Hi, everyone. My name is Patrick Aquille and
joining me today is Vidam Sprout.
He's founder and engineer over at Rise and he's a serial
startup founder actually and has a unique experience working at
Uber in their scale up phase. We compare what it's like
working at startups versus big tech and much, much more.
So enjoy. I've been in smaller
organizations, never really startup vibe.
I would say maybe startup kind of spin offs from bigger
organizations, but you have different funding structures in
that way. Yeah.
But the biggest organization I am in and I have been is ING.
So huge bank. Yeah.
And then I work with people that say I don't want to do this.
I only do this specifically. Specifically this.
Yeah. And I find it very strange
because I'm like, but we have these types of problems and I
know you can solve them. Might not be something you're
good at, but I would expect someone to like pick it up and
you're like no I only want to do this.
And I'm like oh wow, yeah that means we need a lot of people
because if everyone only wants to do 1 specific thing, it's
going to be hard to do everything.
Yeah, no, definitely. And I think, I think you need a
balance. And also in bigger companies, I
think you need a balance. There's obviously people who
have a bit more, I would say are a bit more on the surface,
right, in terms of knowledge, but actually know a lot of
things about a lot of topics. Yeah.
I think, to be honest, when I was a Uber, I was I think that
type of person a bit more than having that very specific
knowledge. But I did have people in in my
team and that I saw at Uber who really said like, Hey, I only
want to work on networking, right?
Like something extremely specific, like I'm my full
passion is about networking. And they actually that was also
that's also cool about bigger companies.
They got transferred. They could be transferred to a
specific networking team. So this team was only doing
that, which is amazing to see. I even saw people that that
really struggled in, in like we ran a product team, which is
really building the the user facing the app basically and
everything that interacts with the user.
And some, some some team members were really struggling there
while they were really excelling at another place in the company
when they really found their passion and they got transferred
to that. Yeah.
So I think that could, that could definitely really work.
It's definitely a big advent of a big company.
Interesting. I wonder like in the phases of
my career, I know people that start off and they go to bigger
companies because they think career progression, I'm going to
stay there for a while. They hit for the biggest ones,
Microsoft, Google, like that's for the top of the top.
I would say Uber I think is among there as well nowadays.
For me, I started out and I wanted many responsibilities,
mainly because I didn't know what I wanted to do exactly long
term. And I still don't think I know
exactly what I want to do long term.
So I try and be in an environment where I have
autonomy and where I can try out a lot of different things, but I
don't know what is better at the end.
If someone starts out or even has already a few years under
their belt, what would you advise?
Would it be more start up or or big tech or does it depend?
Yeah. It depends.
It depends also where your depends where you where your
passion is. If you say like you already have
a few years of experience, it might also depend.
Actually regarding me wrote an article about this one as well.
There's also like maybe some financial conservation stuff
that really people no one talks about.
But I can imagine if you start out in your career, like it's
not everybody's like, oh, I'm I'm the founder type.
Let me start a company. I think especially I would say
later in life, I would always say getting older, right?
I would say that that becomes more important.
It becomes harder to just say like, I'm quitting my job and
I'm doing this super risky startup thing.
So it, it could be a strategy to say like I start my career, I
started, I don't know, like Microsoft or one of the other
big tech and then actually make some money.
I build up a buffer to be a very conscious choice.
You, you get to see a lot of different topics.
You, you can find what you actually like.
And then later on you can say like, oh, let me actually try a
start up. And that could either be like
joining a start up, which in general I think is also
financially, I think I would say more risky.
I'd say, I would say not less attractive.
It depends a bit on like how, how much risk do you want to
take, right? So if you're a founder, you're
taking, I think a huge risk. If you're, if you're like maybe
an early employee, you got sometimes like for example,
lower salary and more, more equity, which could turn out
like way better than you would like get like at, at, at big
tech, for example, right. So I think that is also it's the
stuff that nobody really talks about.
Like I think that's also the sort of financial consideration
that you could have. Yeah.
And then there then there's also like what, what are you?
I think what I what I heard a lot also about people that
worked in big tech that move to startups.
They basically don't like this very specialized being a very
small player in this very big thing, right?
They say, like, I want to have real impact.
I want to join a really small company and I can actually
contribute to the strategy. For example of the company, like
I really like working at Uber, but I, I don't like I was layers
away from the strategy. Strategy decisions, right?
Like should we actually build like go into a new vertical or
like these really high level decisions?
I think if you're really early at A at a start up, you can
actually influence that. Make that impact.
Yeah, yeah, make that impact. Yeah, very.
Interesting. I want to go into more of the
risk side and as well as how you can mitigate that.
But before I do, I want to touch on learning because for me,
starting out really wide and having to have the autonomy to
do many things, I felt like really accelerated kind of my
learning at my own pace. And what I've seen, and
especially in ING, some people have been there out of
university now for 10, even 15 years, same organization.
And then I'm like, man, you are really, let's say, confound to
this environment and this rigid structure.
