The Many and Wondrous Forms of a Builder’s Ambition
A conversation with Brett Kopf, founder of Remind and Omella
Lately I’ve been struck by the many and wondrous ways to be a builder. For instance, as I wrote in Being entrepreneurial about entrepreneurship:
For some people, in some circumstances, [being entrepreneurial about one’s life] might mean taking a job within a well-established institution like McKinsey; for others it might mean going outside established institutions and starting something new, with or without investor funding; for others it might mean going to school, or taking time off to raise kids, or waiting tables to make ends meet while learning to code or auditioning for acting roles or working on a novel. No one is ultimately more qualified than you to judge what particular path to take, or what advice to follow, or what institutions to accept or reject. Just stay awake to the fact that it’s your life on this earth you are building—and then choose accordingly.
And as I further elaborated in Your flaws matter less than you think:
Keep in mind that the concept of a “flourishing, fully-lived life” is abstract. Its universal demands are at the level of things like the need for self-honesty and the exercise of our agency. Beyond these fundamentals, thriving does not have one specific look. A life devoted to the single-minded pursuit of a passion at significant cost to personal relationships or physical health (a la Marie Curie, for example) may be just as “perfect” as a quiet life largely centered on cultivating strong, healthy family relationships, or a life of bustling variety, or any number of other sorts of lives… By contrast, one of the failure modes that precludes a “perfect” life is the passive (i.e. non-agential) adherence to some sterile, generic template of a “good life,” instead of custom-building a life that fully leverages your own inimitable mix of affordances and constraints and idiosyncratic conditions for thriving.
In addition to this between-person variability in the lives builders build, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the within-person variability to which impressive and interesting people are often prone. Being truly ambitious about your life means you’re highly selective about where you channel your ambition at a given point in time—and you allow this to change according to what your fully-lived life requires.
Thinking back on my Founder’s Mindset podcast conversation last year with the exceptionally self-reflective Brett Kopf, co-founder of Remind.com and Omella, I keep remembering new ways his personal story embodies this theme. Brett’s motivations for starting his two companies, the approach he has taken to building and growing each one, the manner in which each one slots into and intersects with his personal life—these two epochs of his founder journey couldn’t be more different, yet both are profoundly inspiring and both bear his unmistakable signature.
Here are some illustrative excerpts, with the full transcript below (for paid subscribers):
Brett 1.0: serving 30 million users, going to therapy, watching dad die
The first part of the conversation focused on 22-year-old Brett’s dizzying experience of building and growing Remind.com—a messaging platform that 80% of U.S. public school teachers now use to communicate with their students.
For some cultural/economic context, Brett and his brother David co-founded the company in 2011, when messaging was new and venture capital funds were flowing into high-growth, high-risk tech startups.
And grow they did: Bret recalls “adding 200,000 to 350,000 users a day, 85% of which we would retain. Faster than Facebook, WhatsApp, at the time of growth.”
What motivated the young Brett to build Remind.com?
I was diagnosed with a slew of learning disabilities when I was a kid. And I pretty much spend the next, call it 16 to 17 years in my life, feeling not smart in school. And that was mostly because the structure and the system that I grew up in - and I went to a wonderful public school—it just wasn't fit for me. I was just a bit different. And I would be taken out of exams and classes, and I would have extra time, and I would have a special teacher to help me on things, and then the undercurrent—the emotion of what that made me feel—was not smart. Now I feel smart, now I'm very confident with who I am and who I'm not as an adult, but for a very long time it was difficult to figure out. And so that sort of energy of feeling not smart propelled me to start my first company.
Why specifically a messaging platform for teachers?
So tactically, Remind is like Slack for education. I wanted it because I had this teacher that totally changed my life. She sent me—well, what she really did was like she cared about me a lot, but I noticed that she was struggling to communicate with our students. And so I tried to solve a problem for her. And Remind then became very big… and I learned a lot about the world just being thrown into the deep end.
What were some of the things he learned?
…Emotionally, I wanted to prove so badly to the world that I wanted to build something that was highly impactful on a very large scale, that I would have this energy or this lifeforce inside me that would make me work my rear end off… I would work really, really hard, and I also wouldn't prioritize things that mattered. Now, what matters to me now is my emotional and physical health, my family, my nuclear family, and then my company, in that order. But when you would have asked me when I was 22, or 21, it wouldn't have been that, probably because I was young and naive. And I just sort of hadn't lived enough and been through experiences. And so because I didn't feel smart, there was this emotional propellant to want me to prove to the world—aka probably my father, who has since passed—but, like, prove to him that I could be something, and live up to his expectations. At the time, I had no idea that I was doing that, like, that I had that drive, though, because I wasn't aware of that.
How did he learn them?
I first started seeing a therapist… when I was living in San Francisco building my first company…. His name was Garrik, he was amazing, and one of the things that I felt like he was really helpful with was being a very safe, transparent, reflective mirror to my conscious and unconscious mind. And one of the things that he always explained to me is like, it's really hard to figure out why you are the way you are, and do things that you do.
At the time my dad was dying... [right] at the time of [rapid company] growth. It was crazy, [we] raised a ton of money, whatever, all of that stuff. So there was a huge amount of pressure, self-induced, but also just to perform in the world, especially because our customers needed it. And there [were] all these personal things that were happening in my life at the time, too. So, my dad had Parkinson's, and he was sort of on his downfall…. And for me, it was helpful to categorize the big problems in my life [in therapy]. One problem was like trying to reconcile the death of my dad. No, he wasn't dead at the time, but he was on that path. The other problem was trying to decide if I was ready to get married to my now wife, which thank God I did, but that was really hard. But I didn't know, which he helped me figure out, that my dad dying and kind of coming to terms with that was sort of a mental block to me even getting to the point that I can be ready to take that next step with my wife…. [H]e helped me structure those things and understand the realness of them. Like, you know… when the company was growing so fast, it was hard to even take the time to consciously say like, "well, your dad's dying right now”… And so he gave me that space, that structured space and time to do that. And we would talk about those things and understand how it was making me feel.”
What was it like to process all this while scaling to 30 million active users?
When like my dad had Parkinson's, there got to be a point where he could hardly move, he could blink his eyes as a yes or no. It's like the worst torture that you can imagine for a human, and for a loved one to see. And to compartmentalize and decouple the things that were happening in career life versus personal life is brutal, especially for a 22 year old… As an entrepreneur—look we have a lot of customers who did really care about me as a human, but at the end of the day, it's not their responsibility to necessarily care that I have this very real personal thing happening. When they send a text message, and they relied on my service and Remind to do something, and it had to do that thing. That's just the reality of it. And so [I’m sharing this] because there's like the surface level as an entrepreneur, what you're doing building something for the customer, and you have employees - but then there's the personal undercurrent of all the things happening in your life good, bad, or ugly, which are inevitable - and everyone goes through something - it's very difficult to manage both of those. And they are both true. Meaning I had to somewhat handle my personal life, and you have to execute at a very high level for what was demanded of me for my company.
