How to fight with your co-founder

And actually conflict is not bad. Conflict is important. It's critical. Healthy conflict is exactly what we want. And that's about how we navigate those tension points. What you want to avoid. And I've had this situation where if you wait too long, you can be at an offsite with the team and two founders stand up and are yelling at each other and literally have had to like stand between them to like Yeah. Is there a bouncer now too, huh? — And the good news is they're committed to doing the work. And so you can land that and you can repair it. — That was Ian Schmidt, a strategic adviser at Trimmergence, which is a consulting firm that specializes in leadership and corporate culture development. We were excited to have Ian on to discuss how founders can better work with their co-founders or really anyone on their team. Ian focuses on the human side of scaling a business because at the end of the day, a startup is really only as strong as the relationships between the people who are building it. We talked about specific tools founders can use to ensure they're effectively resolving conflict, building an internal feedback culture, and doing the work on themselves so they can operate at their highest level. I'm your host, Isabelle Johannes, and you're listening to Build Mode. And this season is all about growing your team. I want to remind all the build mode listeners that applications for the startup battlefield are now open. So if you're building an earlystage company or have an MVP, apply for the program at techcrunch. com/apply. If you want to take these conversations beyond the podcast, then come join us in person at a TechCrunch event October 13 to 15 in San Francisco. We're back for TechCrunch Disrupt, where the startup Battlefield 200 takes the stage. So, if you want to cheer them on or just network with thousands of founders and VCs and tech enthusiasts, then grab your tickets at techcrunch. com/events and use code build mode 15 for 15% off any ticket type. And that discount is exclusively for you build mode listeners and we'd love to see you there. Hi, welcome to Build Mode. — Hi, thank you. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I've been looking forward to this conversation. — Yeah, I'm so glad you could join us. um if you can just kick things off by introducing yourself and giving us a little overview of your background. — Sure. Uh I'm a partner at a consulting firm called Trimmergence and we focus on the human side of scaling businesses and if you think about it businesses have an human operating system and that human operating system needs an upgrade process over time just like the product does and your go to market strategy. So we work with leaders and teams to map their operating system, how they think, how they manage conflict, how they uh do decision-m and really provide them with what we call a noise reduction algorithm. So helping them be get better results faster by making sure that they're connected and they are getting the best throughput in the way they relate to each other in solving problems, going to market, and figuring out their product. — Wow. I love how you speak founder language when you explain that. I feel like there's so many ways you could describe what you do, but explaining it in the way that founders think in Silicon Valley tech founders, you know, the way they operate. I love that. Um, so how did you get into this? What is your path? — Yeah, so my path was uh first of all, I'm the son of a clinical psychologist who started working with leaders many years ago and I grew up in Silicon Valley here in Mountain View and my father always talked about the psychology of outstanding performers. So it was a dinner table conversation and then fast forward I spent 10 years in startups myself uh going public getting ready to go public getting acquired uh downsizing dramatically that whole ride and I really have had a passion over the last 20 years doing this consulting to consult back to startups and high growth companies to really focus on that human side because I saw so much focus on what's our product market fit do we need to pivot etc. which is important and critical but also it's that human factor that I've seen so many companies either fail or slow down their progress or uh when they do it right it really accelerates and helps them bend the curve. — Yeah. I mean one of the main reasons that startups fail these days is because of co-founder conflict and not being able to agree on decisions and co-founders you know leaving for various reasons. I'm curious if you've seen any patterns or sort of common themes in your work for you know major disputes that co-founders have or if I'm sure you know it's different in every situation but if there's a few big pitfalls that you've seen. — Yeah. Some patterns can be really un when founders are unclear about who owns what and um how they're going to navigate disagreement about what the other founder owns or uh when a position or perspective is being really driven

