YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex MacCaw

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43
first
2019-09-13
most recent
2019-09-13
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Golly, it's hard to tell. I can barely tell what next year it's going to look like, but I would say success for me would be if the company was public in five years and the most people working the company felt like it was the best job they've ever had.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It's definitely scaling culture, keeping what's special here. We built a really, really special place that people love getting to work, you know, coming to work at. Someone last week told me it was the best job they've ever had and that just made my week. So really keeping that as we grow, that's the hardest part.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Again, this might be a little contrarian, but two reasons. I love getting to play my own music at parties. And the second is as an introvert, it's a socially acceptable way for me to be at a party and not talk to anyone and just be in the corner configuring a giant circuit board.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So we are actually publishing a book on management and we actually just publishing our internal book really. Fundamentally what I want to change is the way that people run companies. Right now the default, they're running companies from a place of authority and fear and I want to change that to a place of love and vulnerability. And that's obviously a bigger ask to the book is a very tactical way to provide a lot of practical management steps along the way.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Don't be penny wise and pound foolish. Now, invest upfront in customer success and sales. They work. I took way too long hiring out those teams and hurt us for a while.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You know, my favorite book goes back to what I was talking about earlier. It's called The Fifteen Commitments of Conscious Leadership. And it is the book behind the whole principles of conscious leadership. And it just drastically changed my outlook on life.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So, I mean, Ash has been great and been talking me through a lot of the issues we just casually meet for lunch every now and again. But when it comes to my advisory group, what I've done is I got six CEOs and ex-CEOs to invest in the company and they became my advisory board. And so what I do is I email them and meet with them fairly regularly and they provide absolutely brilliant advice.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Definitely not for the seed. I would just raise the seed on all safes. For the A, try not to add to the board. And then maybe the B. Often you just don't have a choice. A lot of investors will require being on the board. There's kind of a luxury having the choice. But I would say be onwards seems like a good term.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, here's my thoughts on this. So actually, your previous guest, Josh Buckley, is the only other guy on the board, the only other person on the board. And the reason is, I think at our stage, a board is just a lot of busy work. At some point, boards have their place, absolutely. But only when packed with operators rather than investors. So we will set up a board and I'm planning on doing it next year, but we're going to add more operators to it rather than have any investors on it.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think it would be great if we just had a fund that was called Just Money. And yeah, and it would just give you the money. Everything else that you can buy, you can buy recruiters, you know, honestly, we have had no candidates through our existing vestors or through other investors, aside from actually, you can think of wine. So yes, I do hope we will see the unbundling of BCs. And I love seeing things like IndieVC come along and trying to disrupt the system.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, I think we're a very special case in that I tell our VCs that I actually don't want much help from them. If I want a recruiter, I'll pay for recruiter and there'll be a better recruiter than that VC because they're full time. If I want a COO, I'll pay for a COO. If I want advice, I'll pay for advice from people who've got that industry experience, you know? So I don't actually expect much help from RVCs”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Egotistically, I feel like I don't want this kind of candidacy about whether Benchmark or Sequoia invested. It might help with some of the senior highs, but we really haven't had a problem.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “It was definitely terms and valuation definitely came into it. We wanted the cleanest terms, but obviously someone on your cap table is extremely hard, if not impossible, to remove. And you have to be very careful with who you add to it. So yes, there was a lot of back channeling, references, a lot of dinners, but really I didn't care at all about people's brand or what other people would think, not one single.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “You can, but people can sniff it out. BC is a professional negotiator. They do this every day. They'll know when you're bullshitting. The second piece of advice I have for negotiating with BCs is to stop caring about external validation. So stop caring about the glamour, about the big name VC. None of it matters in my opinion. You're simply trying to sell a piece of your company for the cleanest possible terms at a reasonable valuation.