So I don't know how well you would do if you go outside.
But then again, if you're there 10-15 years, I don't expect
those people to go outside in the 1st place.
Yeah. So then I'm like, OK, do they
really learn in the same way at a big tech company?
Because it's different learnings?
I feel like they might be really good at bigger organizations
then. Yeah, definitely.
I think there's also these bigger companies probably also
have different techniques of like educate people.
I guess I think it's, it's more about you can actually, I mean,
I know, maybe go to conferences more like taking actual courses
like things that that I think people in start-ups typically
don't do It's. Not worth it.
It's not worth it or there's no room to do that right.
But that that's I think the way to educate like a a bigger
organization. I can definitely imagine that
somebody is who's really strong in a company like ING and has
been there for 15 years. If that person will go to a
start up that they would kind of drown, right?
Like in some situations, it depends a lot on on who it is
obviously. But drown in terms of like you
have to do so many things you never did.
And I think that's what you really learn at the start up,
like about new topics is basically either the founders
or, or you are a founder. And like, for example, now with
the sort of like hill big like AI movement, I think you, I
think everybody got sort of like forced to learn that.
Well, if you maybe had a bigger company, you, you would probably
like take courses and you would maybe do some figuring out
yourself while at startups. Some startups are just like, OK,
we're taking a big leap into AI and tomorrow we're going to all
work on this, right? And, and, and So what you, what
you, you kind of see at the start up there is that
everybody's like, OK, what's going on?
Can I watch YouTube videos about this, right?
Can I, can I just like spin up my own models?
Can I just try just figuring things out?
I think that's a bit more in the sort of like DNA of, of
start-ups, right? So in terms of learning at a
start up, I think it's a a lot about, OK, this is your big
task, this is the direction we're going in, just go and
figure it out. And I think at bigger companies
that's generally a bit more, I would say like structure and I
guess maybe also a bit slower, right.
So they, they probably adopt a little bit slower.
So, yeah, I I think that's, that's definitely a big
difference, yeah. Very interesting.
I wonder because I feel like in tech, picking up a new
technology and like jumping into the unknown, that's something
that you have to do kind of in, in tech in general, even as
software engineer, not even a new language, but definitely a
new technology like we have now with AI specifically, it's like,
OK, company thinks or sees success in this, but we don't
know. There's no blazon path that we
can follow. So it's like, yeah, make it your
own and figure it out. Yeah.
Maybe that's why there's a lot of people from that part kind of
going more towards startup vibes, because then you also get
a bigger incentive to do that because it's it's kind of what
you want and what you're there for.
Yeah. And it's more of a make or break
rather than kind of in the confounds of an organization.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think if you about that learning topic, I think there is
still tech is still pretty much on its own that even at bigger
tech companies, it like you have to innovate of it, you have to
constantly improve. You have to like there's a lot
of competition. I'm not saying that in other
industries there's no competition, but I think I think
that things move a lot slower, right?
So you you people don't learn that.
I think there's the industries who are not impacted by a all AI
at all right now. And I think it will impact like
all the industries, but it will take a lot longer.
So people that are there, there's no, not even real
incentive to Start learning about this, right, until maybe
gets to these industries. So I think tech is still, Yeah,
it's that that's kind of the nature of tech, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Talking about risk then circling back when it comes to me as a
person in a job at a corporate company or could be smaller or
bigger company, I've always dreamt about like starting a
startup. Yeah.
But initially I thought up people just quit their job and
then do that full time. Would you advise that?
Or do you like the more gradual approach?
Or how was it with your own path?
You mean like they just like sort of part time starter?
Yeah, I see. I see some people go back to
let's say 32 hours, they have one day where they do other
freelance work or they start building something their own.
They wouldn't really create this idea that they have or people
that say I just cut off and I do that now full time and then see
in a few months if I make it or not.
Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think my opinion, this is purely from my
experience. Yeah, I've, I've like for me
that what would have never worked, I would, I would, I
never did it like doing part time and then doing part time a
startup. Yeah, maybe at somewhere like in
between startups. I was doing some freelance work,
I think. Yeah.
And then I was already starting something new.
But it was always with the goal of going in full time.
I think obviously there are people who can manage this,
right, that have like a sort of side gig, they make good money
already and then sort of like transition into it.
But I don't know, like in reality, I think what works much
better is just picking a date, right?
And be like, OK, I'm going all in.
And I think it's also because, and if you do that, like I think
it's a lot about focus, right? Like if you're still at a
company where you like say work 32 hours or 24 hours and like
like 2 days working on your startup, then it's probably a
lot of contact switching. You still want to deliver on
that on your regular job, but then you're in your hatch,
you're probably in the evenings or in the other days you're
working on the startup. And I, I think for me at least,
it works a lot better to just be like, OK, let's focus completely
on this. This is the only thing I do
like. And, and this is maybe personal,
right? But I think I also don't like
side projects because of this, but that's very personal.