Does he regret how hard he worked and how little time he reserved for family at the time?
No… I think that, given the skills that I had at that point (and I have more skills now because I'm more experienced), I don't think I had the emotional or physical capacity in the day to do other stuff.
Where does that additional capacity come from?
I think there's probably a mixture of time and experience. And like, I've just seen a lot of things, and you have a lot of shots on goal. And then my son—like when I had my son—he's almost two years old—for me it put a new perspective on what matters and why.
Brett 2.0: Building wisdom, reaping joy
Then, after Rewind.com had grown huge and Brett’s father had died, he took a step back and consciously re-prioritized his life:
I stepped out of a day to day operating role in my first company, I took a year off and I traveled with my wife for some of that time, and I kind of reevaluated what the heck just happened. And then what qualifies [as] a happy fulfilled life for me—I say me because everyone's different. And what I decided was thematically, there is my physical, emotional health, the relationship I have with my very close family, specifically providing for my wife, and with my son, and my dog. And then you know, my mom, my brother, the close people, and then it's the company. But I reprioritized my life out of all of that. And I could not have done that [during the Remind.com epoch]. I just wasn't mature enough.
So what motivates him now?
Well, I now prioritize everything that I mentioned. It's like health, family, then company; everything is revolving around that. And I don't care what external figure wants me to be another way, I just don't care. External figure could be a VC or like the press, I just don't care. Like, because I care more about providing or being with my son, than I would be on the cover of Forbes. I cared about being on the cover of Forbes when I was 21, I don't give a sh*t now, excuse the french. Unless it helps us acquire a bunch more customers, because that's what we're focused on now….
Let me be clear on that: I want to build Omella, I want it to be very large and very impactful, someday as big as Remind is. I do want that. And I get up every morning at 4:30 in the morning to grind a few hours in the morning before my kid wakes up so I can help him get ready. And then I go back to work. And so I still work very hard. But I'm not willing to sacrifice. So what that means is, probably at like four or five o'clock I stop working and I spend the next four or five hours with him. It also means that I spend one hour during the day exercising.
What does this mean for his approach to the business?
One from just a pure business standpoint is I want to have a business with strong, what you call basic business fundamentals and clear unit economics, which always come back to, do your customers come back? Do you have healthy retention? Do you have a high margin? Do you have high engagement? Are you growing in a healthy manner? Meaning are you making more money than you're spending, and having a good business model so you could be running the company forever? Like, that part's really important to me. Part of the reason is because with Remind we didn't charge for a long time, I think for that company it was right, just because we were growing so quickly. But I [now] want to build a company, and before it was maybe more of just a product.
And then there's the value systems of how we build it…. right now it's kind of a scary time, there's layoffs happening right and left, and valuations are getting slashed by 80%, but I think some of it’s good because it gets back to truth and clear fundamentals. And it's like, put up or shut up, if you're not going to build something that's valuable that a customer wants, probably the company's gonna die. And it won't be the end of the world, and you're gonna learn from it, and maybe you'll build something else, or maybe join someone else… For us, at Omella, our economics are clear. We make money on every transaction, but now it's like, how do we get to break-even profitability as fast as thoughtfully possible.”
What’s remained constant about his motivations as a founder, and what’s changed with experience?
[What I love is] talking to customers and deeply caring about them and wanting to help them, [in] this niche that is very big that no one knows about… I love that more than anything [and have loved it since Remind.com]. But then there's a set of value systems that apply that I believe are right, that [are] different from the old version of me, version one. Which, maybe if you went to business school—which I didn't, I studied agriculture and I nearly dropped out of school—they would teach me, but it's like clear fundamentals on what is a good healthy business, and wanting to do it for the right [reasons].
So let me give you an example. For this new company, Omella, we raised like, I don't know, four or five million bucks. Every single investor that came in, I said this will not be an overnight success, you have to be with us for like 10 years. You should not expect liquidity for 10 years. And if you want liquidity faster, please don't invest in the company. By the way, we don't need your money. And setting those expectations upfront was really important. Because we only wanted people who weren't going to be knocking on my door every day. A lot of this confidence, by the way, comes from just doing it a few times and knowing what I believe to be right and true in the world. And knowing that if I'm wrong, I'm gonna admit it, and I took a shot at gold and I tried.
What does he still struggle with?
…I have my career identity where I want to build something really impactful, and I have to work a lot…. And I think the company needs it. And also I want to spend time with my son and my wife, and I want to exercise and do the things I want… And unfortunately, one thing that scares me a bit is that I don't know too many public figures - and maybe this is just because the ones that aren't public are busy with their personal life or working—that have figured out both, where financially the things that they have built in the world are very impactful, and they have a very intentional, good personal life. Usually it's like crazy workaholics that are really not good personal life. And I don't want that.
….The [other] thing that I'm not necessarily as good at is managing my emotional state…. I was talking about it with my wife this week, it's like ah man, it's either I'm working, and I wonder what my son's doing right now, or I want to be with him, or I need to exercise. Or when I'm exercising—unless I'm playing basketball, because then my mind turns off, which is great—but if I'm lifting weights, it's like, “oh gosh, I have to answer this support ticket." So it's still hard; I'm still conflicted on both, because at the end of the day, I want to build something that's very big and impactful. Just for me personally, I'm not okay just building something that is sort of average, because I see this vision and I want to help these customers, I really do, I really want to have that impact and help them.
What are his overall takeaways for anyone wanting to build (a company or a life)?
[W]hen you build a startup it's really simple, you talk to customers a lot, you solve a simple problem for them, and you build a product that solves their problem, and you iterate rigorously. I spoke to 500 customers before we wrote a line of code. And so like that general framework is how I build all my companies. There's a lot that falls underneath that, but that's it. Just like talk to customers. Listen with two ears and one mouth, build a simple product, and solve a problem. That's like the framework in which I start the company.
The personal stuff, that's super hard. I don't know if I have any [takeaways], other than like, know thyself. I remember my dad, when he was actually passing, which I could not literally hear him. Well, literally I could but metaphorically, I couldn't. Where he said, "you know, Brett… all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy.” …And all I hear was like, "yeah yeah Dad, whatever, like, I gotta grind, I gotta grind, I gotta grind." And it's like, oh wow, I'm 36 now… and it's like, oh, you know, you kind of see 50, and kind of see 75 and 100, and it goes really fast. And once you have kids… you know how fast it goes. And he had an interesting point there.
Now, at the time I couldn't do anything with that, because I was so focused on [being] ambitious and growing. And I'm still super ambitious, but also life goes really quickly. So it kind of goes back to this point that you made about knowing yourself or that we've been talking about, knowing what you want and why, and making sure you're doing it for yourself and not someone else. I was doing my first company for someone else, little did I know it. But this company is not for someone else other than our customers of course, but the internal drive, there's a clear foundation for that.
My own takeaway from Brett’s takeaway: whereas building a company is about getting to know your customer and creating a product they want, building your life is about getting to know your whole self and creating a life you want—companies and families and fitness routines and all. Big pivots are expected.
Full transcript below (or listen to the full episode here).
Alice Bentinck 00:18
Welcome back to The Founders Mindset, the podcast where we deep dive into the psychology of founding a company, through the personal stories for the founders themselves. I'm Alice Bentinck, co-founder of entrepreneur first, where we invest in individuals to help them find a great co-founder and develop their ideas into successful start-up. I'm joined by Dr. Gena Gorlin, a clinical psychologist, founder coach, and faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. She's been collaborating with us to better understand and support the psychological needs of early stage founders. Hi Gena.
Gena Gorlin 00:48
Hi Alice. In this episode, we spoke with Brett Kopf, a serial entrepreneur at the intersection of FinTech and education. In 2011, Brett founded Remind, a tool designed to improve communication between teachers and parents. Remind has since grown to over 30 million active users and is used by 80% of teachers in the United States. [His] company Omella is an all-in-one platform for payments, forms, and signatures, that Brett founded after seeing thousands of educators struggling with collecting money. In this conversation, we talked about Brett's journey into therapy and how it helped him as a founder, the differences in approach between his first company and his second, how prioritizing his responsibilities as a father actually makes him a better founder, and much more besides. So without further ado, here's our conversation with Brett.
Gena Gorlin 01:37
Thank you so much, Brett, for joining us. I'd love to start by just hearing in your own words, a little bit of your founder story in a nutshell, what have you built over the years? What are you working on building now? Tell us about the narrative, and then we're gonna start pinning all the interesting psychological meat on it.
Brett Kopf 01:58
Pin away; from the son of a therapist, I'm so curious to hear what you're going to do. So I like to tell people that I started my first company in fifth grade, which is a lie. But that is where the "why" came from. I was diagnosed with a slew of learning disabilities when I was a kid. And I pretty much spend the next, call it 16 to 17 years in my life, feeling not smart in school. And that was mostly because the structure and the system that I grew up in - and I went to a wonderful public school - it just wasn't fit for me. I was just a bit different. And I would be taken out of exams and classes, and I would have extra time, and I would have a special teacher to help me on things, and then the undercurrent - the emotion of what that made me feel - was not smart. Now I feel smart, now I'm very confident with who I am and who I'm not as an adult, but for a very long time it was difficult to figure out. And so that sort of energy of feeling not smart propelled me to start my first company, which is called Remind.com.
Brett Kopf 02:52
So tactically, Remind is like Slack for education. I wanted it because I had this teacher that totally changed my life. She sent me - well, what she really did was like she cared about me a lot, but I noticed that she was struggling to communicate with our students. And so I tried to solve a problem for her. And Remind then became (?) very big. So, Remind has over 30 million active teachers, students and parents. It's used by more than 80% of every teacher in the United States actively, they send billions of messages, hundreds of employees, yada, yada. And I just kept my teeth, and I learned a lot about the world just being thrown into the deep end. And that was my first company. And I'm on the board of that company. And my second company, which I've been working very quietly for the last three years is called Omella. And the way I explain it to my mom, who's 70, i and the reason I say that she's 70 is because usually technology isn't her forte, but she's getting very good at emojis now. But the way I explain it to her is to imagine if Venmo, GoFundMe, Google Forms, and DocuSign had a baby, and that baby was super simple, all-in-one, and only for this weird niche category of schools and clubs and PTAs. Like these mission-driven organizations that I think are very underlooked, doing very important work in their local community, and have bad software. And we want to help them. And that company, is you know, first of all: 10 people, 100% remote, on the track to profitability, growing. And so those are the things that I've started, I've started a lot of other things that I failed at, I'm happy to talk about those, but those are in the depths. But I think just thematically, to close this out, as a human being my identity as an entrepreneur is to try to solve problems in very mission-driven categories that legitimately help people. And I say that just because a lot of entrepreneurs—and there's nothing wrong with it—but say they want to have impact, and they're very impact and mission-driven, but then they build something that is like the antithesis, the opposite of impact. We are legitimately focused on helping people that are doing important work in their local community. And I liked doing that in very big, underserved markets that most people are very scared to figure out how to get distribution into, and I like doing that. And I also believe in making money, and our company's making money, and we're growing, and we're reinvesting that into the product. And then about me personally, I live in Colorado, I have a young boy, I'm married, my wife's name is Courtney. And I think that's me in a nutshell.
Gena Gorlin 05:08
That was beautifully done, thank you, Brett. You've already done half the work for us in just laying out the narrative. So I've many, many questions. But what I'd love to hear a little bit about, and you've already gotten us started in this direction by giving us some of the psychological history of what powered you into building things that, in a certain sense, apply your smarts but also prove your smarts in a really hard-to-contest way. And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that part of the history: I know you've mentioned to me before that you saw a therapist who was really helpful to you at one point, perhaps earlier in your founding journey, and that it was at a time when there were also some personal stressors that were really challenging you as a founder. And I wonder if you can speak a little bit about how those motivations have evolved for you through the therapy you've done, through just the growth that I know you've really prioritized.
Brett Kopf 06:14
I'm going to ask a clarifying question to make sure I understand. When you say motivations, you mean the things that propelled me to build stuff in the world? Is that what you mean?
Gena Gorlin 06:23
Yeah, and particularly on this scale that you've described, where you're really doing it the hard way.
Brett Kopf 06:29
For the first part of my career, it came from a very not good place. Meaning like, emotionally, I wanted to prove so badly to the world that I wanted to build something that was highly impactful on a very large scale, that I would have this energy or this lifeforce inside me that would make me work my rear end off (I don't know who's watching this, I won't use [bad language]). I would work really, really hard, and I also wouldn't prioritize things that mattered. Now, what matters to me now is my emotional and physical health, my family, my nuclear family, and then my company, in that order. But when you would have asked me when I was 22, or 21, it wouldn't have been that, probably because I was young and naive. And I just sort of hadn't lived enough and been through experiences. And so because I didn't feel smart, there was this emotional propellant to want me to prove to the world—aka probably my father, who has since passed—but, like, prove to him that I could be something, and live up to his expectations. At the time, I had no idea that I was doing that, like, that I had that drive, though, because I wasn't aware of that. So to kind of connect the dots, I first started seeing a therapist—which I no longer do for now, just because I don't feel like I need it right now, I'm sure at some point in my life I will again—when I was living in San Francisco building my first company. His name was Garrick, he was amazing, and one of the things that I felt like he was really helpful with was being a very safe, transparent, reflective mirror to my conscious and unconscious mind. And one of the things that he always explained to me is like, it's really hard to figure out why you are - you being whoever's listening to this - why you are the way you are, and do things that you do by yourself. And so he acted as this sort of safe - I say safe not in the literal sense, but metaphorically - he was a really trusted, safe person who would not judge me, or also infuse his opinions on good, bad, or ugly. He practiced that type of therapy - you would know this way better Gena than I would - oh God, what's the most common one?
Gena Gorlin 08:21
Psychodynamic therapy?