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “A very kind of interesting and out there segment, which I tried to tie into the theme of the six pillars and then I realized that it was absolutely not possible. And so I kind of called it Alex's Ask Me Anthony. And so I spoke to quite a few of your ambassadors before the show in terms of Jeff Lewis, in terms of Ash Fontana. And I want to talk a little bit about fundraising and VC interactions. So I want to start, and if we take it a little bit like the funnel, starting pre-deal, I heard from Jeff Lewis that you're the master when it comes to negotiating with VCs. So what advice would you give on successful negotiation with investors, Alex? Yeah, I'm going to preface this. This is a little bit of contrarian advice, perhaps, and I have a slightly different take to the whole thing than other founders. And I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying this is what's worked for us. So the first thing to realize that VCs are professional salespeople, that's all they are. They're salespeople that sell financial instruments. And the best advice I have is the same for any negotiation.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “You have it at the start because there's been a lot of prevetting through the interview process. You know, there's been a lot of back channels and reference checks. So you start off with that place of trust. If you lose it, it's hard to regain. But the great thing about having regular feedback and we do feedback in our one-on-ones every single week, this is biodirectional feedback, is that if there's any chips at that trust, they get resolved rather than spiraling. Does that make sense? Make sense, absolutely it does. I do want to move into that.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Agree in terms of that growth, in terms of When maybe the self-awareness isn't there, often it kind of results in this lack of trust. Trust does deteriorate in relationships and in teams. What was the consequence? It spirals. Trust is all we have to bond us together. And it's, quite frankly, as soon as trust dissipates, you can't work together. Interesting question here Do you start from a full relationship of trust or do you believe that trust is gained in increments and you start from nothing and it's gained or Have it all, and it's there to be lost, so to speak.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “How do you think about proactively increasing self awareness and anything that you do in particular? So I think there are three ways you can grow in self-awareness. One is to become more self-reflective. And a great way of actually stimulating this is through meditation, but actually pause and bring almost like a lens of attention back at yourself as if there was something outside of you looking back at you. The other way to grow in self-awareness is some kind of instrument, and I mentioned the Enneagram earlier, I like that one, but there's a few technical instruments like the Myers Briggs test, for example. And the third way, my favorite way is to set up this incredibly feedback rich environment where the people around you, the most direct form of feedback are giving you feedback all the time and helping you grow.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Start this powerful conversation inside of yourself. And with anybody else, you're doing this work with. Parker envisioned on the show very, very recently, and we spoke a lot about self-awareness and how to increase it He spends specifically everyday journaling. Different segment That he has and continues to”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Honestly, conscious leadership is the best way I've found of living life. So I think the easiest way to explain it is to talk about the simple model. So there's this line. At any moment in time, you're either above the line or below the line. And when you're above the line, you're open, curious, you're committed to learning. You're actually in a sense of trust, able to trust yourself, able to trust the environment, able to trust your relationships and be able to trust the universe. You can trust wherever you're placing your trust. And when you're below the line, you're contracted. You're in a state of threat. Your literal body posture could be closed. Your heart is closed. You're defensive. And the big idea is that you're attached to proving that you're right. So we're simply saying is that the first key skill of conscious leaders is self-awareness. And the first act of self-awareness is can I locate myself in this now moment am I open and closed? Am I in the state of trust or the state of threat? Because we believe the ability to locate yourself really does.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Thank you so much for being It's not a trade that's always To ask one specific element in particular of management, which is the kind of rise of conscious leadership Conscious leadership mean to you, and how do you hope to imbue it today with”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “How poor onboarding can be. you think about structuring neuronboarding to be as optimal as possible You know, I actually got the feedback last week that our onboarding was pretty bad too. It's kind of sad, but now I know, which is great. I can fix it. My approach to onboarding and the current system is that we just give people to read. So the first couple of days, it's just reading. And there's like an asana checklist and people go through and read. And it is a very efficient form of data transfer. But what I've just realized is that it's great for Alex McCall, not so good for everyone else because not everyone learns that way. And so we're going to mix things up. We're going to have some more videos in there. We're going to have some in-person talks. But I'm not sure I've nailed onboarding yet at Clebbit.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “While the last one is management, so most companies and most companies I'll say, they just don't put much thought into management and training, which I think is a complete travesty. I can't emphasize enough how important management is. At most companies, people join and it's just its complete crapshoot as to if they get a good manager or not. And that affects their entire experience of the company, then they leave the company. People don't leave companies. They leave managers. So we put so much thought into management training and we've got actually a whole handbook that we've written internally and we do regular management trainings. And we are trying to get to a place where Clibit has world-class managers. That in terms of the focus on management.