I know that there are people doing start-ups that are doing
great side projects, right? And they actually use that to
learn and like, I don't know, to network with other people and
whatever you do with side projects and maybe make some
money on the side, right? Like these kind of things, but
personally, I really like be like, OK, this is what I build.
This is what I do full time and I basically don't don't do
anything else. It's also because I feel that
with a start up that that is the commitment it it requires,
right, to be like, OK, depends a lot on what you do and in what
space you are. For example, Ryze, taking that
as a very recent example, I think that we we didn't really
know that before going into the space, but the productivity
space is extremely competitive, right?
People constantly trying out stuff like it's really hard to
sign teams to get get on board, right.
There's there's, there's, there's big players there with
large marketing budget. So, so I think that needs full
focus of like, OK, what am I doing differently?
And, and, and it just needs all of your time.
But that that's yeah, that's my take on it.
But there's definitely people who can do this successfully,
yeah. I mean, there's been research,
especially within software engineering that say that, OK,
if you contact switch a lot, there is time wasted there,
right? The more things you have in
parallel, the slower everything gets.
That's also what we do now. I switched to products at the
start of this year and very adamantly they, I say we work on
one thing at a time. That's it.
We don't do things in parallel. Yeah.
And then I get stakeholders to say, but the road map and we can
do things in parallel. I'm like, we can, but everything
will go slower. Yeah.
So very adamantly, I'm like, one thing at a time.
This is full focus. Yeah.
And then all of a sudden they get it faster and they're
happier. But it took a lot of convincing
in that way. Yeah.
So I do like that approach, especially with the time and
energy that a startup needs as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely Adam.
Maybe it's also a good example like we talked about Gerge when,
when he was a manager at Uber. We, we, we worked on this
product team and we were also working on, we always did
working as a team of like a cross functional team of I think
8 people, like 8 to 10 people. And we were always working on
different projects. And I think Gerge was always
really strong and it really opinionated about, OK, let's
only do like X projects, like 3-4 projects with that team.
And if it gets more than you also see that everything goes
slower because people have to contact switch to running like I
was at some point, like running like, you know, 10 projects at
the same time, right? And I have to contact switch.
And it's kind of my nature is kind of what I like as well more
from the start up side. But I think a lot for a lot of
people that's harder and it gets a lot slower.
You have. To.
Navigate through different code bases for designers.
You have to complete the think about a different business unit
you're designing for. So everything, right.
So, so I think he like Gurgaon was always, always really strong
on OK, also saying to other stakeholders, OK, our team is
full now we're doing these three things until this date, right.
This is the deadline and then we have room again.
And so kind of more kind of make that more sequential and than
than doing too much in parallel. I, I think that always worked
really well in terms of productivity of a team.
Yeah. Yeah, Especially if you're in an
environment where let's say that is the norm, that you have
things going on in parallel, then I can see if you didn't
start doing side projects like there's no headspace for that,
at least that that would be me. Yeah, I'm assuming, Yeah.
But then there is more risk in saying, OK, from this point on,
I'm only going to focus on this startup thing, right?
Yeah, because things can succeed and things can fail as well.
Yeah. Can you touch on how success and
failure has kind of happened in your past with startups?
Yeah. So I, I just for context, I had
two startups, one out of university.
And so I also didn't finish university because of that.
But yeah, a longer story, but that was a, a, a budgeting tool
for consumers, basically what the banks have now.
But and we, we built that and it eventually got acquired.
So I was, I, I would say it was successful.
I think it could have been more, it could have been more
successful, but a lot of things going on, but at least it got
acquired and we stayed at a company for a for a year.
So I think that was really nice. Talking also about like having a
sort of like buffer you built for later.
I think that was, that was good. Then I did the startup which was
more in used to have an iPhone you have to used to have
Passbook. I think it's called OK Apple
Wallet now. And this was back-to-back from
the other one? Yeah, I was almost back-to-back.
So I stayed at that bigger
company and then I, I left because I, I, I couldn't really,
I mean, it's just classical founder thing.
Yeah, we were there. Well, and they, they had
opinions about the product because, well, they bought it
and we, we didn't agree. I really, I, I kind of love the
company, but you see your own baby kind of like that's hard
die and your own focus is also gone.
Let's be honest, like worked on this for a few years.
Then I don't know, it took took some more time for, for
ourselves, I think. And I don't know, it didn't work
out. But anyway, yeah, after that it
was pretty much back-to-back. I think there was a small
project, small freelance project in between.
And then after that I did another, another startup, which
was in the in the Passbook space, which I think I actually
love the product. But I think this was a good
example of like with the first, the first company we had like
immediate traction. Like now when you're looking
about, when you read about something like product market
fit, like that company had from day one, I think we had a good
idea. We had the audience like Twitter
was done back then, like coming up in 2007, eight.
Oh yeah. So people are excited about it.
Like we never did any advertising.
