YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Russakow

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20
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2019-04-05
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2019-04-05
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1
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  1. “Of that space, and we would really love to be the Hallmark brand and benchmark for that range of class of vehicles the way we are on skateboard today.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think five years from now, my hope is that we are in the midst of a second mogul revolution where the first mobile revolution was more around anywhere, anytime computing with the phone. And the second is really around anywhere, anytime commuting with light vehicles. We've pretty much reached a point where an automotive-based society is breaking down the idea of people going around in 3,500 pound cars or 15 feet long being stuck in traffic. It's now become probably one of the biggest inefficiencies in our lives. is a fundamental revolution and the point is on mobile revolution and so i'd love it if five years from now a significant portion of the population was going around on all manner of light vehicles you know skateboards scooters bikes wheelchairs walkers whatever they want to come up with and then for boosted we really see ourselves as you know like the apple or the pellet”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Here in Silicon Valley, or whether we've overly honed too much of our efforts around one or two business models and one or two themes, and we're investing in 50 of the same thing rather than in 10 companies in five different sectors instead. And I think that we're starting to see the rise of other innovation centers around the world who have greater appetite to take on some of these other areas that we have acquiesced.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I think for me, what I come back to is a little bit I was talking about earlier. I would love it if we could get back to a day where we did more proprietary work where investors really did have provocatively different views and there was more of an opportunity for debate. I think we've become very consensus driven around certain business models, around certain themes. And so there's a greater risk of the group overall, the conventional wisdom just missing things completely. I think a second thing that really concerns me is once again, and I have this lens from Boosted where I am now, we've pretty much conceded almost as a community the consumer product or the hardware world to other countries. We've conceded a lot of fundamental technology research that used to be our hallmark to other countries. And we've really given a lot of ground to others to potentially eat frog us on those technologies. I think we need to come back and think about whether we have enough, I won't call biodiversity, but innovator diversity.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Be humble and listen and don't assume that whatever worked for you in the past had a different company necessarily applies at the next company you go to, come back to fundamental principles of problem solving every business or role you come into. What also quote you frequently revert back to, Jeff? As I did a few moments ago, it's still the human race. No matter how fast a technology may evolve, the human race is still evolving at a far slower pace. What moment in your life has served as an inflection point and maybe changed the way you think? I think for me, I definitely had an inflection point about halfway through my career to date. Early in my career, I was definitely the classic. I'll call it brain on a stick. You know, go get the go to the best school, go get a PhD, join the biggest brands. And there's a right answer.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Per one, are you ready? In the spirit of rapid fire, let's do it. Okay, well, let's start with your favorite book and why. The missing piece, and I can't tell you why it's just the one that's coming to my mind by Soberstein. Love it. The missing piece is added to the book list. What advice would you give to someone entering a leadership position?”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Played out in this case for many, many years. And therefore, how much disruption is an appropriate amount of disruption and how much is too much willing suspension of disbelief? So that's an example just I mentioned. It's around my company right now, but it's also just one of the top trending areas in the media now. But I think six months after a euphoria, people start to come back to, well, how did this play out in the past? And they go, oh, I guess there's some fundamental truths that are still true. The technology may evolve, but the human race is not evolving as quickly and they may still handle things the same way. Listen, I totally agree with you, and I love that kind of look back and determine how we can perform better in the future and analyze the future more accurately. I would, though, Jeff, love to move into my favorite element being the quick fire round. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And you realize that when humans travel, there's ad hoc travel where rideshare works really well, and then there's routine travel like commute or running errands, which is like 99% of travel where people prefer to own the vehicle. And so as you look at the history of vehicles probably from Ben Hur and the chariot forward, you realize that that fundamental nature of commute means most people will own most vehicles. And then rideshare is an amazing opportunity for ad hoc travel, whether it be taxi or rideshare or scooter share or bike share. And even this past year, you can look at business cases around bike share in China, OFO and Mo bike going bankrupt or needing to get bailed out. So what's I think a challenge for us in the startup community is a lot of times we tend to look past or disregard business examples as recently as last year in an adjacent country or to just go do the market research and say”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I will give an example from the industry of men just because it's been so timely is in Boosted, we're involved with making vehicles and thinking about transportation and how people get around. And so it's very easy to see in the press the last six months there can be almost a euphoria around the idea that all vehicles will only be shared vehicles and no one would ever own a vehicle again. And it's very easy to get caught up in that disruptive whirlwind. But then if you look back at history and you realize, for example, 99% of cars are owned and all the car shares and taxi and rental cars on the planet are less than 1% of all cars or 99% of bicycles are owned and all bike share is less than 1% of all bikes. And even with electric scooters, which are all the rage now, it's already a $15 billion industry. And if you add up all the scooter share vehicles, it's still a small percent.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And where they can be helped, and they're going to be good partners and be coachable on the things that they don't know. And so you're really looking for that signal that the founder stuck up a hand versus its investor initiated because there's usually something else that's going to make change management hard behind that if that's what's been happening. I absolutely love that description of reality versus illusion. And that's a fascinating one. Final question for the quickfire, and it's you mentioned the experience there, and we're actually both lovers of history, I think. Because when we chatted before, you said past is prologue. Talk to me about this and how you maybe think of using history as almost a leading indicator for future events. Yeah, I think it's interesting. One of the challenges that we all have in the startup world, both as investors and operators, is how do you strike the right balance of being a disruptor and challenging how things have been done and how people think with not losing sight of basic economic principles or realities of human nature that are probably not going to change?”