YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen Hawthornthwaite

lines on the record: 38
first: 2022-12-20
most recent: 2022-12-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And Sierra Black. Become a member of Masters of Scale to get access to a year's worth of courses and content on the Masters of Scale Courses app. Find out more at masterscale.com slash membership.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm Reid Hoffman, thanks for listening Master the scale is a weight what original. Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Triff, and Jordan McLeod, our head of content and production is Lori Hoffman. Our producers are Adam Skeuse, Catherine Clark Bray, Alex Morris, Tucker Lugurski, and Chris Gautier. Our editor at large is Bob Saffian. Our music director is Ryan Holliday, original music and sound design by Eduardo Rivera. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson, Stephen Davies, Andrew Nolt, and Brad Worrell, mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli. Special thanks to Chris Yea, Elisa Schreiber, Paria Finger, Saeeda Sapieva, Greg Beato, Adam Heiner, Alfonso Bravo, Colin Howorth, Willem Krolls, Tim Cronin, Kelsey Capitano, Samuel Puta, Anna Pizzano, Sarah Tarder, Leah Sermetis, Charlie Manessus, Chine Azequena. Emily McManus, Halle Bondi.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finding your perfect co founder is rare, but your co founder and your next team members can come from anywhere if you share values, trust each other, and bring equal commitment to the mission. Accomplish that and the co founder effect is that one plus one is significantly greater than two.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both reference to cooking makes perfect sense, and it leads us to the unspoken question beneath the subject of co founding and adding more voices as you scale. Everyone is familiar with the saying Too many cooks in the kitchen. How do you ensure that you have the right number of cooks for your business? It comes back to our magic word if your cooks aren't well coordinated or if they're confused on who's making the final call, then even two cooks is too many. And you have to fix your processes before adding more. But if your chefs do play well together, trust each other and value each other's expertise, then your number of co founders and refounders can and should. We took this question of cooks Terini Joroski and Matt Kent, the artistic directors of Palobilis from earlier in the show.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In recent years, because of feedback from customers, Rothis has been able to launch new product lines like handbags, wallets, and men's shoes. And because of the customer love they've received over their commitment to sustainability, they can keep driving in that direction. In fact, they have very specific plans to make their company even more sustainable, which is one of the goals that Roth and Stephen bonded over when they first started.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Roth and Stephen take these messages from customers seriously because in a way your customers have a co-founding role as well. They can be your ambassadors, your quality control, and your source for new ideas.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember, co-founders are more than just the person you started the company with. That goes for anyone creating and owning the processes that become more integral to the business. Consider it another kind of additive manufacturing, where instead of adding plastic yarn in geometric shapes, you're adding people and their ideas. As Rothi scaled, their manufacturing got more and more reliable, and their airtight product market fit has led them to steady growth ever since.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our fact checker asked us to mention that dogs lack the opposable thumbs and fine motor skills for machine work. But you get his point. Opening their own factory let Rothys close a loop that had been stubbornly open for five years.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A few good people, leading to a few more good people, sounds like a simple formula, but in fact, this is the way team building works. The co-founder effect provides a model all teams can use as they scale, where each new member has room to add their voice to the mix. And if everyone's playing well together, more voices are better than fewer.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As Stephen dug into every customer question, Roth worked to fulfill the dream of opening Rothy's own vertically integrated factory.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Notice how Roth and Stephen each claim their own area of expertise, even if it didn't start out as something they were expert in. Nothing about Stephen's previous experience said he would be a fit to handle thousands of customer service emails. And as we've discussed, Roth's experience with the manufacturers in China was learned entirely on the fly. Each co founder had to trust that the other would learn to master their new skill set. That trust is what growing teams learn to rely on.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For nearly five years Roth and Stephen had been operating, more or less, on their own clock, dictated only by their resources and personal capital. That's actually rare. More often, new business ventures find themselves racing multiple competitors to scale. As much as Stephen and Roth had been frustrated by the lack of imagination and footwear, it was this very lack that gave them time to innovate and build their product. But the launch drastically accelerated their time frame. If Rothys couldn't deliver an e commerce experience as beautiful as their shoes, their customers would evaporate or drift to a competitor who by now would be on their trail. They had to move fast, so once again the cofounders divided and conquered.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This instant kind of product market fit is not the norm, rather it's a combination of luck, timing, and design. The integrity Roth and Stephen both brought to building their product was reflected in the responses from customers, which is not to say that the existential fires stop burning the day they launched.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stephen mentions this in passing, but their ability to combine two vastly different sets of contacts is no small thing. It's one reason that diversity of experience is a great thing for co-founders to have, because when you combine networks, it's more than additive. It's a force multiplier. Nearly five years after the fateful birthday party that brought Stephen and Roth together, they got their five thousand name mailing lists already and launched their first campaign.