Scott Wu: preference

Transcript context

…Okay, two more questions. Maybe the most counterintuitive thing you've learned so far building Devin, that maybe goes against startup wisdom, common startup wisdom? Something I've thought about a lot lately as we've built this is, this is not my first company, actually for a lot of us, it's not our first company, I think of our 26 or 27 people total on the team, I think 18 of us have started our own company before this. And yeah, one of the things I think about is, there's actually your point about cliches I think really spoke to me as well, which is, there's the really common things which you hear all the time in startups, where you're like, you got to move fast, or you got to hire great people, it's like, okay, well, obviously you do, I wasn't planning on not hiring great people, I wasn't planning on going slow. And similarly it's like, yeah, you really got to build something that people want. And there's these three to five things which are always repeated, and they're always the common wisdom in startups. And I definitely had this idea as a founder, when I was starting initially, that, all right, so those are the three to five basic things, but as you get really deep into it, you spend a lot of years into it, you learn all of the thousands of other things that you have to learn to build a company. And I think to some extent that's, of course, true, and there's lots of little details that you'll get into with all these different things, including team building, and product, and strategy, and engineering decision-making, and fundraising, and sales, and every other component. But I also realized that as time has gone on, more and more, I felt like building companies well sometimes just comes down to doing those three to five things just even more than you could possibly expect. And so, with us, it's like... And everyone says we go fast, but it's like, yeah, we had a hackathon in November, we had another hackathon in December, we started the company officially in January, we got the prototypes out to initial users in February, we did a launch in March, we got our first customers in April... It's just like, basically truly pushing the pace in every spot where we possibly could has really made a difference for us. And similarly, it's like, yeah, everyone always says you should hire great people, but I think that the truth within that truth is basically you should fight to all ends basically, to get the folks that you really want to bring in. And one of my favorite stories to share is we had a candidate who came and interviewed, he was a junior at MIT, so he was very, very young, and we gave him an interview, and he did way better than almost any of the full-time candidates that we had ever talked to. And so, we said, hey, what do you think about taking some time off of school and working with us and building out Devin? We really think you're just going to be able to come in and just have a ton of impact already from day one. And he thought about it for a while, and he came back and he said, you know what? out Devin? We really think you're just going to be able to come in and just have a ton of impact already from day one. And he thought about it for a while, and he came back and he said, you know what? I'm down, I want to do it, but my parents really want me to graduate from school, and I'm just not sure there's a way to make it work. And so, we talked him more and just understood the situation, and then we flew to North Carolina, went straight from the airport to his parents' house, had dinner with him and his parents, we talked a lot, a really nice Gujarati family, we gave them some gifts and just talked to them about it, and try to understand what would it take, and what would we need to make work. And they just said, it sounds like a great opportunity, but we really want our son to be able to graduate. And we talked that through and we figured out a setup basically, where he could work for us essentially full time, but then come in for his required classes, and do what he needed to do to get the diploma basically, but no more than that. And we talked that through, and then we got to a point where everyone was happy with that, and then went straight back to the airport and flew right back, basically. And that was the first and only time that I've ever been in North Carolina, and it was just a great trip. And it is the kind of thing where it's like, hiring great people is one thing, but truly just never giving up, and really giving it everything that you can to make it work for people who really makes sense to be on the team. And he's been with us on the team for over a year now, and he's been an incredible, incredible engineer, and we wouldn't be here without him. And similarly, we had someone else who was again, really, really talented candidate, did amazingly well, very young, and had a lot of great offers at a lot of other companies, and we were talking to them about, he wanted to start his own company someday as well, and we were talking to him about certainly a lot of the obvious things, which are having him meet our investors, or get to do work with customers, or see a lot of these other components so that when the time came that he would have all the experience he needed to start his own company. But one of the other things that was big is he was talking with a lot of great companies already, he didn't want to burn any bridges, and so we actually worked with him and basically hand wrote all of his rejection responses to each of the other companies, and worked with him on it to say, here's how you should say it in a way that's going to come off as that you really did appreciate the time with them, and that obviously you want to remain close with them and stay in touch. And it was the kind of thing obviously where it's like, look, obviously our job is to make sure that he's happy enough that he doesn't want to leave at any time in the near future, but I think it's the kind of thing where the way that you put together a really, really great team is by fighting for what's right for them too.…

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