We kept on growing. It's just like, I don't know,
it's all very natural. I think you have to be also a
bit lucky there. We saw that opportunity.
There was nothing there in the Netherlands.
We could connect to banks. There were a few different
reasons I think why we had it positioned really well.
If I look back right, coming out of university, it's like a
product market. It's just like we just going to
build right. And with the second company, I
think that was a really good example of like batting on it
like a technology from Apple and like Apple wallet.
Now I think it's taking off a little bit because of of flight
tickets and and Apple Pay, but it it it back then, it just
didn't take off. So we had this tool where you
could serve up these coupons in your, in your passbook, in your
passbook app and people just didn't get it.
It was just too early. It was hard.
It was also a hard sell. The technology was pretty thin
in what we, what we did. OK, so we actually, well, we
raised money for that and we tried to pivot and eventually
ran out of money and it's tough. That was tough.
I, I remember the last few months were also tough, like
also among founders. I think you, you're like 1 fan
was actually truly trying to do a pivot.
Like my commitment was a bit less because I, I didn't really
believe in that pivot. And I also saw kind of the end
of the runway coming closer. Yeah.
So then eventually that didn't, that didn't work out and then I
moved on to Uber. So, yeah, so that is in terms of
like I think I had there a pretty good example of I would
say success in the first one definitely and I would say
failure in the second one. Yeah.
So that that is, yeah, talk to me both basically.
Talk to me about kind of the emotional investment there
because in the first one, you said, OK, it got acquired.
And then you see people making decisions about this thing you
built up. You even said, my baby, like
this product that you have. Yeah.
And then for the second one, I mean, you had full focus from
the start, right? You believe in something,
otherwise you wouldn't start it or build it.
And then it didn't work out. Like how?
How have you learned to kind of give that a place from an
emotional side? I don't know, I think I think I
just accepted it. I guess like I, I think I I knew
already also from the first time.
I, I think I kind of a long time ago, but I think I kind of
realized that the first time was sort of like success be because
we were at the right team at the right place at the right time,
the magic, the magic. And, and I think for the second
one, I think we had a really strong team.
And I think we also, for example, had a, a really strong
team on the, on the sale side of things.
And I, that's why I was also like, OK, let's, let's, let's
go, let's do this. But I also soon already realized
like, OK, this is tough, right? This is different.
But then we did the first one. I think it was also the first
one focused on consumers. Second one was more focused on
like retailers or like B to B Yeah, I think that's also
different. So yeah, I think I will also say
that, yeah, emotionally it's funny that I look back at it
this way, but I think emotionally the first start up
was was a bit more tough. And that was also because we
were basically coming out of university, right?
And then you you start this company, you also didn't raise
that much money. So we were also bit like lean in
that sense. We work like incredibly hard.
So it was, it was also really stressful.
If you look back, it was it was great.
We want like website of the year and like these kind of things,
but it was also like like really, really hard work.
And so, yeah, and emotionally that was I think more tough even
than the second one. For the second one, we we
already had that seal before and, and we, I know we we worked
on it, but we were also like, OK, yeah, I think emotionally
was a lot less draining. You could argue that's that's
why it didn't became a success, but I'm not sure if that's true.
So yeah. I really like how reflective you
are and how you can look at the both periods kind of
objectively, right? Yeah.
And also, I mean, judge how the factors of success kind of
weighed in there, especially at the start coming out of
university. That is kind of a really cool
time period. I think looking back at my own
career, like, yeah, you come out with a lot of ideas and you just
go basically, you have a lot of energy and you can go.
Also you don't have many responsibilities, so you can
take that risk. Yeah.
And especially if you find success, then the next one is
like, yeah, let's do it again. Yeah.
Is what I feel like. Yeah.
And then it doesn't work out. You can figure and get attached
to something in the idea of it, but I think it's good to be
reflective in an objectively figure out what went right and
what went wrong. Yeah, yeah.
Did you consciously then take a break and go into an
organization or? I didn't really take a break.
I think I even did like a small project in between kept going.
Yeah, I don't know. I just kept, I just, I think I
kept going. Yeah.
I so I, how it, how it kind of went is like we were pretty much
at the end of, of that company of Fosbury that the password
company. And then I actually didn't
really think about like what's next.
And then, and then Uber, I was, I've been following Uber for,
for years, just from the start of world.
And I think it was sort of like, I don't know, pretty important
company, I guess in the, in the, in the, in that decade, I think
it still is, but in terms of growth in that, in that decade.
And so this was around 2000. An hour later, it was 2000, end
of 2014. And then and then Uber actually
opened an engineering office in the Netherlands.
And so Yalo was running at the office, basically initiating the
office. He binged me and I was like,
hey, how are you doing? How's it going at Fosbury?
We're starting to we're like, what?
An engineering office is going to grow really fast.
And for me, it was sort of my first reaction was like, I don't
know, right. Working out of like a it's not
big tech, but at, at like at a bigger company, I would say,
yeah. But then he also invited me,
invited me over at Uber. And that I think that vibe that
that company had in there's not like it's very controversial
company obviously in, in that time as well.