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Workers treated Where they weren't paid, had machinery stolen. And so navigating that really started to create the desire to build our own factory and to do things in a way that would ideally influence the state of manufacturing in China. These painful experiences, working with a piecemeal workforce, taught Roth and Stephen a critical lesson. The wrong partners are as detrimental to your growth as the right partners are additive. Building their wholly owned factory in China wasn't feasible, yet, but little by little they did their best to build a team they could rely on.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As both co founders followed these parallel tracks, one fact was becoming clear the US factory may have failed, but the product they'd innovated at that factory really held up. The additive three DNG process using reclaimed plastic yarn went shockingly fast in the hands of Chinese manufacturers. Every day, production was gaining speed. However, there was one thing they'd had at the US factory that was proving harder to replicate in China using contractors, and that was team cohesion. So along the journey had OEMs defraud us.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“China all of a sudden was like, oh my god, I can access materials in a nanosecond. I can access the know-how, the engineering, all these things. To grit determination, and WeChat Roth worked with fabricators in that sweater factory to see how quickly they could produce a rothy shoe. We had no formal agreement, nothing. I gave them our programs. We started to work immediately and made progress, called Stephen, about a week later, I think, and was like, you know what? This is just never going to happen in the U.S. When you're wrong and realize you've been wrong, the right partner gives you double the resilience to keep going and double the manpower to put things back on track. As Roth scaled operations in China, it fell to Stephen to shudder the factory in Maine”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Roth may have been the first to see that their factor in Maine wasn't going to get them to scale, but the learning was a collective one with both of the co founders. So instead of doubling down on an old mistake, they moved forward, a decision that had its own challenges. I flew over to a sweater factory in Fujian, China, and set up with them.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These are our collective hypotheses, our collective theory of the world. And what you're really saying groupthink is the ones that are bad, that might kill you, that you're not seeing because of your point of view. And that means you have to be able to ask each other learning. Like, oh, I talked to this really smart person. Maybe we should take this seriously. I see this happening with our competitor. I see this happening in the market. Maybe we should reevaluate this. We have a group learning that us learning and being right is more important than our collective theory of the case.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they had set wroth to China to see a factory there might be more viable. And a bear saying this moment of reckoning can be a bitter one. You've been hammering away at executing on something that's critical to the mission, but the obstacles and market realities have been hammering back, and at some point it begins the dawn on you that the obstacles might win, and you start to wonder if it happened because you and your colleagues had the same blind spots. Sometimes we refer to this as groupthink, which we are generally told to avoid, but allow me to offer a slight reinterpretation of that word which I shared recently with my producers. Blind spots are just the flip side of strengths and weaknesses. We go well, our blind spot is a predisposition of speed, and sometimes we don't realize that sometimes it needs to be done long. Yep. So it's kind of just a question of shaping the right ones.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're back with Stephen Hawthrunthwaite and Roth Martin of Rothy's. If you're enjoying this episode, share it with your co founders by clicking the share button in your podcast app. And to hear our complete conversation with Roth and Stephen, become a master scale member at MasterScale. com membership. There you'll find stories we didn't have time to cover in this episode, like Roth's early adventures in biotech and the time Stephen spent learning how to make men's suits. And you'll hear how Rothys took their e commerce business IRL at the farmers market in San Francisco's ferry building. You won't want to miss it. When we left off, Roth and Stephen had just made a dramatic decision in the life of Rothy's. For over three years they had worked to develop a washable, versatile women's flat knitted from plastic water bottles and made in America. They had ticked the first two boxes on that list, but the third had proven an unvanquished.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One benefit of co founders is the ability to actually be in two places at once. But which place would hold the future of their company remain to be seen?”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As often happens in the world of atoms, developing the prototype was one hurdle, getting a mass production was a taller one.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Creating their own process for sourcing materials was a major triumph. Maybe they could revitalize an American industry single handedly. But then one year of research and development turned into two and two turned into three.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This development process itself was a feat of engineering and co founding, because some of your most important co founders aren't limited to the people you form the company with. It could be the machine repairer downstairs from you, or the early employee who invents a great cultural practice, or the supplier who fixes a supply chain challenge. In the case of Rothy's, that supply chain piece was one of the most critical puzzles to solve. Earlier, we talked about the additive manufacturing process that enabled Rothies to knit the uppers of their shoes with yarn made of recycled plastic such as the kind you get from single use water bottles. Spinning empty bottles into yarn like an eco friendly rumple sillskin wasn't a broadly available process at the time, so they had to create their own.