Brett Kopf 08:22
Yeah. I was just so frustrated; I'd say, "Tell me the problem, analyze me," and he goes "Hmm, that's really funny, it's interesting that you want me to analyze you, I understand that you want that." And I'm like, ah! - tell me the answer!
Gena Gorlin 10:21
Gaaaah! So frustrating! [laugh]
Brett Kopf 10:21
But what ended up coming of that, it would help me identify why I was the way I was. So I can give examples of that. At the time my dad was dying... So let me just set context: my first company supported hundreds of millions of users, adding 200,000 to 350,000 users a day, 85% of which we would retain. Faster than Facebook, WhatsApp, at the time of growth. It was crazy, raised a ton of money, whatever, all of that stuff. So there was a huge amount of pressure, self-induced, but also just to perform in the world, especially because our customers needed it. And there was all these personal things that were happening in my life at the time, too. So, my dad had Parkinson's, and he was sort of on his downfall. I was living in San Francisco also trying to manage that. My brother too, he's my co-founder. The personal life stuff, and I can go into that if you'd like, I'm happy to, but there was all these things that I was trying to reconcile in my brain that he would help me put into what I ended up calling "spaghetti buckets", I don't know why, but like I would visualize a bucket of spaghetti. And for me, it was helpful to categorize the big problems in my life when I was with him. One problem was like trying to reconcile the death of my dad. No, he wasn't dead at the time, but he was on that path. The other problem was trying to decide if I was ready to get married to my now wife, which thank God I did, but that was really hard. But I didn't know, which he helped me figure out, that my dad dying and kind of coming to terms with that was sort of a mental block to me even getting to the point that I can be ready to take that next step with my wife. And then there were some other things, but he helped me structure those things and understand the realness of them. Like, you know, I know I'm babbling here, but when the company was growing so fast, it was hard to even take the time to consciously say like, "well, your dad's dying right now". That's bad, like that's a very sad, horrible thing that's happening. And so he gave me that space, that structured space and time to do that. And we would talk about those things and understand how it was making me feel. I don't even know if that answered the first question you asked, but those were the types of things that he helped me do.
Gena Gorlin 10:52
Yeah, I mean, it's all incredibly relevant and helpful, and I know our listeners so appreciate just your raw, honest recounting of those very painful and personal buckets at the time, I can only imagine.
Brett Kopf 10:57
Can I put color on that real quick? Let me give context to why. So here you are seeing me is like I started one company that has a bunch of users, I'm starting my second company, it's like on a good path, yada, yada. But no one knows the personal side, other than my wife, of course, or maybe like my best friends. So you know, when like my dad had Parkinson's, there got to be a point where he could hardly move, he could blink his eyes as a yes or no. It's like the worst torture that you can imagine for a human, and for a loved one to see. And to compartmentalize and decouple the things that were happening in career life versus personal life is brutal, especially for a 22 year old. Just the reason I'm sharing that is because as an entrepreneur - look we have a lot of customers who did really care about me as a human, but at the end of the day, it's not their responsibility to necessarily care that I have this very real personal thing happening. When they send a text message, and they relied on my service and Remind to do something, and it had to do that thing. That's just the reality of it. And so when I'm sharing that is because there's like the surface level as an entrepreneur, what you're doing building something for the customer, and you have employees - but then there's the personal undercurrent of all the things happening in your life good, bad, or ugly, which are inevitable - and everyone goes through something - it's very difficult to manage both of those. And they are both true. Meaning I had to somewhat handle my personal life, and you have to execute at a very high level for what was demanded of me for my company.
Alice Bentinck 12:25
It's interesting, 'cause I think your point here around, everyone deals with this, and maybe you deal with it at different times, you know, as and when life throws these things at you. But it's so rare that people's founding stories actually talk about these things. And when I think about the founders that we've worked with at EF... you can't choose when your personal life happens. And I think it's very, very hard, and the trade offs that you have to make in terms of "my startup is super important. It needs basically 100% of my attention 100% of my time, how do I then justify to myself, to my family, to my employees, having any shift or change in focus?" And I think it is really hard. Did you end up feeling any guilt in either direction, you know, guilt to the company or guilt to your family about how you were focusing during that time?
Brett Kopf 13:15
No, at the time, no. Retroactively, after it happened? Yes. And at the time, I didn't have enough time in the day to even have the time to feel guilt. The only time that I had time to think about any emotion was when I was with my therapist. And then after all these things happened - so I stepped out of a day to day operating role in my first company, I took a year off and I traveled with my wife for some of that time, and I kind of reevaluate what the heck just happened. And then what qualifies a happy fulfilled life for *me* - I say me because everyone's different. And what I decided was thematically, there is my physical, emotional health, the relationship I have with my very close family, specifically providing for my wife, and with my son, and my dog. And then you know, my mom, my brother, the close people, and then it's the company. But I reprioritized my life out of all of that. And I could not have done that at the time. I just wasn't mature enough. And I hadn't been through (inaudible).
Gena Gorlin 14:14
Can I even try to push further on this challenge that we've surfaced, that simultaneously you're somehow giving 100% to this company you're building, and you're also trying to give 100% to this life you're living, and it doesn't add up? I'm wondering, if you reflect back on how you approached your company and sort of what happened with the company's growth and trajectory at the time, if we think of the "before" time—before you had done that reflecting and reprioritizing, or as you were just still getting started on it—and then how you approached it afterward, and how you approach your current company. What differences would we see in your approach as a founder? Like, your decision-making, and just how you think about priorities within the company, about relationships with your team? What's different now that you have this different vantage point on your life as a whole?
Brett Kopf 15:21
Well, I now prioritize everything that I mentioned. It's like health, family, then company; everything is revolving around that. And I don't care what external figure wants me to be another way, I just don't care. External figure could be a VC or like the press, I just don't care. Like, because I care more about providing or being with my son, than I would be on the cover of Forbes. I cared about being on the cover of Forbes when I was 21, I don't give a shit now, excuse the french. Unless it helps us acquire a bunch more customers, because that's what we're focused on now.
Gena Gorlin 15:53
Has that made you a worse or better founder, just taking that as the standard?
Brett Kopf 15:59
It depends on who's asking or what their metric is.
Gena Gorlin 16:29
Sure; well, what's yours?
Brett Kopf 16:05
Me personally, I think I'm a bit better because I have a more balanced life, and I'm very clear in the intention of what I want in the long term. Let me be clear on that: I want to build Omella, I want it to be very large and very impactful, someday as big as Remind is. I do want that. And I get up every morning at 4:30 in the morning to grind a few hours in the morning before my kid wakes up so I can help him get ready. And then I go back to work. And so I still work very hard. But I'm not willing to sacrifice. So what that means is, probably at like four or five o'clock I stop working and I spend the next four or five hours with him. It also means that I spend one hour during the day exercising. Now, I'm saying this super confidently now, but I'm really not perfect at it, like I struggle with it quite a bit. Because I have my career identity where I want to build something really impactful, and I have to work a lot. And I am just that way natively - it is who I am. And I think the company needs it. And also I want to spend time with my son and my wife, and I want to exercise and do the things I want. And so you'll have to ask me in five years if both can be true. Or if I can build something that has $100 million in revenue and impacts hundreds of millions of people, and have a great personal life; I don't actually know. And unfortunately, one thing that scares me a bit is that I don't know too many public figures - and maybe this is just because the ones that aren't public are busy with their personal life or working - that have figured out both, where financially the things that they have built in the world are very impactful, and they have a very intentional, good personal life. Usually it's like crazy workaholics that are really not good personal life. And I don't want that. Does that make sense?