But I think the vibe when you walked into that office, it was
just like, it was just a big start up.
I think just about like 4000 people in the company, but just
the way that the company still functioned was very much a start
up. And so it was, it was that was
for me, I think the main reason I was like, OK, I can work on
things like at scale. I can sort of work on a company
in a in a bit of a later stage than, well, at later stage than
what I've been, but not like a huge big tech company.
It's not super huge there. No, so and and that's when I
started thinking about like home.
This could be interesting. So I actually went just through
the normal application and actually had an amazing time.
I think the first from 2015 started early 2015 until about
2018. I think we're, we're actually
really, really cool. And in terms of we were growing
so fast. Like I sometimes give this
example of I was onboarding somebody and that person had to
onboard somebody else two weeks later.
So it was really like I was going to onboard this person.
I was like, well, I can do it. Like I would like, do you feel
you can do it? And that talking about giving
responsibilities, we had people that joined us junior engineers
and that we're actually onboarding people after two
weeks or we're doing interviews, right.
And they had a bunch of like cultural values to sort of like
keep that growth, like keep everyone running in the same
direction, which is kind of interesting.
Like how do you how do you grow that fast?
But yeah, so I think that's, that's kind of and then after
that also like I left in 2021 and I but I think at some point
it became bigger. We went public in 2019, which
changed a lot. Also on the payment side, like
earlier on, we were much more sort of like free in what we
what we could do. And then and then afterwards,
obviously things change. It's just the nature of a
company that like grows up and gets and gets bigger.
And that was also the reason I started looking around like, OK,
this is I kind of like feel this is too getting too big for me.
Yeah, it's is it bureaucracy? I think it was relative.
There was bureaucracy, bureaucracy, but probably not as
in other big companies. It was still a very fast moving
company, I think like a lot of big tech companies.
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious to hear your
perspective on how good is an idea in essence.
Because Uber started and I think Uber was one of the 1st, at
least the ones that caught my eye.
But then we have Lyft and now we have Bolton.
In Asia. You have different ride sharing
apps like there there are a few that kind of do the same and
they'll have their own market share.
I don't even know sometimes what differentiates them from each
other. So it's the same idea and it's
executed in different ways. I know some friends that really
hone in on a specific idea and they're like, OK, if I don't
have a brilliant idea then I'm not going to start anything
basically. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's an
interesting topic. I I think execution is extremely
important. So if you're talking about Uber,
yeah, there were a few right Chung apps.
I think it got sort of like it kind of started out with GPS on
the iPhone. I think that's where the main
different like suddenly the iPhone you can even realize I
don't think GPS was actually the first iPhone, which is funny,
but like maybe it's not true. I'm saying now, but, but it was
very early and that was also, but I heard that like the, the,
the Uber founders were like exploring because of this.
They were exploring ideas, right?
They thought like, oh, you could actually just push a button and
we could send out like where you are.
And so I think that has sort of initiated sort of a wave of
these ride hailing companies. This is the technology.
I think so, yeah, that that's sort of like big technology
thing. Think maybe something related to
what we're now probably seeing with AI.
There's like it opens up this whole probably can of new ideas
that you can do that you couldn't do before.
And I think that was, well, there's a bunch of examples that
in the past, obviously, but I think in terms of Uber, what I
saw at least, and I think all of these companies were very strong
on execution, right? And, and with Uber, maybe even
more than with, because Uber is in the way of very physical
companies say, right, like with physical locations, like with
actual cars on the road, much more than just a software
project product that everybody can use on the Internet.
It was much more than that. So it had to, you had to go out
to the city, you had to sort of acquire the drivers, you had to
make sure that right. So there was a lot of local work
involved. So there was definitely, I think
Uber had a great tech team, but in the early days we also
sometimes jokes internally like we're not actually a tech
company because the, the, where the real growth came from was
from the operation side, people on the ground like the, all the,
the, the, the, the managers and all the, the, the people that
basically landed in new cities and we're spinning up new like a
like a whole new network there of, of Uber drivers.
So I think in that sense, there were multiple ideas.
I think Uber was very strong on that on the operational side of
things. Interesting.
And still are, I think so, yeah. Yes, because you can enable like
with the technology, but you have to land and expand in
regions. Yeah, yeah.
And that's obviously different with, with different type of, of
companies. But I, yeah, I think that that's
what the founders saw pretty early on that, that that should
be really the focus the, the operational side of things.
Yeah. Interesting.
Let's say I have an idea and I look at the market and I see
people already doing that. Would that then withhold me from
doing that? Or is that like a proven thing
because my idea people are doing it versus the opposite?
If I have an idea, no one's doing it.
