Judd Antin: belief

Transcript context

…Interesting. So your advice is, as you're starting a company, your pitch is that you'll have a lot more leverage and move faster hiring a researcher versus generally an engineers, but you'd be trading off, essentially. That's what most of the hires end up being. I am reluctant to overgeneralize, and I would say I know many founders who are in startup mode are like, "I know what I need to build. The problem is that I need people who can help me execute." And I think that's right. And so everything's a trade off. But remember, imagine that you could have that Swiss army knife at your disposal. Maybe you've got an MVP out the door, and you're looking to make your first major iteration, or like many startups, you need to pivot. This is where it's like, "Hey, you don't have to do that alone. " We deify startup founders who pivot appropriately, but I think that is what we would might call moral luck, where we deify the ones who got it right, and even though they made exactly the same decisions as the one who got them wrong. And the fact of the matter is, if you have an insights person with you who has that Swiss army knife of tools, you're not in it alone. You don't have to guess. Ultimately, it will still come down to a tough decision that you and founders have to make, but you can have evidence that bears on that decision, which you wouldn't be able to get any other way. To close out on this, and I have just a couple more questions on this thread, I think one of your big messages to researchers is, "You can be empowered. It's up to you to do the right sort of research and to move your career in the right direction, not become a researcher people don't need." And there's this quote that you have at the top of your post, where a lot of the reaction, or I guess the way you put it is, "I know what you're thinking, they just don't get it. We're so misunderstood. Our plight is to deliver insights that users use to drive business value while we're forgotten, never driving the roadmap, no seat at the table, consistently miscast, only to be laid off in the end." And what I'm hearing from you is like, "You can change that. You can push back on doing research that isn't actually contributing." But let me ask you, what's your lasting, I don't know, advice you would leave researchers with to be successful?…

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