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Be vulnerable in doing so. Do you encourage that sort of Well, the old adage is you can lead a horse to whatever. You can't make a drink. So honestly, there is only so much you can do. You can put it in front of people. All you can have healthy defaults can set a good example. One thing I have found that does work is games. So Clibit has a softball tournament. Also Clibit does boxing as well. So having these group activities actually brings out people who perhaps normally wouldn't”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Jim started, and I can't afford the healthy food. How would you advise that? Well, I would say, as for footing it, I don't think you can afford not to. Health was a priority from day one. It has to be. As a founder and CEO, you have to look after yourself. You need to be exercising every day and you need regular therapy. I think when you, as soon as you raise around, let's just say you're a seed founder, you're struggling at the start, and maybe you're finding ways of being healthy, like going for a run or trying to eat healthy. But as soon as you raise that first round or you get to profitability, then put a personal trainer on the company card, put an exec coach on the company card, put a therapist on a company card. These are absolutely legitimate expenses and you should be spending company money on the stuff. Because if you're not in tip-top condition, then the company's not going to work.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So health is number one, and I think the issue with the idea of work-life balance is it really implies the two diametrically opposed. I prefer the idea of work-life harmony, where you look at everything holistically. And this means clear bit, we have really healthy lunches. We actually have two full-time chefs because people just pick the default. If there's shitty food in front of them, they'll pick it. We offer gym stipends. We offer therapy for everyone. We offer the best health insurance. We have on track vacation. You can work from anywhere. We don't track or care about the time of the sea. But it's really, I think, health is really about amalgamating.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “They're a type of psychological test, and we recently just done them in the company. And I'm an Enneagram 8 Wing 7. And it's a really good way of understanding yourself. I recommend you do it, especially if you're trying to work on that. I'm not sure that you have to try and change fundamental pieces of your character like that. I would just try to meld them into whatever you want to do in life. But yeah, I'm eight. So age is the challenger. So eights are less worried about external validation or people pleasing.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “There's a real skill to giving and receiving effective feedback. And we could do a whole podcast about this. Fundamentally, there are two steps, and I recommend reading a book called Radical Candor on this. The first step is you need to have a real genuine relationship with each other such that the person you're giving feedback to really trusts that you have their best interest in mind. So you've got to have that real, genuine relationship. The second is that you need to be absolutely candid, state the facts, state the story in your head. Don't sugarcoat things to make people feel better. You're just doing them a disservice by watering down the feedback. That's what I see the most is managers operating in what I call ruinous empathy, where they sugarcoat their feedback or don't give it because they're afraid of upsetting people. Really, you're just hurting them if you do that.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Okay, so feedback. We have a culture of giving and receiving feedback, and I crave feedback. It's a gift. I found it's the only real way to grow. I'm not objective enough about myself to grow without it”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “It's a tricky balance. I think what you have to be wary of is distraction. So you should be transparent, but giving people the minimum by minute play-by-play updates to the funding round is just going to distract them. So the balance that we got in our last funding round was we just had every couple of weeks I would do an update to the company. And in that update, I was very transparent. I'd be like, this is going well, this is not going well. This is what investors care about. This is where we can improve. And I think that's the right cadence for fundraising.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Transparency is our third pillar. To be clear, we are transparent in all areas by default, aside from compensation and performance. It builds mutual trust, it lets us draw from the wisdom of the crowds, it lets us operate more efficiently. Transparency is key.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Well, you know what we do is the leadership team gets together and will figure out the company OKRs at the start of the year. We actually have the same OKRs the whole year. And that includes the revenue number, but it also includes a number of other things that we're working towards. And then let's just say we look at marketing OKRs. Matt, our CMO, will take those company OKRs and he will show them to his team and they are the ones that come up with their own OKRs. And sure, Matt approves them, but the key thing is to get people involved and making the decisions as to their own targets.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “So, really, autonomy is the secret to a happy team and treating people like adults, trusting in them, delegating. Your team should be making decisions and driving things, not you.