Is that a good or a bad? Thing I mean that I think I've
been I've been going from what you say about like oh nobody's
doing it it's an awesome idea and let's not tell anybody and
just do it and then we're the first one stealth mode yeah to a
lot more to like OK if you're in a space where companies are
successful and they're making money then that's sort of like
an immediate validation if you go into that space obviously
that those companies could be much more ahead so it can be can
be really hard to catch up or but I I think there is a sort of
a balance there where you probably want to see like OK
there's a bunch of companies in this space already doing it but
I can have a certain angle that is different than these
companies have but the I would say the the customers are maybe
the same right so you you know there is actually an audience
for your for your product. I think it's, it's, it's
actually a huge red flag if you, if you come up with an idea and
you see nobody doing anything like that in the space, right?
There's just a lot of smart people out there.
And yeah, it's interesting to to to think that you're smarter
than everybody out there, right? People are obviously seeing
opportunities and diving into gaps.
And so, yeah, definitely, yeah, there's definitely for me, I
would lean towards Luke, if there's successful companies,
what are they doing? And there's it's definitely huge
validation if you go into a market where, yeah, where
there's already successful companies.
Interesting. And then if there are
competitors and especially you're now in the productivity
space, if, if things are very competitive, I feel like your
sales and your storytelling becomes a lot more important,
maybe more important than the technology or the software that
you have, right? Yeah, definitely.
I think that's also, it's an interesting topic also in terms
of like the productivity space and Rise.
I think at Rise, we, we are very strong on the product side.
I think we are as a, as a team. And so we, we really try to use
this like product lat growth, right, Lat growth.
So basically saying like, if we built a very best product out
there, people will tell each other.
Yeah, at the same time in the productivity space, I think
that's also really tough, right? There's also a lot of other
products that are really strong. Like you said, there's some
companies with with marketing budgets that are a bit bigger,
right. So, yeah, in terms of that,
we've also come to realize being rise that we need to shift more
towards the seal side of things. And this is now where we're
actually expanding a bit. I think it's, it's kind of like
we, you could have argued like we waited way too long with this
on the other side. I think we also looked for a
direction that worked. We were kind of like going back
to the, the Uber founder once sat in all hands.
Like he said, I I never guess like he can't skill failure.
And I, I really love that quote in terms of, I wouldn't say that
it was failure early in, in Rise, but it was definitely
something that didn't like what didn't give enough value to, to
the customers so that they would pay.
So we were always a little bit holding back in, OK, if, if
nobody's raving out about this, then we're not going to expand
and do sales because then we're, it's going to be really tough.
And then we're maybe also going to, yeah, we're going to sell
something that nobody wants, right.
So I think that's why we waited with that.
And now we're actually expanding much more on that because we see
a lot more traction on the direction we choose, like I
would say since January this year.
So yeah. Interesting.
I had a conversation recently also on this podcast, it must
have been a few weeks back, but I had a friend on Nick and he
does a lot with regards to AI and startups and they're
specifically since he has a lot of experience with that.
I was curious from his perspective on how you delegate
decision making. I had two friends and they were
friends in university, even in high school, and they started a
company and things got like really bad.
Basically, they're not friends anymore.
And it's because of that they had a different opinion on how
things had to go, specifically to a point where they're no
longer friends. And I think it's a huge shame,
but I've seen that happen before.
Like how because you started as a founder in the startup,
specifically, how much decision power did you have?
Or was it like a split thing? Or how do you delegate
decisioning? So, yeah, it's interesting.
Like I think it's the first company we were at 4 founders,
which is quite a lot, so. We have like.
Yeah. And we also had a lot of
meetings like if I look back compared to now, So we we from
red rice, we rent from three to two founders.
It's a related story, but with four founders, we know it's we
even hired Aceo, who was then also sort of a founder, at least
in terms of decision making. He was having a big impact
there. Yeah, for big say in things.
So we were with five with five people and I remember at like
just really random example, but we were at some point having
discussions about the the business cards, right, the font
on the business card. Yeah, the five of us.
My new details. Crazy.
That's crazy. Yeah, it was really crazy.
But that's just an example of. And that was also a point where
I was like, what are we talking about here, right?
So I also intend to say in that case, like for some things I
don't have, I don't have an opinion about this.
Ask me if you want something like technical or maybe on the
product side. But I think that was that should
be if you were a lot of founders should should probably agree
with each other. Like, OK, we trust you on sort
of like the sales and the marketing side and we trust you
on the product side. And so give trust there and,
and, and just, I don't know, I think that's the way to do, to
do decision making that definitely I think things really
get tough when you when you disagree and especially when you
disagree on a, on a strategic direction, right.
The biggest ones? Yeah.
And then it gets, it gets tough because that's that influences
how somebody acts in a company very much, right.
And, and in general, I think one of the So what we had at a
company in the past is that we were at some point having three
different opinions. And we for for a few months, we
said like, OK, let's explore all three different directions.
And I asked this to another founder, like a friends, like,
what do you think of this tragedy?
And he said, like, this is absolutely horrible.
What are you doing? And I'm like, OK, yeah, but it's
also trying. But in a way it, it works
because you give each other room and you, you explore different
directions. If they're, it's also easy when
you have a company where everybody's like, this is the
product market fit, this is the direction, this is the endpoint.
And you just go, I think that's just much easier than you're
figuring things out. I think that's a really hard
stage, a hard phase of a company, right where you're
figuring things out. And then people start saying,
I'm not sure about this direction.
I want to do this and I want to do this.
And then if you have strong opinions, I think that's just,
it's really tough. And I think you'd also have, you
don't have to, you shouldn't do that too long.
Like the different direction thing we're exploring.
It's fine to have like an experiment running or or try new
things. Obviously that's what you
always, always want to do. But sort of like the, I think
the high level direction should be really clear amongst the
founders. So yeah.
Let's say you have that, then that high level direction.
You start with founders and you get to a point where there's
there's too many things that need to happen, so you decide to
hire people. But that's something where you
go from, OK, this is something that we own specifically as
founders and you get people on board.
How do you hire the first few people?
Like how do you give that trust to something or someone that you
don't know specifically? I think that that what always
went, at least for me, pretty natural.
It's also because I'm not the type of like like micro managing
person that wants to be involved in every decision.
I think that I think that helps a lot.
For me, it's more like, Oh, I have so many things on my plate.
And if I have somebody who's also maybe stronger at a certain
topic than I am, right? So like for Rice, for example, I
can definitely say we have like strong, stronger coders than
than than I am in the team. And I actually love to be like,
OK, I'm a bit more on the side of say, like a bit more product
and influence and guide, like the, the technical decisions.
But I also have people on my team that say like, oh, I have
experience with this. I'll, I'll just show you how to,
how to do this. And and then in that sense also
delegate, delegate stuff to, to people.
So for me that always went pretty natural.
But I can also only, I mean, my company's also been only up to
about 20 people, right? So my own company.
So in that sense, I wouldn't know how that goes when you
would scale it up to 50 or 100 people, how that would work.
I think that's a really, it's also pretty tough stage in a
company where as a founder you, you really have to trust a
complete part of, I don't know, engineering or a design or
whatever to, to a team right to 1 to a manager that has a team,
for example. Are you maybe traditionally do
it? So yeah, I'm I'm not sure about
about that how, how that would work out for me.
So yeah. And the people that come on
board, do they get part of equity or do they get a regular
salary? Because from my standpoint, if
I'm starting up something, I have to hire.
I don't have the budget to pay people normal salaries, let's
say. Yeah, definitely.
And I think we we give equity. We did we did that early on with
everybody in the team. And it's it has multiple
reasons. It's also funny, by the way,
that in the Netherlands it's just not so normal.
While in like, for example, in the Bay Area, if you would join
as an employee coming from big tech, he would join a company.
I think nobody in the Bay Area would consider a job without
equity like going to a start up, right.
It was not like, well, I made this at well, you know the model
from, from Girgay. I've made this at at Apple.
Now I'm joining you. OK.
Then I want like a high risk, a high upside side of things.
So we also did that with with a, with a, with rise.
We also like give significant equity to to people and there's
obviously a structure attached to that.
I think that's very, very normal to do that, which is basically
like you have a Cliff and then you have some vesting.
It's it's by the way also normal and for founders as well.
And so you so that's and and we definitely.
I think it also in our case, it also attracted the right people,
right? It also attracted the people
that can definitely make more money at bigger companies or
tech company, big tech companies, but they really love
working on a product and they also like the the, the upside of
equity, right? And being it's, it's not even
made maybe pure financial reasoning, but also being a part
of it. And just the founder say, well,
here's some equity. And, and if you stay longer and
like you, we also increase equity, right?
And we and, and I think that so yeah, that gives.
I I think then you also attract the right people, people that
also understand what it's like being at a start up.
People also have experience and actually where it worked out
well for them. Also people that where it didn't
work, work hard well for them. But yeah, definitely it, it
allows you to to, yeah, to hire more people that you you
wouldn't maybe be able to hire otherwise.
So yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And I think working at a startup is a different type of
fulfillment, right? If you're at a big company,
sometimes I felt like I'm a cog and some people are doing the
same thing in a different department and we don't even
know about it or each other basically.
And then a start-ups like, yeah, if you're 20 people, you know
what people are doing. Basically.
We're working on the same thing with the same mindset, the same
goal, because otherwise we don't get there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely I think and that's
also true until probably a certain size like it's size what
my companies that I had like it, it was always like I I knew
pretty much where everybody was working on like even on a
feature level, right, what we what we were doing.
But I can imagine if you also again, if you scale up that you
that you don't know that anymore.
And that also people who are in those teams don't know exactly
like, oh, that's, that's the platform team.
That's just sort of splits that some companies make at some
point, right? Like, oh, this is the platform
and those are the product. Yeah, that's all platform.