hard into the company. And so if there isn't a framework to navigate that conflict, then you're going to run into not just a tension point, but over time we think of it as uh you know, you build up tech debt when it comes to the technology, you build up relational debt. — And so you work with co-founders in sort of a coaching capacity. Tell me what that looks like. Do they you get on a Zoom call once a week and you they tell you about their problems like therapy? I mean what does that entail? — Yeah, we like to take a systematic approach and that systematic approach is first before working in the relational domain is helping the founder map their own personal operating system. So what makes them tick? What's at the core or the kernel of who they are? And how do those traits show up as gifts and how do they show up as challenges? And then once they've done their own self- inquiry around okay this is how I am in the world and here are the blind spots that I know I have and both founders have done that then that sets a great foundation to bring them together to talk about okay what do you need from each other what is it look like when you trigger each other uh how are you going to navigate those moments what tools reach for when that happens um and then making explicit agreements okay Here are we call it relationship synchronizing. Here are my agreements. This is what I can do for you to show up better. Here's what you can do for me. And then here's what's unique about our working relationship that contributes in an extraordinary way to the organization. And this is how we need to come together to make that magic happen. And then memorialize those so that then that becomes a touchstone. And keep it simple, right? One page. Here's how we're going to operate together. And then do check-ins over time. Wow. So it really is coup's therapy in many ways. — So do you work with them individually yourself and then bring them together or are they expected to sort of do their individual work on their own? — I or we on my team will work with them individually and then we you go deep there. Then you come together and do the relationship synchronizing and then you move out into okay what's our team dynamic and there's an eb and flow of going into the individual work working at the relational level coming back to the individual work as I say it's an ongoing OS upgrade so it's you need a cadence — it sounds like it can also take a long time sometimes some people are not as um ready for those personal insights as others I'm curious how long you typically work with client clients. — Well, there's a couple of different things in that question, right? One is it takes time and a lot of founders out there, I'm sure, are saying, look, I I don't have time to do to go there. And what we found is can't afford not to go there, right? That it actually saves time. And I think of it in tens like what's a nugget you can take away from self-awareness that'll help you in the next 10 hours or 10 days or 10 months or in some cases if you build a really strong relationship. I've seen a founder and an early engineer go on for 10 years in an extraordinary collaborative relationship where then that engineer was part of the senior executive team. So those investments pay off short-term, medium-term, and long term. And then as far as how we work, uh, we have clients that we've worked with for in some cases 20 years. — And imagine it's almost probably a little addictive, right? Once you start getting all these epiphies and enlightenment and you become so much easier to work with your co-founder and team is succeeding, I would keep coming back and wanting to dig deeper, but maybe that's my own brand of crazy. But — well, you you hit on something that's really important, which is it's addictive because you're growing. — Yeah. — And you're growing not as a leader. I just got a text from a young founder that I'm working with and she's like, I'm making better decisions. I'm flowing with I get goosebumps thinking about it. I'm flowing more powerfully into the work. You know, there's a reduction in noise and how I show up with the rest of the team. And the bigger piece is she's like, I'm my identity is no longer fused to the outcome of the company. I am actually I've actually now expanded my sense of self beyond that and I'm better in making my audacious goal happen, but it's positively impacting who I am and who I'm becoming. So that I think that's the part that gets really addictive. And then when we talk about siblings and partnering with friends and spouses, it becomes even more either addictive or critical. I would say — that's a buy one get one free co-founder

and couple therapy. Yeah, I can imagine. So I'm curious how people come to you. I, you know, again, founders like you pointed out are busy and may not feel like they have time for this and whatever, but when there's a real conflict, then it's sort of in your face. You can't avoid it. We need to go talk to someone like yourself. Um, or are there people who maybe are coming earlier but trying to avoid conflict from day one or is it sort of, you know, waiting until there is a fire burning that needs to be put out? — Yeah, great, great point. So, first of all, we're huge fans and we're going to push the perspective that get started early. Um, and you'll notice what happens even in our conversation. We're talking a lot about conflict because that's the point at which people are like, "Oh, yeah. we've got to do something right. And wouldn't it be awesome if we laid the groundwork, this noise reduction algorithm in advance to really reduce that conflict? And actually, conflict is not bad. Conflict is important. It's critical. Healthy conflict is exactly what we want. And that's about how we navigate those tension points. So, what you want to avoid, and I've had this situation where if you wait too long, you can be at an offsite with the team and two founders stand up and are yelling at each other and literally have had to like stand between them to like, yeah, — a bouncer now, too, huh? — And the good news is they're committed to doing the work. And so, you can land that and you can repair But think about the collateral reverberations and damage and repair that needs to happen after something like that. So — yeah, that's