't think so. I think there'll always be people that have both. But I think so much of social media today is presenting oneselves as we want to be presented. So there's a part of it where people feel like, oh, I can be anonymous and I can say what I want. Another part is like, I'm going to take this photo of myself and edit it and put forward this, like on Instagram, and lots of things about someone looking their best or whatever it is. And it's so important for that to be connected to their own identity. And actually it's like a sort of augmented version of themselves. So there's almost the two extremes.

16:09

Has working on this challenge and this problem been what you imagined building a start-up would be like?

16:18

I'm not sure I knew what I imagined. It's been a roller coaster.

16:22

I mean, there's been the highs and lows, and I guess I couldn't have predicted what they would've been. Very tough, I think. And exhausting. I remember I like once made my email address for the first time. And no one emailed me, obviously, because I had just made the email address. And I was thinking like, oh, I've got to generate, one day people are going to email this email address, I've got to generate all this interest. And now I'm like, people, stop emailing me, I don't want any more emails! And I had this moment of reflection the other day, I'm like, I remember when I was desperate for an email to this new email address. So actually, small wins, I think. I don't know what I expected, but it's definitely been a whirlwind so far. It's only been, not quite three years yet.

17:17

When you reflect on your working journey in this present moment, what timeframes do you use in order to make that assessment now? Because it sounds like you have this kind of slightly more unstructured way of figuring through these decisions. But at the same time it also sounds like you're not doing it for no reason, like there is some kind of...

17:48

There's a, I don't quite know what the word is here, but there's a time period to it.

17:53

You mean like how long do I take to make a decision?

17:54

No, sorry. How...

17:59

So one of the things that people really struggle with is like, it's easy to say you should make these types of decisions thinking about the long-term, but it's like, how long is the long-term? Like, is that two years, or is that 20 years or is that 30 years? And when you were saying, "I'm right at the beginning of my career here," it's the, "I am starting out," like someone else might look at your journey so far and be like, what are you on about, you're in the middle of it, or you're getting towards the end of it, you should stop soon. Like how do you figure that out?

18:30

I think, especially with start-ups, things move so fast, you could only think about them now, really. Especially thinking about like my role, my working role in the company will look so different today that it will do in two years time. Because hopefully the company will be in a totally different place, might have many more people, the actual what I do day-to-day will be so different. And so I can't optimize for 10 years out, that's actually like, what do I need right now?

19:02

How's your work? And it changes so much as a CEO. Do you have any ways of self-reflecting as you go through the constant different changes that your work is going through to figure out what parts of it you really enjoy, which parts you don't? Because I feel like as a CEO you have this unique job, where it's one job title but in fact it's not. It's one job title, but it's so many different jobs and it constantly changes. But it also gets to the point where you can pretty much build it in the way that you feel is right. Like, do you have a mechanism by which you go through and build it?

19:42

I think, this is not a good answer, but I think so far it's been fairly obvious to me, which bits that I enjoy and which I don't enjoy. Because there's some things which I just put off doing until the last minute. And then I know I need to do it, so then it happens and it's not as good as it should be, or I just know things aren't great. Like, for example, I have like no flair at all for design. And so in the early days when customers would say like, oh, can you send us a deck? My heart would sink and then I would put off doing it and then send up terrible. So I just knew that's something I'm never going to be good at.

20:17

And other things I spend way too much time on, because I get really into it and feel like it's something that I want to just focus on. And maybe it didn't, business didn't require that amount of detail or something. So I've found that actually it's quite organic. Like I'll have a go at doing lots of things and then recognize where I'm falling behind and try and bring in someone to help out with that.

20:43

Are you optimizing for enjoyment there?

20:45

I think if I enjoy something I'm more likely to do it quickly or, no, quickly is the wrong word, I'm more likely to do it better. And so I guess I'm optimizing for enjoyment and also where my skills are better aligned.

21:04

I find it quite difficult to ask you questions, because typically, someone has like a, I guess a particular way that they've thought through how they would go about their journey and they have like a really clear motivations that they've been pulled by. And it's like, yours is fascinating, because-

21:23

[crosstalk 00:21:23]

21:22

No, no, it's great. And yours is fascinating, because it's almost like you've kept it so broad and you've just kind of really gone with whatever you felt was right at the time. And so questions like how have you self-reflected on those motivations and what do you do in order to like more deeply understand what those motivations are kind of feel slightly less applicable because almost, they've just been things that you've like stumbled upon a long the way somehow.