I don't know, right. So and that's kind of natural, I
guess like at a way bigger company also don't know where
people are working on, but yeah, it gives, I think for me
personally this size that that rises now.
So we're with the seven people now as like 2 founders and, and
five people in the team. It's that is that I really like
if still the personal connection with people.
You know what everybody's working on you still.
I don't know, you can. Yeah, it's, it's a really nice
size to have. I think if you, if it does get
bigger, then then I would also probably split teams bit bit
earlier or at that point. So yeah.
Yeah, it makes sense. One of the last things I was
thinking on was what you mentioned earlier.
When new technology comes out, new possibilities open up and it
doesn't happen often with a specific technology.
People always say this is disruptive, but usually it turns
out not to be that disruptive. I feel like with AI, we it is
quite disruptive or it can disruptive.
Promise. Exactly.
And everyone's trying to experiment and see what kind of
the boundaries are. Are you jumping on it as well?
I'm not sure how much you want to share about that.
I can't share too much about it, but yeah, definitely.
I think one thing is that at Rise we haven't done any AI
features that we implemented. And 11 reason is that we, we did
some experimenting, right? Obviously it would be weird if
we didn't do anything there. Yeah, but we did some
experimenting. We were at a we had an on site
like 1 1/2 years ago and we one week we were like, OK, let's
build amazing stuff with AI and was actually super disappointing
in terms of like the model was hallucinating like, Oh yeah,
open AI is, is timing out again. Like I was like, how can, how
can somebody build a product here?
There's also kind of a reality check of like, OK, are the
products actually really good that are out there now with AI?
Because what we can build. It was just it was just not that
good. And I think what you saw is that
so that so we were experimenting and then we saw around those
companies kind of like adding AI stuff everywhere, like Jet Bolt
here. Yeah, yeah.
But also in the product like pushing stuff like Slack is
still like crazy pushing these kind of features.
And it's funny that a lot of people actually also don't like
it. So people coming to rise, like
if we ask about another product, like I'm coming from XYZ
products, it's like, do you use any of the AI features?
Like, no, yeah, I tried it, but I hate it.
Yeah. But I think that was, it is
definitely changing. I'm not saying that I won't
change anything in this space because now we're actually
working. We, we are would say,
experimenting a lot more, I would say.
Yeah, we are. Things are different.
Yeah, yeah. And you notice that things are
so much stronger now. The models are so much stronger.
If you work with Open AI, for example, they have this like
structured outputs, which makes with the integrating with
something like Ryse like so much better because you can rely much
more on what a model returns, right?
So that's only on the sort of LLM part.
So I think, yeah, we'll definitely go into the
direction, but we've been holding off because we were
like, let's also focus on making the actual product that we have
really, really strong. And if we see like use cases
also maybe another product, right, where we're like, OK,
this is fantastic, right? The way that they're using AI
here, it's like that. Would everybody use and
everybody loving the product, then we would definitely
introduce it. Yeah, I can't say too much about
it, but we have a lot of stuff in the pipeline coming there.
So it's it's going to be really exciting.
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I really like that you don't
jump on new technologies immediately.
Like I, I work at a consultancy and it's like what I see in
organizations are proven technologies, right?
New technologies come with a risk.
And if you can't afford to experiment, experiment and then
experience can also not lead to the outcomes that you wanted to.
And you have to accept that basically, yeah, if it's not
ready yet, then don't use it. Specifically, you can't push
something. I think that's not going to work
because it will not work. Yeah.
So I really like that as well. Yeah, yeah, that's also it's
funny with AI that you, I think it's definitely a huge
revolution right in everything. You also see it in like coding,
like I, I have no clue what we'll be doing in 10 years in
terms of in terms of coding. We probably just will be coding,
but it will be a lot different the way we do it or building
products I would say. And it's, it's a lot different,
but I also feel we're like super early, right?
I think if you ask around, people say like, OK, which AI
features in products in like everyday life, do you actually
use like for engineers definitely like something like
copilot or, or cursor, right? Like these kind of things.
So being used a lot. But I, I also, I don't hear a
lot of other, I see a lot of products that are being
announced, I think on the in the agent space, which is I think
sort of next step from in AI or it's already happening.
But the I think a lot is happening there and, and things
are super exciting, right? And, but it's also still at the
stage that not a lot of people are actually using it.
So still in this sort of like pioneering space, I think, Yeah.
But yeah, that definitely, I think in a year or two years
from now, we will be like, oh, you probably can name.
We can't even name the products anymore because it's so
integrated everywhere, right, That it's that it's there.
So yeah. I really like that perspective.
Yeah, I think Asians is going to be huge, but let's see how it
goes. I've really enjoyed this
conversation with them. This was a blast.
Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on
and sharing your perspective on startups and big tech,
specifically Uber. Before we round off, is there
anything you still want to share?
No, thank you. Good stuff.
All right. Thank you.
Round it off here. Thank you so much for listening.
Let us know in the comments section what you thought of this
episode and we'll see you on the next one.