YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Girouard

lines on the record
67
first
2021-09-30
most recent
2021-09-30
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “And who isn't some very good things would happen? And that's sort of proven itself up at one level, it seems very obvious. If you know a lot more and you have more sophisticated risk models, some good things are going to happen. But for some reason, just enormous disbelief that it's possible to build a better mousetrap in lending. It's just viewed as the ultimate commodity subject to macroeconomic conditions, et cetera. So we just had a lot to overcome in terms of convincing the world you could build a better mousetrap in lending.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Financial services, along with maybe healthcare, are two of the most difficult industries to penetrate. And I just say for the first 20 years of the internet, they were largely avoided by most entrepreneurs who would rather go to less regulated industries. Certainly in the last 10 years, that's changed pretty radically. And when we got into the industry and said, hey, we can create a better loan product by using very sophisticated math and a lot of data. There were large players in the industry doing online lending, but they weren't really focused on the problem we were focused on. They were more just bringing the product online, making it available, making it a little more efficient because you could do it on the internet or on your phone, et cetera. We really wanted to look right at the heart of lending, which is the credit decision. Who gets a loan and for what price? And our basic assumption was if you could have a much more accurate model identifying who's likely to pay back.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And that was helpful. I knew we needed to hire a lawyer very quickly. We weren't going to make much progress without having legal expertise in the company. So just a lot of things like that that I think in the end were very helpful.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Well, I think coming from a completely different industry with no background in something can either be an enormous asset or liability. I suppose it depends on the person. I guess I knew what I didn't know. I spent a couple of months just driving around in the city meeting people, putting coins into meters, having lots of coffee, and just learning and asking about this thing because this concept. A lot of people would educate me, but they would also probably tell me they weren't that sure this idea makes a lot of sense, et cetera. So it was just like an experience. But I think ultimately, if you know what you don't know, you are a fast student and you can challenge a lot of the assumptions, but not be blind to the way an industry works. It can work to your favor to come completely from the outside, not to bring assumptions. When I found it Upstart, I was 45 years old. So I had plenty of times around the block, if you will, just not in that particular industry.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “But that was sort of the founding notion. And for me, it was like, look, I had done well at Google. I had been there eight years. And I probably could have strapped in and gone another five or ten years and done well. But I just felt like it wasn't the last cool thing I was going to do with my life. I wanted to have”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “And of course, you felt terrible, and there was this rationale for the email, this and that, but it's just one of those little moments that stuck with me, like, really? I think I could do okay. It was that combined with just a lot of ideation around things I thought might be interesting and Upstart became one of them. It was the idea of providing access to young people so they could do more interesting things, access to capital. In the original version of Upstart, you would actually not get a loan, but you would get something called an income share agreement where you would pay it back as a fraction of your future earnings. And income share agreements, which, about the only thing we really contributed to that in the long run is the name because we actually created that name way back in 2012. But in any case, that was the notion. And my co-founder had built a model to effectively predict what somebody would earn over their lifetime based on a whole bunch of factors. And that became the foundation of Upstart. So that was pre-pivot.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “The end of my time at Google, I had been there about eight years and I started what became Google Cloud. And I just kind of got this thing where I had built something fairly interesting. It was still a very small part of Google, but it was interesting and compelling. And at some point you start to question like, maybe anybody could have showed up at Google and built this. The company had so much mojo in those days that you sort of question whether it was you or whether it was just Google. And so I had a little bit of that. I want to prove I can do something beyond Google. I actually had somebody who worked for me who mistakenly copied me on an email to somebody outside the company. And it was one of those moments. And the email said he's done pretty well here at Google, but I don't think he'd survive on the outside.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Will just generally say we've been successful at Upstart, if anything, not because we had the right game plan and not because we always made the right decisions, but ultimately because we had the right people around the table that helped us get eventually to the right answer. And I think your hiring practices, your people development practices, your mission, all that contribute to who you can bring in the company and keeping them in the company. And that is really central to success.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “There's a lot to it. I would just say, in many ways, we've exported a lot of what I, or we as a whole bunch of X Google people at Upstart have learned there and kind of like adjusted it to our world. And Google didn't do everything right. So there was a lot of where picking and choosing of what we like. But if there's any singular lesson, I think it came down to having the quality of people around you is the whole game. When I started at Upstart, beginning of 2004, it was before they were public. I walked in and just sat down and I was like, wow, these people work at Google. This is so cool. And it was before 50,000 people worked at Google. And when I would be in rooms and hearing the discussions and trying to contribute, I was just like, this is a smart group. The brain density in this company was intense. It just struck me always that it's the thing you hear elsewhere, you know, one exceptional software engineer really can be worth 10x what an average software engineer is. And you can take this to an extreme where it is dysfunctional.