Gena Gorlin 17:43
It does make sense, and it's interesting to hear you say that because I think part of my charter for this podcast is to gather the counter examples. And I think we've at least gathered a couple of, dare I say, you know, minor, but real counter examples. And I suspect with time that you will also prove to be one of them. I'm optimistic on your behalf. But I have a radical hypothesis. And I'm just going to disclose this now, so that it can be part of our shared context to this conversation. My hypothesis is that it's either net positive-sum or zero-sum, and that when we think about these parts of our lives in a zero-sum kind of way - that you know, we're necessarily trading off one against the other, and that there's a pie and these are parts of our pie, and it's a question of just how much of our pie we want to devote to our job and company versus our personal life - that that's a kind of losing narrative. Whereas I think there's another narrative, and I've seen it bear out, you know, we interviewed I think, two sets of founders you're familiar with Brett, Keith Schacht and Ray and Rebecca Girn, who spoke of the ways that they integrate these parts of their lives together. And I've heard it in a few other places: you know, Ben Horowitz speaks of the kinds of challenges we're talking about now in "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" and how he’s kind of navigated some of those hard decisions. And I think that there's an approach, this might also come back to our motivation theme, and maybe we'll talk about that a bit more - how your motivations evolved - but I think there's an approach to life as a whole, that makes you fundamentally a better founder - if we really think about your goal, your mission, your vision for what you're building - and fundamentally a better dad, and a better partner, and a better human. And I sort of feel like you can't do one without the other fully, which is almost the opposite of the way we think about it intuitively, right? It's sort of like, "well which one are you going to prioritize? And you'll do less of one if you do more of the other", but I actually think that there's something backwards about that. I think it's sort of like, you're doing it all in a certain kind of intentional and authentic way, or you're compromising it all, at some level. So I just want to explore that - I might be wrong. But that's part of what I want your help figuring out.
Brett Kopf 20:15
Well, I hope you're right. And we have to check in in three to five years if it's a true statement [for me] specifically. Thus far, I am doing a pretty good job at it for our tiny company. And we have to make tradeoffs, though; so let me give you an example. Remind has raised a lot of money. My current company Omella has not, now we're much smaller, but even at the same time, we have not. We are running the company in a very methodical, thoughtful way, that we're focused on getting to break-even profitability. Now the current macro-environment has changed a ton since 10 years ago, everyone should be saying that on this podcast now. But in general, if we remove timeframe aside, we want to build a company that is long-term, sustainable, profitable, has healthy margins, has very good retention, where our customers love us, and there's a high NPS [Net Promotor Score]. Those are the things we're focused on. Sometimes that means though, like, I'm not just throwing money at a problem, sometimes you have to go slower, which drives me crazy. And it's probably the right thing. And in five to ten years from now, we'll still be around, and hopefully, it'll be a really big, impactful company. Where before, and arguably just because Remind was such a unique case, for—most companies on the planet don't add 200,000-300,000 users a day, where it will be like "Oh, my God, just holding on for dear life, throw money at every problem because we're growing so quickly." I don't know, maybe it's just because that was a unique case. But if we have to make trade-offs, that's the point, like we're making trade-offs now, or sometimes we have to go slower. Another personal example is, what I would have never done before, is every Friday at 12 o'clock, I go play basketball. There's a game that I play at my local gym for two hours, which is my version of meditation. Two hours out of the middle of the business day, but it makes me... and still, the lizard brain—which I know you know, Gena, that word—the lizard brain in my head, like the bad Brett, says "Oh, what are you doing? That's bad." But I know that it makes me a better person for my family, but also for the company. And it's like physically and mentally the right thing for me to do. So that is a worthwhile trade-off.
Alice Bentinck 22:12
One of the things that I think many founders, particularly first time around forget is that ultimately, for a large part of the company's life trajectory, if the founder leaves, if the founder can't maintain their energy, their mental health, their ability to keep going, often the company will collapse. And that's particularly true of the CEO, the CEO-founder. I mean, when I look at some of our founders who are struggling, it's often because they are always prioritizing the company. And don't recognize, as you have, that actually the most important thing is that you are able to be on your A-game. And if that takes spending four hours every night with your child, doing your two hours of basketball as meditation, I think understanding that about yourself feels like such an important thing, but often something that only a second time founder realizes, because they don't feel the... I suppose the guilt that comes attached with that. They understand that it's fundamentally an important part of making the company successful. Do you think your first time founder-self could have got to that same realization?
Brett Kopf 23:15
No way. I wish, and I don't want to also make that seem like others can't, I hope they can, and I hope they are genuinely better than me, but no. Part of the reason, is because I still struggle with it, a lot. And I'm like... 35, and I've started a new company, yada-yada. I said "no way" very aggressively; I'm skeptical of it. I was so laser-focused... Here's the problem with it: I think that, given the skills that I had at that point (and I have more skills now because I'm more experienced), I don't think I had the emotional or physical capacity in the day to do other stuff.
Gena Gorlin 24:02
Where does that emotional capacity come from now? Like, what's been added to your tank such that now you can make it work?
Brett Kopf 24:10
I think there's probably a mixture of time and experience. And like, I've just seen a lot of things and, you have a lot of shots on goal. And then my son - like when I had my son - he's almost two years old - for me it put a new perspective on what matters and why. I'll tell you a very personal story that I've gotten permission from my wife to tell this story because I'm embarrassed by it, but it's a true statement. My wife - well she wasn't my wife then, she was just my girlfriend; we've been together for 11 years and her name is Courtney, and she's the best. We were just dating at the time - and I explicitly told her, I was like, "you're not my priority right now, it is the company." And to her credit, she said, "I understand and I know that you're ambitious, you want to have this impact, that's okay." And I wasn't always showing up for her how I should be. What ended up happening is Remind came and went. I mean, I'm still on the board and everything, but like it's being ran by an executive team, and it's on like a good path, yada, yada. But Courtney is forever. And I didn't realize that at the time. And only after, you know, I took the time off, I'm like, "Oh, my God, were my priorities so backwards." And it's embarrassing to even say that out loud, but it's also the truth. And so now I know, that's what my priority is now, it's like my health first - and I have a very strong opinion on that because if I don't have that, then I can't show up for her, or the company. And just side tangent, clinically I have dyslexia and ADD, one of the things that I prioritize heavily is health. So like, I work out five to six days a week. And I try to eat really well. The thing that I'm not necessarily as good at is managing my emotional state. And so just to your point, part of the reason I say "no way" back then is because I still struggle with it. I was talking about it with my wife this week, it's like ah man, it's either I'm working, and I wonder what my son's doing right now, or I want to be with him, or I need to exercise. Or when I'm exercising - unless I'm playing basketball, because then my mind turns off, which is great - but if I'm lifting weights, it's like, "oh gosh, I have to answer this support ticket." So it's still hard; I'm still conflicted on both, because at the end of the day, I want to build something that's very big and impactful. Just for me personally, I'm not okay just building something that is sort of average, because I see this vision and I want to help these customers, I really do, I really want to have that impact and help them.