21:48

Yeah, I think in some ways. I think I've tried maybe to never say no to things. So to put myself in a position where I could open up new opportunities and things. So just getting involved in lots of things. So that's been really helpful.

22:09

I love meeting people and chatting with people about their experiences and that's been really helpful as well in figuring out what I want to do next. Something I find really useful, with everything actually, is talking to somebody who's one step ahead in their journey. So especially now, as a founder, like speaking to another founder who's two years or one year ahead of me is really helpful for advice. But the same goes for like somebody who was a year before me made the jump into doing EF or leaving academia or something. It was a really useful way of thinking through like, is this what's right for me? Do I have a similar mindset to you did at the time?

22:54

Do you think that's unique to your specific position? Or do you think that's something that you would be doing if you were in academia too?

23:01

Totally, I think it's not unique at all. It's always really helpful to speak to someone who's just one step ahead, because they've been through what you went through so recently that still fresh for them and they can still remember what it was like and give advice that's actually more relevant, rather than people who are many years out and say like, oh, I remember when, you know, it'll be fine, you'll get through it, or something. People who said, oh yeah, doing this thing was really hard and this is how I went about it.

23:28

What do you think are the things that you find most challenging about navigating your own working journey?

23:34

Something that's challenging is that I feel like hopelessly ill-equipped for every stage. And especially as a founder. Like every time the company changes at all, I go through this like phase of feeling completely out of my depth and then I have no idea what's going on. And then it takes a while to sort of settle down and be like, no, I can do this, I know what's going on. And then it sort of happens all over again. And so I've found that really challenging, that I sort of go in cycles of feeling like this is, wow, I have no idea what's happening or I don't feel like I know enough to be in this position or to be making this decision or whatever. And then slowly the pieces sort of fall into place. So I've found that so tough. And that's the same in any line of work, I would imagine, that you feel like every time you try something new, you never know what's going to happen. And it's just become way more pronounced for me in the start-up.

24:33

What do you do in those moments?

24:35

Try and speak to lots of people. So I've got lots of, sort of, I mean, in the start-up way, I have some great advisors and people that I lean on to say, what would you do in this situation, try and collect information. Also, this is like a terrible answer, but I love reading those start-up books and those sort of start-up stories. And in all of these books, there's always near disasters the whole time and it sort of gives me comfort. They're like, oh, they felt out of their depth or these things nearly went horribly wrong so many times over, so it's fine. When I feel this way, it's just adding to my, one day, maybe, book.

25:22

Why put yourself through that all? Like-

25:24

Good question, I love it. But I feel like I thrive in being in the deep end and figuring out how to make things more stable. I really get a thrill out of having something really challenging that I don't know how to navigate and then figuring out how to navigate it. So I actually really enjoy that part of it. And I feel like being a founder's forced me to confront lots of weaknesses in myself and there's not much scope. I don't know if maybe you feel the same. Like if you're bad at giving feedback or receiving feedback or whatever it is, you have to work on every single aspect of... And everything's, you're confronted with all your own flaws in such a strong way. So I feel like it's been a really big learning curve, which I've actually, it's hard, but I really enjoy it.

26:26

It strikes me that your character may be way better suited than mine to this environment, because there's this kind of like being plopped into the middle of the mayhem and kind of dealing with that mayhem, as it appears, feels like something that comes naturally to you in some way.

26:55

I think I like mayhem. I don't know. How do you feel about mayhem?

27:02

I'm less of a fan of mayhem. Yeah.

27:06

You seem to be doing pretty well.

27:09

Well, yeah, I'm not a fan of mayhem at all. In fact, would like to not be in mayhem. But, yeah, I feel the complete opposite I think.

27:23

That's funny. I mean, it's not like the mayhem, but I get a lot of satisfaction from getting out of the mayhem.

27:30

Yeah.

27:30

And probably more than if it just, it wasn't there in the first place.

27:36

Now is that because you're consciously choosing that just because that's what you enjoy, because that's what's fun, or are you doing it because you feel like you have to, or like you're compelled to do it?

27:52

I don't know. I think I have... I don't get that stressed I suppose. I feel like it's going to be all right. So, that means that maybe my tolerance for mayhem is a bit higher. But I don't know, I think I do enjoy it. It's definitely not like a conscious, shall I put myself in this situation because it looks precarious or chaotic. I don't know, maybe people around me would say that it's still chaotic.