not a great look to the rest of the team. Yeah, exactly. — Not a good look. — So let's talk a little bit about what are some of the maybe examples or use cases that you think might be applicable to other founders, right? So fighting over equity to begin with probably I imagine is something that's bare you know bare bones conflict and then deciding which you know products to launch which industries to go in how to manage teams I mean what are some of the sort of inflection points that you often see conflict arise — yeah and I think another big one is who's going to lead right who's going to be the who's going to take the CEO seat right I think that's one big conflict another conflict is over time are you able to really deliver in the role that you're in uh because as you grow and evolve. Sometimes you might be the 0ero to one person in that role, but you might not be the 1 to 10. And I think this is where the evolving self-awareness and that a personal OS operating upgrade is so important as well as the relational because what I've seen is working with organizations that evolve over time is two of the three founders are there. And why? because one of they couldn't quite work it out with the third founder and it got crunchy and you know they left of their own valition or they kind of got pushed out right and if we can there's so much power in the original band so to speak and sometimes it's time for other people to move on but when it's not conscious and uh desired then there can be a huge loss there. — Yeah. can yeah I can imagine it's like a friendship breakup but 10x — I mean yeah there's a lot of personal stuff involved it's not just business at the end of that relationship — right and so often it is friendships — yeah what have you seen in the scope of you know solo founders to double founder co-founders three four I mean I've seen people who try to apply for battlefield with six co-founders and I'm thinking we have I'm a little wary of that — wow yeah — not a little a lot but what um what have you seen is kind of a good secret sauce a good combination is four too chefs in the kitchen. Is three a good place to be? — Wow, that's a good question. I don't know if I can comment on like, oh, here's the, you know, I might defer to my investor uh friends to get that kind of pattern matching, but what I would say is the more founders you have, the more critical it is that you have this dedication to the relational dynamic and upgrading that over time. And if there's if you don't have that platform, you're taking on a lot of risk. — And what about, you know, co-founders who are quite similar to each other? I think these days I see a lot of very technical co-founders who then find themselves a business founder to help kind of grow and pitch the company because they themselves may not be the one who likes to get up at startup battlefield and pitch on stage. And so they're very different backgrounds and personalities and skill sets. And it usually seems like it's pretty obvious in that case who will be the CEO and CTO. But I'm curious what maybe differences you've seen between founders who are similar in background and very different. — If you're similar in background that there's a there's an advantage there because you can kind of finish each other's sentences, right? — The downside is you're missing part of

the of the equation and if you're not careful, you could get into a little bit of group think — and uh you really need to check yourselves. This is where the evolving self-awareness is so critical and the relationship synchronizing so you can really identify explicitly like this is what we're missing and this is what we need to invite in from a diversity perspective. I think that's absolutely critical success factor — but I can imagine on the flip side too that when you have co-founders who are very different right from background by skill set I mean personality everything it's sort of you know conflict might be easier to navigate in a sense that you know you are your domain expert in this I will defer to you on those decisions because you know better versus when they're sort of similar that there are more points of tension because you know we think the same and you know if we're going to disagree who kind of owns that piece of the authority in the company — that can be a dynamic particularly if folks are um good at trusting each other to captain their domain. Sometimes that trust is wobbly. That's why the relationship synchronizing is so important because if I have a deeper sense of who you are, how you operate, and also how you're different from a style perspective, then I can accurately interpret you and not project onto you and then want to get up in your business and start secondguessing you. And this, you know, the beauty of diversity is we're different and we bring the creative magic of the two of us together is exponential, right? The downside of it is I may not totally get how you operate and who you are. I forget that you're not like me. And so then when I get triggered, I can start to project onto you and potentially be misinterpreting what you're really trying to accomplish or what your motivations are. Let's dig into some of these sort of tools and frameworks because now I'm picturing you know the perfect diverse team, right? We've got all the different skill sets and backgrounds and you know the beauty of the bouquet that comes with that. How you know where do you start? What kind of challenges do you approach first and what sort of frameworks do you help introduce them to? Yeah. So, as I mentioned before, we try to start before there's some big challenge or tension point. The first step is