Gena Gorlin 26:28
Yeah, and I'm really happy to hear you say that it's still a work in progress, because that is so in the nature of building ourselves and learning about our own emotional needs, and about our motivations, and about all the complex ways that we manage our attention day to day. And I think it's a really false picture of the process, you know, anybody who says "well, here's everything I've figured out, and so now I can be, you know, the perfect superhero founder", because they're just either setting themselves up for a fall or they're BSing. Like, of course it's a work in progress.
Gena Gorlin 27:09
So part of what I'd love to maybe now circle back to with this added context that you've shared with us is, how is your motivation different now? Because I feel like that might be a through-theme, and a lot of what we're talking about, a lot of the ways that you have grown and that you're still growing. You know, when you mention now, you want to build something impactful, something that's great, not just something middling and ultimately meaningless. What does that mean to you now? And how is it different from those early days when, by your own lights, you were motivated by the wrong thing?
Brett Kopf 27:44
There's two big differences. One from just a pure business standpoint is I want to have a business with strong, what you call basic business fundamentals and clear unit economics, which always come back to, do your customers come back? Do you have healthy retention? Do you have a high margin? Do you have high engagement? Are you growing in a healthy manner? Meaning are you making more money than you're spending, and having a good business model so you could be running the company forever? Like, that part's really important to me. Part of the reason is because with Remind we didn't charge for a long time, I think for that company it was right, just because we were growing so quickly. But I just want to build a company, and before it was maybe more of just a product. And I'm a very product-focused founder. And so right now, I care about the product a lot, but that's an input to having clear business fundamentals and clear unit economics. Does that make sense?
Alice Bentinck 28:39
It feels like a very end of 2022 statement. In that I think a lot of founders are now being encouraged to actually think about unit economics. But it sounds like this is something that you've been noodling on for a long time. Why is that so important to you? How did that come to be so important to you? Because it's not what the startup culture has been for the last however many years.
Brett Kopf 29:00
Yeah, you're giving me a layup here, it's horrible sport/basketball pun, but the reason is because I was the antithesis of it for 10 years. We walked the line; like, we did the opposite with Remind, where it's like, grow, grow, grow at all costs. Now again, unique situation, adding 300,000 users a day. And so we can raise all the money we want. It's just a crazy number. But I saw like the negative implications to not having clear fundamentals nailed down before you scale. And if you don't have those things, a lot of not good things happen. And eventually, the music stops. Now, the music's stopping very hard right now, everyone knows that. But we have been thinking - my brother and I, he is my co-founder - for years, and years about building Omella. And we've been building it for three years very quietly, but even years before that, we were thinking about some version of payments in the education space. And then there's the value systems of how we build it. And so I almost think, you know, right now it's kind of a scary time, there's layoffs happening right and left, and valuations are getting slashed by 80%, but I think some of its good because it gets back to truth and clear fundamentals. And it's like, put up or shut up, if you're not going to build something that's valuable that a customer wants, probably the company's gonna die. And it won't be the end of the world, and you're gonna learn from it, and maybe you'll build something else, or maybe join someone else. But I'm definitely on that train now, and I think about it every day, like that's the thing that keeps me up at night. For us, at Omella, our economics are clear. We make money on every transaction, but now it's like, how do we get to break-even profitability as fast as thoughtfully possible. I use the word "thoughtfully" because... we raised some money - I can throw a bunch of cash at a problem right now. But I don't know if that would actually get us there faster. One of the things I learned is, you know, when you're in a very high growth environment, you think "oh, we gotta hire, we gotta hire, we gotta hire." But hiring more people usually doesn't equate to higher engagement, retention, revenue, or growth. Oftentimes, it doesn't. And you're seeing that as a reflection now, it's a latent reflection of what's happening in the market, where, you know, the best companies in the world - Stripe is an example, we love them, but they're even firing, they fired, like 9-10% of their staff. That's a long answer.
Gena Gorlin 29:00
That's a great answer. Yeah, I just, I can't help as I hear you talk about your current approach with Omella, and your previous approach with Remind, it's like two different people. I mean it's all you, right, but it's like two versions of you we're hearing about, where there are certain deep insights, and corresponding desires, that are driving you now, and that are driving even the trade offs that you've spoken off. Where it's perhaps trading off short-term for longer-term gain. But where, as a young twenty-something whose father was dying, who was really just starting to kind of grow up (?) at adult life, you were on some kind of a current, of both startup culture, but also that need which was still somewhat invisible to you, of proving that you're smart and that you're capable, and the urgency of proving it while you still can, perhaps even while your father was still able to see it. And it feels like there's a visionary-ness to the way you run your company now. I guess I wonder, if you were starting Remind, if you were founding it today, with everything you know and all the perspective you've gained, what would be different? Or is that a just incoherent question, because maybe that's not what you would do.
Brett Kopf 32:38
I probably wouldn't do that, it's only a little incoherent because the timing in the market is very different—like, back in 2010, messaging was just becoming a thing, but I know that's not your point. But I do think I would do things different. I would just go back to value systems. So okay. Visionary or not, the only thing I'm visionary with is talking to customers and deeply caring about them and wanting to help them, this niche that is very big that no one knows about. I love that. I love that more than anything is really helping them. But then there's a set of value systems that apply that I believe are right, that different from the old version of me, version one. Which maybe if you went to business school - which I didn't, I studied agriculture and I nearly dropped out of school - they would teach me, but it's like clear fundamentals on what is a good healthy business, and wanting to do it for the right [reasons]. So let me give you an example. For this new company, Omella, we raised like, I don't know, four or five million bucks. Every single investor that came in, I said this will not be an overnight success, you have to be with us for like 10 years. You should not expect liquidity for 10 years. And if you want liquidity faster, please don't invest in the company. By the way, we don't need your money. And setting those expectations upfront was really important. Because we only wanted people who weren't going to be knocking on my door every day. A lot of this confidence, by the way, comes from just doing it a few times and knowing what I believe to be right and true in the world. And knowing that if I'm wrong, I'm gonna admit it, and I took a shot at gold and I tried.
Alice Bentinck 34:07
I love the assertiveness, and because it's sort of this—your confidence that you have built over the last decade or so of being a founder, then culminating in an assertiveness which is actually just a really strong business strategy. And it's just, this is what you believe will allow you in the company to be most successful. And being able to put that to investors as a kind of, you know, get on the bus or don't bother even buying a ticket for the bus—it's very, very compelling. I mean, how did investors respond to that? Because I would assume it'd be like catnip for many of them.