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “I'll tell you our secret. And this is something that sounds maybe sounds obvious in retrospect, but we didn't do it for a long time. And when we started doing it, our business transform. So the secret is sourcing sessions. Sit down with your engineers or whoever is relevant for the role and then use tools. There's tools like TEMable or you can just go through that LinkedIn and use LinkedIn Recruiter. You literally just got to sit them down because sourcing is so boring. It's so boring. Everyone hates it. So you literally have to, people are not going to go through their network themselves. Do you sit them down and you do this every now and again? And you also do this with all your new hires as well. And that is the best way of growing the business.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “So, what I'll do when I'm hiring a senior role is I will go out and meet the best people in the industry. Right now we're hiring a COO, chief operating officer. And during the search, I've spoken to some of the best COOs on the planet. Last week I was talking to Adam Bain about it, who was CEO of Twitter. So that really actually lets you tune what excellence looks like. And then when it comes to candidates, I think the key thing is sourcing. It's like the number one thing because if you don't have enough candidates in funnel as you go down, you start compromising. And you're like, ah, we need to fill this role. We haven't found the perfect person, but let's hire them anyway. So the key thing is that sourcing up front.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “So, the first pillar is people, and so clearly hiring the right people is important. I mean, I think that's obvious. I think what is less understood is that 80% of the work of management is actually done upfront by hiring the right people. People who are interested in self-growth and self-improvement, people who match the jobs to be done, people who are fairly self-managing, who you can trust that whatever they see they will get done gets done.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Know what my secret weapon is I ask for help. I don't have any problem asking anyone in the world for help. And the great thing about Silicon Valley and the world in general is that people really do help you. Matt Mashari helped us in the early days and he didn't charge us a thing. So it was really down to the people out there who were standing on the shoulder of giants who helped us and coached us and made us what we are today.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Me that love of company building and the love of management and operations and management are the unglamorous side of company building, sure. But after product market fit, they are the difference between success and failure.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Its essence, company building is building the machine, the builds the machine. So it's scaling up the company while ensuring that communication and culture doesn't go to shit. It's a real art and a rare one and I think that's why you see founders who demonstrated they've done it before they've just come on such huge valuations to the next company they build because it's such a rare talent. And for first time founders, it's a really tricky transition. You have to change how you think about your time, how you think about hiring. You have to start dealing with human problems rather than bits and bytes. And I actually think it's really difficult, especially for technical founders. Well, certainly it was for me. You've had your head down this whole time building, building, building, and now you stick your head up and you realize the company needs a real CEO, but you have no idea where to start. And I was exceptionally lucky to have coaching from this guy called Matt Mashari. And he came in and he held us early on when we were about 25 people or so, now we're about 100.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Well, usually it's quite obvious if candidates are interested in self-improvement because they ask about it. They ask about our values, our culture, how we do feedback. But I do believe that frankly, interviews just don't cut it. The only real way we found of evaluating candidates is through references and back channels.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Well, the beauty of different founders and different companies is that there's so many different flavors of success. It really just comes down to the founder and the motivations. A lot of motivated by external validation, like money status, or having an impact in the world. And to be clear, there's an absolutely valid motivations than just not really mine. And as you alluded to, I actually started this company as a tool to self-actualize. So there are a lot of ways, maybe healthier ways of self-actualizing, like meditation and therapy, but a company is a fantastic way of pushing yourself and setting up this feedback loop that you really needed for self-growth. And I ask everyone at Clivet to think of the company as a self-growth vehicle. And for the record, I actually totally agree with Matilde that operational excellence is key to scaling. We were lucky enough to get a lot of coaching early on in the days of Clearbit to actually make Clearbit operate extremely well.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “So, most founders will give you some elaborate story about some founding story. I'm not sure I have a single aha moment, but I do remember just being enamored by the data space. You know, everything we do ultimately flows back to data. And as humans, we just seem to be compelled to create it. And I just wanted to be in the thick of things and I wanted to start a company that would really push myself and see what I could become basically.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Well, I think startups have always been ingrained in me. My father is a lawyer for Gillette for 30 years. And as he got ready for work every day, he would say, you've got to be your own boss, Alex. So I think he ingrained it in me from a pretty young age. And I've run various businesses over the years, and I moved to the States about 10 years ago. And I initially worked as an engineer at Twitter and Stripe. You know, they don't actually let you start a company without actually working for a few companies. And then when I got my green card, I started Clibit.”

    2019-09-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source