28:24

I wonder if there are CEOs who are absolutely clear all the time, all day, every day, that all they ever wanted to be was the CEO and that was it?

28:33

I don't know, but there's probably, even like more professional CEOs or like-

28:35

Yeah, true.

28:37

Who have done it before, who recognize, like this is my skillset, or maybe it's like selling or some important part of the job, that they go in to do that role. Whereas I feel like I feel similarly to you in the doing things because no one else wants to do them and they need to be done.

28:53

Yeah, I think you're right, that if you're a professional CEO, the job probably stays the same as well, that it's less changing, and it's more like, I guess, the difference between being a founder and being a CEO, isn't it? If you're a founder, you care deeply about the problem that's come organically from some original place, whereas if you are a CEO, you're more worried about scaling the company and how that runs.

29:15

You have this unique insight through EF as well that I've never had, which is you have seen other CEOs at different stages. It's like seen them go up or down and do different things or... As you've kept track of those CEOs, of your EF peers, like have there been any, I guess, lessons that you've learned about those founders that have been counterintuitive to what you thought the start-up, kind of classic, founder mentality would be?

29:49

I think it can be really hard to predict who's got this start-up mentality or-

29:56

Yeah.

29:57

It's not... I don't know. There's so many like elements to it. Like the companies that have gone on to do super well or not well. There's so many factors that go into that, it's hard to decide whether that was an attribute of the founder or not. But in terms of CEOs, there's so many different personalities. But there's so many different types of CEOs and there's so many different types of companies as well. Though I feel like definitely it's not a one size fits all type thing, there's just so many ways of being a founder and being any employee or anything. There's so many ways of doing something well.

30:38

Kind of annoying, isn't it?

30:40

Yeah.

30:40

It's like, I'd just like you to give me the playbook please. And I'll run with that playbook, that would be great.

30:45

That is something I've found quite annoying, generally, is that there are so many things. I feel like, everyone's probably done this before, why is it not just written down? Why am I making it up again?

30:54

Yeah, you would think that surely the course of history had taught us some of these lessons that I don't have to go through this fucking painful experience to learn. And I could just read the fucking book. So annoying.

31:06

How do you know when your things are in your... Because I always really struggle with the control part and knowing like, when am I just basically kidding myself and actually like, this was all within my control, I'm just trying to tell myself that there was stuff that was outside of my control that's gone wrong. I almost like look at the whole thing and I think, I find it difficult to work out what I'm not in control of.

31:30

You mean like when something's gone wrong, was your fault, do you mean?

31:36

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Or if that would require an event to happen, but there's also the kind of your failures of omission, when you don't do something that actually you should have done that would've been so much better. I'm constantly thinking like, am I the right person for this job, should I be doing this CEO thing? And then it's get to a point where it's like, well... And I can look in two ways I guess. One is what are the things that were in or out of my control that I did? And then one of the things that we're in or out of my control that I didn't do? And it's almost like those two assessments, both ways. I always struggle to work out what was in my control and what wasn't. I just usually look at both and think the whole fucking thing was in my control and I screwed the whole thing up.

32:19

But that's always the way. You can always do more, you can always do things differently and better. And I think, especially like, what I feel anyway, because it's all new to me, like everything is new, I never have any idea what's going on, I always just hope that I'm doing the best thing and that in hindsight you could always have done it better. There's always something else, something that I could have done differently. Reflecting on that too much is a bit painful because it's always the way. But yeah, a lot of things are in your control. But.

32:52

How do you compete that against your ambition? Because, you know, I can sit here and say, I didn't want to be a CEO, but I did want to do something really meaningful. And I probably will be quite upset if at the end of my life I haven't achieved the kind of ambitions that are inside my own mind. It's difficult to compute that ambition. I find it hard to know like, okay, how can I just say that these things are going to go wrong? Surely I should be better than that. Because-

33:32

Always. Yeah, always. But if you take too long to make a decision about something or agonize over something, then you'll also miss out on something else.

33:42

Yeah. Yeah.

33:43

There's always a trade-off between doing something perfectly and doing something fast. I don't know, there's a time and a place for both and sometimes it's hard to know. I always get it wrong. But, you could always have done something better or quicker.

34:02

I've really enjoyed talking, thank you.