Brett Kopf 34:44
Yeah, it was good catnip, even though I don't like cats, I like dogs. But it was good for them. So let me give a caveat. First of all, I've done this before. And so we just have one easy step where we've proven something, and I have a network, yada yada, and I've been in the Valley for 10 years. So that part was just natively easier. But then the other part... like when I tell younger founders who're raising money, it's like it should - I think, used the term a car, but you should be on this freight train. And you're driving the train, and you see this investor in front of you - and I don't mean this in a crass way - but that investor is a barrier to you. And then they can give you money. And that money will lay longer tracks for you, but eventually those tracks will run out. And maybe it's okay that they lay longer tracks, but you should feel like you're going to run that person over if they don't get out of your way, in a thoughtful, humble sense. Now, I speak confidently, but I'm also quite... I had and have a lot of humility. I'll give you an example. When we raise money, it's this is the vision of the company, this is why we're doing it. This is why we were uniquely gifted to focus on this. Meaning we're not going to build a rocket ship like Elon Musk, we're not good at that. We'd be horrible at that. But you know this education space and building utility software... we have hypotheses on how we're going to make money. Here's what the three of those are, we don't know for sure yet, but we've spoken to 500 customers, and we understand their problem. And so we admit what we don't know, and it's just truth. It's like, if you were talking to your mom, or your dad, or like your best friend, and them investing and putting their own personal cash, you will want to be really honest with them. And so if we're investing the most important asset we have - which is not money, it's time - we wanted to make sure, my brother and I, before we ever raised money, and every round that we raise with Omella, it's like do we feel honest and good about this? Is this like a true statement? Because we don't want to bullshit someone if we're not actually ready. And so I am very confident, yes, but [I also] have a lot of humility in what we don't know. And every month in my investor updates it's like, man, here's what we screwed up on. Here's what we're doing very good. Here's the single thing that our company needs to unlock, like this. And one more thing because I think it's important for people listening, the way I speak to investors, or even on here, is like we have systematically eliminated threats to what we think is building a good company, which is first retention. If I pour water in this bottle does it leak? If it leaks, then nothing else matters. Like you shouldn't focus on acquiring customers if the bottle is leaking. Then once the bottle has very good retention you want to make sure you have really good engagement, do they keep coming back? Then do they activate? Well, so when they say "yes, I want to use your product", do you get them onboarded really quickly? And *then* can you acquire a bunch of customers? And so when I speak to them, that's exactly what I tell them, because that is a true statement. Like if I was talking to our executive team internally, it's the same way that I speak to investors.
Gena Gorlin 37:27
Yeah, it's so interesting to connect the dots between the way that you're now approaching business. It's this really systematic, principled, kind of long range approach, where you'd see an investor not just as a source of some immediate extra runway, right? "But okay, well, we just need our track to last for as long as possible so that we can keep moving", right? But you see this really kind of long term, complex strategic vision for which you're laying foundations. And so you're able to make choices that might feel like huge trade-offs or losses to someone who doesn't have this perspective. And you're also able to take time for your meditative basketball games, and you're also able to love your son, love your wife, and make that a really non-negotiable part of this expansive life. And to me, those feel deeply connected, right? When we contrast the kind of psychological space that we're in, at a point where our family unit is still in flux. And we're losing someone who's dear to us. And it all feels fragile. And it all feels kind of urgent, and it's in a certain way and out of our hands, right? And every decision feels like "Okay, this is going to be the make or break of whether I stand on solid ground in my life or not" versus "yeah, this might not work out, and I'm gonna be fine, and I will have learned the lessons and I will try again. But you know, but here are the principles I'm gonna apply." Just, that feels so fundamentally different to me.
Brett Kopf 39:22
Yeah, I think it is different. But don't get me wrong, like I speak here confidently to you. And I did reference my humility - I have a lot of it. [T]he biggest thing I struggle with is anxiety, I'm a very anxious person, which is good and bad. The reason it's good is because I will not not respond to a support ticket in five minutes. Because I know that it's just natively the way I am, and I just want to help our customers. Is it necessarily a great thing that I wake up in the morning at 4am or 5am, and like, want to respond to a customer? Maybe not; so like, I'm not perfect at this and I'm trying to figure out the balance too. But those core fundamentals of like wanting to be healthy and be there for my kid and my wife and and build something in the long term, those are true statements. Like I believe in those a lot, and we're executing on them every day. But it's hard because while I have that long term - I'm feverish, I am feverish right now working. Sometimes my wife, because she works from home too, slash is with my son a lot. She goes, like, "I think you need to like, just go upstairs and go away, because you have like, really bad energy right now." I'm like, "Okay, you're probably right", and I just need [to] take a chill pill. So I have a long term vision, but like feverish in the day-to-day to try to get a lot of stuff done. Because it's... speed matters in starting companies, as you know, it's like one of our most precious assets, is moving quickly.
Gena Gorlin 40:34
Yeah, so it's not like the feverishness goes away. And, again, it's not like, the light switch has gone on, and now you have this grand perspective, and you don't have to manage your own day-to-day psychology anymore. And that is not the picture we want to paint for anyone, because we'd be setting them up for disappointment, right? It's more so that you both have the internal and the external resources, say, in the form of your wife being able to notice that, and to ground you in that way, that now have allowed you to, in crucial moments, to kind of skew the balance toward that perspective, right, and toward the wisdom that you've gained. Even though you're jittery, even though you're waking up at 4am, but still ultimately to stay on your chosen path, or perhaps to return to it. You know, when you do.
Brett Kopf 41:31
Yeah, and honestly, you know, if someone's listening to this are like, "oh, this is really cool and existential, and like it feels good, but like what do I do with it?", you should just work out. And I know that sounds so simple, but I think working out physically is so important. And there's all the research that backs that, I'm not going to like talk into that, but physically—yeah, there's legitimate science—but just physically exercise and move your body and work really hard. I have a lot of energy. I'm very effusive, as you can tell. And if I don't exercise every day, I'm not only doing a disservice to my first and second goal, which is my health in my family, but I'm doing a disservice to the company. So, like, it's probably one of the most important things you can do is exercise.
Gena Gorlin 42:13
Yeah, it's wild. And I mean it in a certain way, it contains all the elements in microcosm, that constitute this mindset that I think we've been circling around, you know, whatever it is that I'm calling the founders mindset on this podcast, that there's the experience of achieving a chosen goal, and of the effort that that entails. Like they're packed so tightly together, it's like, you can't miss it, right? You can't miss - okay, either I've made it to that line, or I haven't. Either I've done my 20 reps, or I haven't, whatever the case may be. And there's no lying about it, there's no BSing it, right? You either you've done it, or you haven't, and it's between you and your inner demons to negotiate that endurance, right? And whatever your reasons for wanting to get to the end, it's just you.
Brett Kopf 43:10
The inner demon statement is so good. One of my friends, he's one of my closest friends, and kind of like life advisors, one of the things he told me is like humans are natively selfish, as am I. As each of you are most likely to with certain things in your life, and there's certain things we're not, but like, no one in the world thinks about my life as much as I do. Or Gena's life as much as she does, maybe Matt does about you, your husband. But my wife doesn't think about my life as much as I do, nor should she. It's not her job, and she shouldn't have to do that. And so part of the reason I'm sharing that is because... I'm trying to build something that impacts hundreds of millions of people. And the emotional and physical state that I'm in, hopefully will one day affect a lot of those people. And so knowing that even though I think about myself a lot of times, it's not really about me, it's about helping those people. And structuring my life around exercising, and focusing on my family, and building this company for the long term, will hopefully help me achieve that and help those millions of people.
Alice Bentinck 44:14
But one of the things that you keep on using as a phrase, which is not a phrase you hear very often, but I think it actually really sums up nicely your perspective on life is this "natively". So you keep on kind of referencing back to the knowledge that you have of yourself, the knowledge of how you behave, how you work, your preferences, your flaws, and you use that as a source of power. And I think most people, I think many of us are brought up to believe when we have something that is natively seen as a flaw, or like as you know, inherently seen as a bad thing, we try and change it. Whereas what you're saying is, "hey, this is how I work. I'm gonna go with those parts of my personality, go with those parts of my behavior. And I'm going to acknowledge that that is something that I'm going to work with and work around", whether it's the fact that we're all selfish, or the fact that you need to do basketball - I feel like we mentioned the basketball a lot. That's a very, very powerful thing that it's very easy for founders to beat themselves up to try and change and become somebody who they aren't, rather than just saying, well, actually, this is who I am. Let's work it, how can I leverage who I am, to actually make this whole thing - life, work, relationships, family, work as a system?
Brett Kopf 45:26
Yep. So that actually—what you pointed out, thank you for doing that - is the archetype, or like the most important part of all of this. Well, the thing I didn't mention is in the middle of like seeing a therapist and starting our first company was I had a CEO coach at the time, and I took this thing called "Tilt-365", It's kind of equivalent to a Gallup poll, I think it's better. But it basically helps you figure out who you are. Every human being on the planet, they structure into one of like 16 categories. And when I read it, I was like, "oh my God, I'm reading a story about who I am as a person, good, bad and ugly." And how that applies to starting a company or showing up as a husband, or as a father is like, "oh wait, I understand why I'm acting like this, or I understand why I'm afraid to have those hard conversations, because I don't like conflict", which I don't, it's just natively who I am. And so it means I have to work harder, to make sure I have those. The faster you can know who you are and what you're gifted at, then you could outsource what you're bad at. And I can give you a ton of examples on that. But I tried to just stay in my lane, like I'm really good at sales and customers and storytelling, but anything that has to do with operations and finance or repetitive stuff, I'm bad at, and the company needs it. And so I love to find people who are really good at what I'm bad at, where I have a line set of value systems and principles, natively, and get out of their way. [B]ecause if you actually, you know, hopefully achieve some success where the company starts ripping and growing really quickly, you will not be able to do all those things, and you have to outsource what you're not good at to people who are really good at them. And be so okay with that. I delight in the fact that I have people who are better than me at my company right now, doing things that they're really good at.
Gena Gorlin 47:01
It strikes me that in order to be able to make those calls, you've got to not just know about yourself, but to return to our theme of, what is selfish or not, to really care about yourself and your experience as a founder, and to stay connected to your why's in order to make those long term calls, in order to have the hard conversations, in order to do the outsourcing, to lean into your strengths. All of that requires a certain orientation of... yeah, this is my chosen road, right? And I'm choosing to do it in a certain way. And *I'm* choosing to do it in a certain way. And it's gotta be me, because as soon as it stops being me, it's not going to work. [T]he foundation will not hold, insofar as I'm the foundation after all. And so there's a certain way in which when you mentioned that trade-off, [of] "well, I'm confident, but I'm also humble", you get to be confident because of the ways that you're honest and humble, and vice versa, I think. Because you've smashed that dichotomy in a certain way. It's like, it has to be about me, in order to really benefit these, hopefully, hundreds of thousands, or millions of customers, for whom I'm ultimately building this. And it has to be about them, but about them in a way that I actually genuinely care about, and I'm not just trying to, you know, prove that I care, right? Or prove that I'm good enough. It has to actually be about them to be about me, and it has to be about me to be about them. It's win-win. Or it's lose-lose.
Brett Kopf 48:45
I don't think I could say it any better.
Gena Gorlin 48:46
Speaking of concluding statements, having reflected on all of this, anything, you either wish you'd known when you were just getting started as a founder, or anything you'd like to impart on any early stage or aspiring founders who are listening?
Brett Kopf 49:04
Yeah, of course. There's like the tactical things of how to build a startup, and then there's the emotional side. I'll break it apart by two because you guys hit both in this podcast. [W]hen you build a startup it's really simple, you talk to customers a lot, you solve a simple problem for them, and you build a product that solves their problem, and you iterate rigorously. I spoke to 500 customers before we wrote a line of code. And so like that general framework is how I build all my companies. There's a lot that falls underneath that, but that's it. Just like talk to customers. Listen with two ears and one mouth, build a simple product, and solve a problem. That's like the framework in which I start the company. The personal stuff, that's super hard. I don't know if I have any - other than like, know thyself. I remember my dad, when he was actually passing, which I could not literally hear him. Well, literally I could but metaphorically, I couldn't. Where he said, "you know, Brett" - and this was like three or four years before he died - he's like, "all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy." He didn't make that word up, it was in a book or it's a famous quote. And all I hear was like, "yeah yeah Dad, whatever, like, I gotta grind, I gotta grind, I gotta grind." And it's like, oh wow, I'm 36 now or I'm 35, and it's like, oh, you know, you kind of see 50, and kind of see 75 and 100, and it goes really fast. And once you have kids - for anyone who has kids listening, you know how fast it goes. And he had an interesting point there. Now, at the time I couldn't do anything with that, because I was so focused on [being] ambitious and growing. And I'm still super ambitious, but also life goes really quickly. So it kind of goes back to this point that you made about knowing yourself or that we've been talking about, knowing what you want and why, and making sure you're doing it for yourself and not someone else. I was doing my first company for someone else, little did I know it. But this company is not for someone else other than our customers of course, but the internal drive, there's a clear foundation for that.
Alice Bentinck 50:50
Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Founder's Mindset. Make sure to subscribe, or follow us to be the first to get every new episode. And if you enjoy the show, why not leave us a rating and review to help us to reach even more people. We'd hugely appreciate it. As always, you can find out more about Entrepreneur First by heading to joinef.com. And you get more of Gena's thoughts on founder psychology at builders.genagorlin.com. I've been Alice Bentinck.
Gena Gorlin 51:15
And I'm Gena Gorlin. See you next time.