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “May not be fully supportive. The founders and the management team by that point be somewhat fatigued and the relationship between them and investors may be somewhat toxic. That's more typically the case than not. And you've seen the movie enough times, it gets easier to see. And so I think where it works well and what you tend to look for is the things about the company that you want to be great are great. So in the case of Boosted, for example, amazing product and technology, great service, great brand. And then the things that are not where they need to be yet around general management or scalability or economics or supply chain are things that you know are very operational and either fixable or scalable and that you can add value to. And in this case, also the founders were the ones that stuck up a hand and said, we really would like to get some additional experience around the management team to work with us as brothers and sisters and work together. And so you know that they've got a self revelation about what they do at value around.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Think people may And trying to instill What are the root causes? Yeah, so I'll answer that with a small side. When you're looking for as a CEO or potential CEO to come into a growth company, 19 out of 20 times the story is something like the following. The company is growing like crazy and has this revenue. It's near profitability. The investors are excited and there's plenty of money around the table. The founders are excited to bring in some additional help. There's plenty of energy to go the next mile with the company. And what quite often is the case is don't divide the revenue by two, divide it by four just because the investors are optimistic and almost giving you next year's projection, which means that it's not near profitable. It's still potentially losing a lot of money. The relationship between the founders and the investors may be strained and the investors are looking to bring in a professional CEO to help.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “But not the founder. So I'm suddenly intrigued by. And so, with that in mind, what are the core elements Think For a successful CEO Yeah, I think the first thing to look for, particularly coming in as a CEO into a startup or growth company, is are the founders genuinely asking for the help and the partnership and the change has been initiated by them? Usually that is a very healthy sign that you can add a lot of value and that it's going to be a really positive integration. Okay, totally agree.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And the entrepreneurial gene may also have been there all along. The funny thing is, you look back at age 50 and you realize that”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, and it is advice that I look forward to giving to my children one day when they're ready. The first thing I'm going to say, which is not going to sound fully satisfying, is there's no right answer without looking at who you are and where you are. For a lot of people in their 20s, if you have that entrepreneurial drive where you really just need to go do it, that's going to end up being the path that may make the most sense for you. I do actually think, and this is a bit countercultural sometimes to Silicon Valley, I think for a lot of people to go spend the 20s and the 30s in larger environments and being able to have the chance to get that education across different functions of a company, different business models, different types of product, how to be an executive in a company and get things done. Those are incredible skills to learn. And I do think people that have come through that environment and then come back to entrepreneurship do bring a tremendous amount of value to growth companies.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Helps to have just seen the movie multiple times before. And so the larger companies are an amazing development ground because within each company, you've got dozens of products, dozens of geographies, different business models, and you just get exposed to a lot in those environments.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You learn a lot. I think entrepreneurship but also leadership that there are a lot of learned and apprenticed elements to that in that experience. And so I think once a company hits some kind of initial product market fit experience and the general management skills really start to kick in and become critical to scaling. So things like business problem solving, strategy, building an organization, developing people, being able to think about multiple products, multiple geographies, multiple business models. It really does pay to have been in growth and scale many times before. And having seen the movie multiple times from different angles, different industries, different types of companies, different cultures, and to have the ability to know what things should look like at scale and to have an urgency to get there. And so coming into a company like this one boosted, we've grown from two countries to 34 expanded from one channel to multiple and expanded from one business model to multiple.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Long lost brothers, where I was a brother that had gone off to 25 years of business experience, and they were the brothers that had stayed more techie and entrepreneurial. So for me, it's actually not been a left hook. It's actually been a return home, and it's the most fun I've ever had.”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Boosted. I get that question a lot. I have to admit after doing almost 25 years of internet and digital media and enterprise software, one has to ask what kind of midlife crisis I was having to take a left hook into the world's leading electric skateboard provider. For me, it was actually a return home. I started out as a PhD in robotics and autonomous systems 25 years ago and had really just left the space. I famously told my buddies until batteries and other technologies get better. I'll see in about 20 to 25 years. And it's been almost 25 years. So I was introduced to Coast Adventures, a Samir Call there. He really wanted to do something with me on one of their portfolio companies. And then when I met the folks at Boosted, it was like coming home. So the founders that boosted came from the exact same PhD program at Stanford that I did, same classes, and to this day, some of the same professors. So when we met, it was almost like meeting a lot of”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, so thanks for asking. I'm definitely a CEO that came into startups really mid career. I spent the first 15 to 20 years of my career in the Fortune 500, SIP, Adobe, Symantec, Yahoo, and only really about eight, nine years ago started getting in the growth. I had always done very entrepreneurial things within larger companies and had that gene and was always itching to try things that were more around growth and scale. So after my fourth big company, I was finally able to look at my wife and say, okay, house is paid for, college is set aside for the kids one day. I really need to be doing something else for my growth. And she was very supportive. That conversation with”

    2019-04-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source