Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…I think it's different for every company for sure. Some companies get souped in and get bought. And other companies actively sell themselves. We are definitely in the latter camp which means that we manage a process. It's similar to how you manage a process for fundraising. Not every company just meets the VC and raises money on the first try. They go through a process and meet tons of VCs and put them through the funnel and end up on the other side hopefully with a successful round. So I think that's one takeaway is treat it like a process and manage it like a process if it is something you're interested in. It doesn't really just... For most companies, I would say it doesn't just happen. And then the second piece of advice I would give I think we should have been talking to potential acquirers from the beginning and sharing our vision and what we were trying to accomplish because we started those quite late in our journey as a company and it just meant it took... When I met a potential CPO, who would acquire the company, who would end up being my boss or CEO, it was their first time meeting me whereas if it had been their fifth time, we would've had a relationship established and they would've known more about the vision and what we're trying to do and hopefully, would've had some more time to think about it. So those would be my two pieces of advice. Start preparing to sell your company from the moment you found it which is a weird thing because obviously, if you're starting a company, for most founders, they want it to be the next big thing, they're not starting it in order to sell it, but it's a good thing to have on your radar because you never know what the future holds. And then two is to treat it like a process. Yeah. On that piece of knowing people who may acquire you, I found that to be a thousand percent true. We sold our company the Airbnb and that's how it got to Airbnb and what I realized is you just need people who may buy you in the future to have you in their head when they have a problem so that they could be like, "Oh, Camille and her team could solve this problem for us. Let's go chat with her and- Exactly.…

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