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, I mean, the art of persuasion really can be challenging. This is part of what you're doing is negotiating. Part of it is just asking. It could be a vendor. It could be you're just trying to move the will of somebody else towards something you need. And I just find often you appeal to them as the rational logical person that you are, where they just can't do anything but agree with you. I mean, it sounds funny to say that. If they understand where you're coming from, what you need to do, and why If they were you, they would be asking for the exact same thing you are. Do this place where they almost can't deny that you are a rational, reasonable, and pretty darn nice person and they want to be helpful to you. And I think that's often that's a little bit opposite maybe the classic Steve Jobs where he just berates vendors or things. He's like, no, we need this ship this week. But I think there's only so much you can get away with and Apple can get away or Steve Jobs could get away with things that others probably can't. But I think there are ways to sort of move.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Often there's hidden assumptions in that two months, there's something going on there that they assumed this can't happen until that is done. This project can't start until that is done. Larry or whomever might want to challenge that assumption. Why can't we do these things in parallel? I don't actually think we need to wait. And that simple thing of why are we waiting for X to start Y? I feel like it is just a repeated record in my history. I've heard it and said it a thousand times where people think serial when they need to at least try to think parallel.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Do this sooner. When I was at Google, Larry Page was just adamant about this. Every time somebody would say, we've come up with an incredibly aggressive plan. We thought this would take six months, but we think we can get this done in two months. And Larry would say, well, why can't you get it done in a week? Matter what you brought to him, he could one up you and just challenge you. And there's an art to it. You don't want to just be a pain in the butt and just pushing on things when people are already working hard. But there is in art to it.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Execution often starts with meetings and discussions as well, as much as we all hate the concept of meetings and people love to bash meetings. It frankly is how a lot of things get done. In meetings, you have to organize a plan and execute a plan. And oftentimes there's not enough consideration to time. How many times I've sat in meetings where somebody would say, okay, here's the next two things or three things we're going to do. Thanks. Let's go. And no one ever said, when are we going to be done with those? How fast can we get that done so we can move on to the next thing? And having a habit of asking, when will this be done? Why can't it be done sooner? And not of everything. I think one of the important things you really have to know is what is on the critical path here? There's no sense us all worrying about something that, frankly, doesn't need to be done for two or three weeks or two months. You have to really just understand the nature of the project where the critical path is and just almost always challenge the when. Challenge whether we can't.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “As a CEO of a company, your goal is not to make more decisions than you need to. You want to build a company capable of operating where important things are done far below you in the org. And so that's the first thing is like if I'm involved in every decision the company's making that's a bad sign. I should be breaking ties or helping to work some of the most important decisions that I have a unique perspective on. So that's the first thing. And then beyond that, it really comes down to like, we're all making decisions all day long. We just have to discern which ones are worth two minutes and which ones are worth two days and who should have input. And the trick as a leader, I think generally is to give people a voice, but don't try to create consensus because consensus is almost impossible if the decisions are even worth thinking about.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Involved in it, which sounds like an obvious thing, but most people don't really think that way. And if you do that up front, you'll find you may not always make the right decision, but you'll make an expedient decision, and that's almost always better.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Sort of get others, other companies, other people on board with those decisions. And if you could do all three of those things faster habitually, you're going to just have more trips to the plate, more swings, whatever you want to describe it as. And that was the idea down to like how a company makes decisions. Some of the ideas in there have come out a little differently in terms of like one-way doors, two-way doors, the Bezos concept of decisions and whether they're revocable. I was just really into the effort of how you make decisions and which ones should take a long time or short time and just how you get things done. My belief was, particularly for founders, but really for any type of executive, is you can begin to reinforce behaviors that will make your company move more quickly. And that was the heart of it. It was really thinking about maybe one of the most foundational ideas is the most important thing about a decision is to decide up front how long you're going to take to make that decision and who needs to.”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, thanks, Patrick. So I only occasionally contribute something to the, I don't know, the blogosphere, whatever you call it. Sometimes I just keep thinking about something until at some point I feel like I have something useful to contribute. So several years back, I really started thinking about how some companies just move much more quickly than others. And I sort of kept thinking about why that is and how that is and what the implications of that were. I had been at Google for a lot of years and I thought at Google at least at the time is a company that even at significant scale was able to move quickly. So speed is a habit really came down to trying to break down what is it about how some companies do things that create speed and can you habitually do that? And that's where the title comes from. But basically it came down to the idea that most of what we do in business is number one making decisions and number two acting on those decisions. And then really as a sort of third thing, a lot of times you have to”

    2021-09-30 · Invest Like the Best · Dave Girouard - Making Better Loans - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 52] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source