mapping your personal individual operating system. How do you tick? What are your gifts? What are your challenges? And having deep honest conversations with yourself like this is what I'm good at. not good at. And not just from a expertise perspective, but how I communicate, how I lead people. um what happens when I'm triggered and fired up in a meeting. Um all of those different dynamics actually map those out, get them down into one page. We're big fans of pick a toolkit that everybody can standardize across and then but then also boil it down. You got to make it quick reference, easy to reference so you can keep moving fast, right? Second is get in a room together and again not just the team offsite. We feel like the missing piece is people might do work one-on-one with a coach and then they might do it off-site and this relationship synchronizing is so critical which is the relationship I have with you is different than the relationship I might have with somebody else and we need to go deep on that. So doing the personal work and pick a framework or a model that works well uh and resonates for you and the rest of the team. Then get in a room and have a scaffolded conversation about here's what's working. Here's what needs to improve. Here's the latent potential and then as I mentioned earlier document those and then have some sort of ongoing cadence where you're checking in with each other. It might be quarterly. It might be uh at least once every half. And then all of that flows into the offsites that you have throughout the year. The other thing I think that's really important is through that process is building in a sense of an internal 360 where you're raising your own consciousness to see how you're showing up and impacting other people and after the fact reflecting, holding yourself accountable. uh going circling back and doing repair if that's what's needed and making sure that the throughput is clean, right? And then finally is there's a place for 360s and we do 360s but I always say that's a great starting point and a commencement for cultivating a culture of feedback so that there's a ongoing uh data feed between you and everybody else on the team so that hopefully if we were to do a 360 again at some point you'd look at it and be like yep yeah I know all that no heard that right

so that those honest conversations with each other along the way and not waiting. — Yeah, it seems like, you know, 360s are sort of the bare minimum that companies have to do. They, you know, we get it. Every year you have to check in, but to be able to have it be sort of a part of the culture to check in more regularly. Um, I want to sort of, you know, double click on this idea of repair because I think there are a lot of founders who again are so busy and they're kind of just making rash decisions without having gone through this process or taken a lot of time to build these frameworks just yet. and they might be listening to this podcast being like, "Oh, shoot. I got some repair to do and now I'm thinking about it. " What how can someone so once someone realizes that they've maybe, you know, I don't want to say been a bad influence, but like you said, like maybe lashed out in front of their employees and you know, needs to kind of come back with their tail between their legs and make some repairs. How should they go about approaching that? — Well, first of all, just recognizing it is a huge step. That's this internal 360. So, that's a huge step in and of itself. Then the question is now what do I do? Right? And I think the first step is to slow down and pause and do a little inventory. Okay, here's what I think happened. This is how I might have impacted others. How does this relate to something that I know about myself? Oh, my partner tells me this all the time or I've seen this over time growing up or I've received this feedback before. So, you have both the situation and the pattern, right? because you're going to go and try to repair the situation or address the situation. But what you want to do is heighten that self-awareness to evolve through and pass that pattern over time. Then go and sit down with the person and take ownership and ask what their experience was. Here's what I think happened. This is how it might have impacted you. Uh I want to own that and I want to understand how that landed. Sometimes it's worse than you thought. Sometimes it's not as bad as you thought. But the biggest thing is there's whatever the content is, the thing where we argued about or the way I showed up, but the process of me coming to you and saying, "Hey, I that didn't really go the way I wanted it to, and I want to make sure we're good and what's going on for you. " That builds a lot of trust because it's like, "Oh, okay. You see it now. now I trust you more. I didn't like that, but Or if you're hyperritical and hyper sensitive, like a lot of founders are, folks may say, "Hey, no, no. You're that was fine. That was within the zone. Don't sweat it. " Then you can calibrate your internal 360 to figure out when you're really in the zone or out of the zone in general. And then more specifically with certain individuals. I want to sort of pivot back to when we were talking about, you know, married co-founders, sibling co-founders. So, I mean, obviously, this is a small portion of the co-founder community, if you will. But I do think it's interesting to kind of use those examples as almost use cases for other co-founder relationships because when we were talking to, you know, the sister co-founders, they have had, you know, probably 30 years of life navigating conflict and they know each other inside and out and how that shows up in a co-founder relationship. Um, and even married couples, right? like they live together, they go home at the end of the day. How to separate church and state in those two um their two realms. Um what have you seen in maybe clients or just you know from your own experience um co-founders that have sort of unique relationships? — Yeah. Well, first of all, you have this amazing uh established foundation of trust, connection, deeper purpose, shared purpose. That's beautiful. That's irreplaceable. Um, and you want to make sure that you're you have very explicit uh ways in which you're navigating th those dynamics because as we talked about earlier, you could end up losing friends. with some sort of rift with your sibling or with your romantic partner and that's not uncommon outside of working together every day. — Yeah. I mean, it's hard enough as is, but that's right. My sister and I talk about how how fortunate we feel or how close we are because that's not always the case with siblings, right? — And I think the recommendation would be one to be explicit about what you need in the business context in the boardroom versus what you want and need and maybe even doing some visioning about what you want need outside of that. Are you going to you know do you have a safe word to turn off the work speak? Are you gonna set particular times or containers or situations where it's like hey we're just hanging out and I would say that and we see this with friends who've worked together for decades in addition to siblings and what

have you where it's like hey I know you inside and out. We can just keep running and yet there's still latent potential. So the investment in again growing your self-awareness and then having those relationship synchronizing uh scaffolded sessions and check-ins is critical because there's always something even if it's going great. I've seen it with folks who've worked together for 20 years. It's like oh there's this nugget like I didn't realize that we could there's an unlock here that um we missed because it's so good. Right. And then I think the final thing I would say is you do want to be really well scaffolded for when the tensions get really high because now when you're dealing with conflict the stakes are so much higher like wow we could lose the company and I could lose you right and that increases pressure and that pressure tends to cause us to not show up at our best and then we get scared. scared because the stakes are so high and you can start to see that spiral. — I love this idea of you know the latent potential and the nugget unlocking because I think so often people think of um you know the sort of coaching when again when there's conflict when it's negative when we need to solve a problem rather than using it as a way to grow your business which is as a founder is your job and is what your investors expect of you. Your customers expect your team and to use this as a tool for growth rather than a problem solution. — Yeah. you mentioned earlier you're like, "Oh, yeah. Have people find you and like when they're in conflict or what have you and I made the hey, get started early before the the conflict. " There's a there can be a sense that I have a gap and or there's a problem and so we need a fix. And what I want to help people understand is this is rocket fuel to help you get better results faster in a much more fulfilling and sustainable way. And oh by the way, it's a noise reduction algorithm that will help you when you have conflict and you'll have the foundation for that. And so I like to flip the script there and say this is about bending the curve. It's how do you grow yourself so you can grow the organization better and faster? How do you become an exponential you if you want an exponentially growing organization? I want to circle back to this sort of, you know, relationship founder situation because I'm I keep thinking that, you know, when um co-founders who are not married or siblings or anything like that, they have their partners and their siblings outside of the co-founder relationship and, you know, that they can bounce ideas off of and kind of get outside opinions. And so their circle of trust, their personal board of adviserss, if you will, is broader. There's more diversity in that than having it all be, you know, consolidated in one person. And I'm always sort of curious, you know, I think a lot of co-founders, it's a lonely ride in many ways, even if your co-founder is your best friend or your partner, whatever, that almost might be lonelier because, you know, who else do you talk to about these problems? Um, I wonder what you advise founders in terms of building their own personal network, people they trust to be able to talk about things, whether it's, you know, of course to talk about business things, they need someone who is probably experienced in this and finding, you know, sort of these shadow CEOs who've been there, done that, but also on the personal side. Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point, which is what is your support network and looking for those types of relationships where you can build really deep trust and talk about what's really going on for you inside. And that's one of the reasons I appreciate uh I thought you did a great job in season one of not only showing tools, tactics, and ways to be successful, but the human side of what it means to be on the founder journey getting real like that and finding that collection of folks. And this is where the evolving self-awareness is so important is the more you get deep and honest and vulnerable with yourself and kind of get it out, then the more courageous you're going to be to let other people in on what's really going on. Because yeah, a lot of founders, it's lonely. They're under extraordinary pressure. As I mentioned earlier, their identity may be fused with the outcome of the company. And that is it's very common and it's navigable. People have been there before and but it takes uh asking for help and reaching out and cultivating those trusted relationships. — Yeah. I mean I hear a lot about founders finding other groups of founders because it seems like they're the only ones who can relate to this kind of wild ride of being a founder. But um I I'm sure there are, you know, different aspects of life and of company building. There's probably times where they want to go talk to someone who's been an executive at a big tech company. How did you scale this? Like I think that path for business growth, mentorship is so much clearer. You have these adviserss and

you know, but on the personal side, I imagine it's much harder. — Yeah. And I definitely celebrate finding other founders who are going and that's what I liked about season 1, finding other founders that are going through similar, you know, there's everybody wants to try to figure out what's the blueprint to to, you know, hypers scale. Uh, but what's the blueprint to navigate the fact that at times I might feel powerless or other times I'm terrified and those moments when I'm just there's so much rage or um or I feel shame that things didn't go the way it is like how do we and we're fans of we think of three legs of the stool. There's the self-awareness, the relational skill, and then that map for um what am I feeling inside and how do I transmute that to a sense of power and exhilaration and compassion? Being able to do that in community is so powerful because I think most of us, not just founders, but most of us in life, sort of feel like, oh, it's just me. I'm the only one who's feeling this, right? I want to talk more about this idea of you know separating ones self and identity from the success of the company because I think even those of us who don't run companies probably feel that in your own careers right when projects fail you take it personally and you know try not to when you succeed it feels great but especially with being a founder that you know if something isn't going right you might even feel incredibly guilty that the team is you know not getting their bonuses or whatever it may be and there's so much tied to you personally as the face of the company and the starter of this you know wild uh company that you've built. How do you sort of work founders through detaching? — Well, a couple of different levels. First off is why are you doing what you're doing? Like what's the deeper in and kind of the five W's, right? Why why did you start this? Why is this meaningful? Why what does this mean to you as a human at the core? and stopping to do that because I think we can get spun into the doing and the manifesting and uh not taking time to do that kind of inquiry. Uh I think the other angle I work with founders on is who do you get to become through this process and not just as a great company builder or someone who's building the next uh extraordinary product but who do you get to become as a human being? Because if you can crack the code on that and you can relate to that, then you can see everything as a growth and learning opportunity versus, hey, I hit the mark or I missed the mark and then beating ourselves up for that or getting scared because I'm further off the mark. I'm not going to make it. We're not going to go public. What, you know, wait a minute, how am I showing up? How am I growing and building a foundation of what it means to contribute not only the company but more broadly to life and how can I feel vital in that because once you do that then then you're unstoppable — you know in startup battlefield we like to choose companies that are very missiondriven and are changing the world and all these things but of course there are also the very um investor friendly high growth SAS companies enterprise this and that right and I think what I've seen what you were just talking about of founders who really feel like they're contributing to the world and you know making it a better place that you know building very missiondriven companies often health tech, climate tech, things like that have a very strong why and like can go through you know hellfire just to because of that why and maybe have lived the problem themselves are really deeply connected to the problem and I think that in itself is motivation. I am curious though if you have examples or experience with founders who are more on this hyper growth hypers scale side where you know it is more about you know growth and profits and you have a lot of investor pressure and it's a very different game from those who are like maybe I'm not even taking VC money I'm just in it because I'm passionate about what we're building versus all the pressures in the world we need to scale and grow and exit as fast as possible. — Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to say Startup Battlefield, amazing what you and the team are doing with that. That's incredible to find entrepreneurs from all over the world and give them a global stage, help them refine their story. It's amazing. You're you're changing lives. That's a great purpose. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. Yeah, that's really awesome. — And um yeah, when I speak of purpose, sure, it's obvious and clear when the you know, it's a startup to try to solve world hunger or whatever it might be, right? But I there's so much purpose in hey I'm under a lot of pressure from the board and we're trying to hypers scale this company. My purpose

is to be able to shepherd this through to fruition and to do it in a way where people are engaged and involved and feel that they can bring their greatest gifts to work. That's a great purpose. Even if it's for a widget that isn't, you know, isn't so obviously solving some human calamity, right? That kind of purpose. I The purpose might be because it's there. It's I'm Mount Everest. I want to climb it, right? Great. Well, do you want to climb it and then be spent and die at the peak? Or do you want to climb it and be able to come down and then show others the way? and what does that make possible and provide for people's families and there's all kinds of things that happen in these high growth companies that are really beautiful purpose um that don't necessarily have to be this you know solving a you know a world problem if you will or a problem with humanity — absolutely yeah find your personal motivation and your personal challenge not Yeah. So, when we met the other day, I was we were talking about, you know, mindfulness and meditation, all these things that we geeked out on, but I um I was telling you that I'm doing this like 30-day mindfulness course, right? And they have sort of weekly challenges that get more and more extreme as we go through the month. And it's sort of, you know, a checklist of daily things, right? Like hydrate, journal, move your body, things like that. I'm curious if you can kind of or if you have a maybe daily checklist for early stage founders of things that they should do to sort of start this journey to check in with themselves. Maybe one of the tasks is something to relate with their co-founder or their team. Maybe three to five things that founders should do daily. — I'm a huge fan of a morning routine because it really sets the tone for the day obviously. And I find that some sort of way of connecting to the body and getting out of the head. So for some that's meditation. Uh for others it's and I'm a big fan of breath work and some sort of uh way to really drop into the vitality of life and then move into okay what is it that I want to accomplish for the day? How do I and how do I want to show up? So there's what I want to do and who I want to be because I think we tend to create our lists of this needs to get done, — right? — But how do I want to go about doing that? What's my state of being? And just doing a little moment of like visualizing or seeing yourself move through the day and then I'm a huge fan given the level of pressure everybody's in is drop into your heart a little bit of gratitude. What can you be grateful for? I It's relationships. It's uh you know the beautiful uh flor and fauna around you. It's the amazing place we get to live in the world. Whatever it might be, simple or profound. Just take two, three minutes and just think of all the things and not just think but feel into all the things that you're grateful for. And then I would say and translate that also into your company. Don't forget to tell people what you're grateful for. see how that changes the tone in the boardroom, right? Because I think we're all trained to identify the gaps and the problems and uh and that's awesome. And what I found is companies and individuals don't take enough time to celebrate success and to drop into gratitude. I completely agree and I think that changes the motivation from employees from you know the ground up that you know realizing that if I work hard I will be recognized for it publicly and they're grateful for my hard work. I mean that can do wonders just a few words from the leadership. So I think that's a really great tip. — Yeah. And on that point is particularly in when it comes to conflict, but in general in life, people really want to be seen and heard. And you know, sometimes there's an attachment to trying to be right. But more importantly, people want to feel seen and heard. And when you express gratitude, you're really seeing what someone is delivering. And that lights them up. like we know about what that does to the, you know, biology of humans. And then also remember that when you're in conflict situations, a way of seeing somebody else is to fully hear them out. And that has a huge positive impact uh in navigating conflict situations as well. — I want to take a little bit of a turn. So I think you know for founders that I've worked with again busy people traveling a lot conferences all the things sometimes this might sound like wishful thinking right to be able to have time and energy to like focus on these things right that we've talked about. Is there a certain point in which you advise founders to seek help in

other aspects of their life in terms of maybe hiring, you know, um, someone who can help them with their nutrition or fitness or a personal assistant in their personal life or things that are kind of like I feel like in the work space in the company, it's obvious, right? We need to hire an EA, a head of engineering, but then, you know, founders often take their work home and everywhere else on vacation to kind of say, you know, you have a lot on your plate. Maybe you need to hire um you know a coach or a go to a mindfulness retraer. I don't know something — right now. — And on a couple of different fronts. Well, first of all, you're also hitting on energy. Uh the vitality and energy is your fundamental currency to be successful. And in add also a big fan of get out there, work out. It could be, you know, walking around the block outside, what have you. Anything you can do to make sure that you are maintaining your energy is key. and having other people take stuff off your plate or accelerate your success in those areas, fitness, nutrition, stuff around the house, you know, outsource as much as you can so that you can really focus. If we think about going deep on self-awareness, people say that, "Oh, I don't have time. " It's like, well, what are all the things that you're doing today that you could take off your plate that would free up time for that? or I don't have time in the morning for a morning routine. What are those things that I can hire out that frees up my time, attention, and calories to focus on these things that are so important? — Yeah, I guess the question really was more about time management. So, I'm glad you took it that direction because I'm thinking there are only so many hours in the day, right? And I, you know, often think when founders go home and work these, you know, 996 crazy days and hours, you know, what does that look like for the people in their lives that love them and maybe haven't seen them in two months because they're traveling and working constantly and being able to say no to things and really prioritize when I'm in founder mode and when I'm in family mode or whatever it may be. Well, the other thing I would recommend is what's your strategy or approach to do kind of, you know, relationship synchronizing with those important relationships in your life outside of work so that you have a sense of what do they need? How are they experiencing you? What boundaries do you need to set for yourself in your life so you can spend more time with them? And what sort of expectations do you need to set with them so that it's clear and explicit? And again, there isn't that relational debt, kind of like tech debt where you're moving so fast that you're starting to drift apart in these relationships and they're starting to get resentful or feeling ignored or what have you. If you have real conversations about that, then you can figure out a way to a creative way to try to navigate that. see it with uh leaders all the time is it's they're like I'm I have time for my I'm making time for my family but I'm not present with my family. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. My head's somewhere else. Often times they don't need a huge block of time but what they need is total presence when you are there and then they feel that and that's enough for them. So talking that through one again doing the self-reflection and then two talking that through with those around you I think is critical. — So for the founders out there who say you know they don't have time to prioritize the sort of founder coaching and really digging into their own um strengths and weaknesses and all of these things what was sort of your advice and your approach to how founders should consider their personal growth the growth of the company? — Yeah. Uh, I always say scale yourself so you can scale the company, right? You need to be on your own exponential growth curve. And we hear this all the time. Oh, I don't have time right now. I'm going to kick the can down the road or there's nothing's broken, right? And what I would say is the more you invest now with the power of compounding, you're going to save an enormous amount of time. I've seen it happen time and time again. And if you wait, you're it's actually going to end up messier and taking more time to clean up and um reduce the noise. So that's one piece. The other piece is what we found is super powerful is if you have a set of tools that are very simple that are potent both for that self-awareness journey, for navigating the relational dynamic, and to sort of map and manage your internal state, that state of being. when we get triggered. If you have that integrated and then you deploy it for yourselves and in the

company as a platform if you will with kind of a standard methodology that relationship and OS upgrade process can be super efficient and really effective and what's great is what works at with two founders then that platform scales to 20 to 200 headcount to 2,00 and we've seen it beyond You know, we've had clients for 20 years with the same platform to make it super efficient and effective and I guarantee you it's going to save time. It's going to help you get better results faster. It's going to unlock all kinds of energy and it's going to be a lot more fun and fulfilling. — I love this idea of, you know, when you do the work on yourself, it spreads to the next person to the next person. And I think that's important in just non-b businessiness context as well. But especially when you're the founder of this company, the leader, the face, the figurehead work you do on yourself will then spread to your co-founders, to your teammates, to your customers. Um, and really to sort of take that seriously. — Well, and at the end of the day, your culture is how you interact and how your feet move. It's not the um the values that you put on the wall or what have you. everybody's watching the founder and the core team. Like that's the culture, right? And so, yeah, you want it to be as clean and that noise reduction algorithm and you're really juicing up what you're all here to do. All right. Well, this has been fantastic, Ian. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. — Thanks for having me on. — Build Mode is a TechCrunch podcast. Each episode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye and hosted by me, Isabelle Johannes. Our art and design is also by Maggie Nye. A big thanks to Morgan Little who leads our audience development, the Foundry and Cheddar video teams, and most of all to you, the builders, and everyone else in the wider startup community. We'll see you back here next time.