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and confidence to say this can work. Stephen and Roth badly wanted manufacturing their shoes in the US to work, so they scouted for anyone who might be able to help them. And as it turns out, they did have one surprising predecessor in this space”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Roth and Stephen had wanted to onshore jobs to the United States. They were also skeptical that they'd be able to convince factories in China to change everything and do things their way. So they started testing and probing the problem. This is a powerful advantage of the co-founder effect. When you conceive of a radically new approach to an old way of doing things, it could mean you're delusional, or it could mean you're about to become a major disruptor. And often what separates one from the other is the ability to problem solve and the conviction to keep going. It's hard enough to tell an entire industry, hey, you're doing things wrong, but it's much harder when you're the only one saying it. And that's true whether you're founding something new or are in an established business trying to make a change. Having even one other co conspirator to poke holes in the status quo gives you the resilience.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Figuring out low waste manufacturing was one kind of disruption they wanted to take on. The other wasn't about what to make, but where”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Roth and Stephen's answer to a more sustainable manufacturing process was to deploy the same process that makes sweaters and mittens for making shoes. Knitting the uppers to their shoes would make them much more sustainable in two ways. First, as Stephen just told us, it meant that they could produce just the material they needed at the moment they needed it. And second, it would allow them to make their own yarn from reclaimed ocean plastic using computer aided design software in a process called additive manufacturing. It's sort of like 3D printing. In fact, it is 3D knitting. Note, their vision came long before they'd worked out the details, but if they could pull it off, the environmental implications would be huge”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cutting a circle out of a square means you're shedding all those corners and throwing them on the scrap heap. It's simple geometry with profound consequences for the planet. But that wasn't the only wasteful process Roth and Stephen noticed.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Co founders and teammates can learn the rules quickly. This is how Stephen and Roth found themselves in southern China, crisscrossing the landscape to learn about their newly adopted industry shoe manufacturing.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keep that four-year timeline in mind that will become relevant a little later. It's worth noting that Stephen and Roth were entering an industry in which they had zero experience. This isn't a small challenge. If you're building a software product, having a technical co-founder is almost always a stronger position than if you have to hire out all the coding. And in fact, some VCs will insist that you add a technical co-founder before they invest. But again, let's deploy the word if the entrepreneurship journey is one of constant learning, and presumably something you're doing has never been done before, or else there's no room for upside in your business. This is where newcomers can bring a unique outsider perspective that can disrupt old calcified ways of doing things. Entering an unfamiliar sector doesn't have to be fatal to a startup or an established business if you and your co-”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For Roth and Stephen, the appeal of this white space was electrifying. A well designed shoe that behaved like a sneaker and tapped in the Lulu Lemification of women's wardrobes. This was a product that might sell itself once it met the market. Now Roth and Stephen just had to figure out how to make it.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Notice that this light bulb moment might not have occurred to either Roth or Stephen on their own, but together they were able to recognize a pattern. This wasn't just something their own wives were struggling with. It was a common problem with a large, total addressable market. This is one of the co founder effects most powerful functions, making it easier to spot major trends. Each person added to the team acts as a prism to reflect back and clarify the observations of the others.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stephen and Roth started to think about the patterns they'd been observing in their daily lives. Was there a product not yet invented that might actually sell itself? That's when their attention drifted to something they both saw, their spouses, their”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two guys who are founder is one has in-depth technology M&A experience, the other one has been running an amazing gallery. What product do you think you create? Women's shoes wouldn't be top of mind. Really”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As they talked, Roth and Stephen each saw something valuable in the other. Individually each had been feeling the need for a career shift, but together party talk started morphing into something more serious. The two decided to go into business together. What that business would entail? That would come second. And here's where we'll want to deploy the magic word if because this is not a template that works for everyone, many co-founder relationships start with a product idea first, a better mousetrap, or the next killer app. Others, like Roth and Stephen, form the relationship first and then start talking product. Both are valid, but only one might be right for you. One of the first decisions where Often Stephen had to make was whether to go into software or physical goods, or, as I often describe it, the world of bits or atoms. If you said, hey, there's these”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Professionally they couldn't have been more different. Stephen had spent years in investment banking, advising on mergers and acquisitions at Berkeley's and other firms. Roth, meanwhile, was in art and antiques running the hedge gallery in San Francisco's financial district. But there was one thing they realized they had in common. They were both looking for a change.”
2022-12-20 · Masters of Scale · The co-founder effect, w/Rothy's Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT