On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Mike Schroepfer of Gigascale Capital
- Shashank Saxena of Sierra Ventures
- Ryan Delk of Primer
We asked guests to tell the most important lesson they’ve learned in their career.
The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area.
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Transcribed with AI:
0:19
Welcome back to etfr On today’s special segment, we ask guests to tell the most important lesson that they’ve learned in their career. Here’s a segment called Lessons Learned.
0:35
On today’s special segment, we have Mike schrepfer of giga scale schrep, what is the biggest mistake and or hardest lesson you’ve learned as an investor?
0:42
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it’s some variant of that is that, you know, I think at the end of the day, you’re like, what are the variables under your control? And what are the variables not under your control? The market isn’t really very much under your control. Meaning, like, what am I selling into? Am I selling chemicals? Am I selling energy and like, that ends up being a pretty dominant factor in what’s happening. Is the market growing? Is it shrinking? Is it a few buyers or lots of buyers? Like these? Details really, really matter in terms of, is my job easy or hard? You know, there’s a classic Warren Buffett quote about, you know, when a great entrepreneur enters a tough market, it’s, it’s the market’s reputation, that’s, that’s maintained some variant of that. So I think that there’s like, market, and then there’s the founders. It’s like, it’s their company. We’re backing them, helping them. I’ve been a founder. I know what it’s like. It’s like, fundamentally, their company. And so there are limits to what we can push and change. So I think, you know, seeing a part founder and saying, like, I wish you were doing more of this, if you’re, if you’re saying too much of that up front, it’s probably not a good fit from a founder investor standpoint, because we’re here to help and push and give advice, but like, ultimately, it’s your ball to run with. And so I think I spend a lot more time sort of making sure we have alignment on sort of key things. You know, it’s something both in interviewing and others. It’s like, I found it really helpful to sometimes have hard conversations with people before we even work in business. It’s like, I disagree with you on this, or I think there’s this problem. What do you think? And if we can’t have a productive conversation before we’re hooked together as an investor or working together, then it’s unlikely we’re going to have it after so. So anyway, so I think that, just like trying to make sure you know this, this team and market balances is really there.
2:19
On today’s special segment, we have Shashank. Saxena of Sierra. Shashank, what is the biggest mistake in or hardest lesson you’ve learned as a founder, and what’s the story behind the lesson
2:29
people so it’s very, very hard in terms of when to dig in and trust but verify, which is get closer to the facts versus when to just let go and give people full autonomy to to move forward that judgment call of which person on what task and how close versus distant To be away from it. That is that was a big learning in my founder journey.
3:11
On today’s special segment, we have Ryan Delk of primer. Can you tell us a story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you lead
3:18
someone on the team gave me feedback a while ago that was I was frustrated at something was happening internally, and I was frustrated that I felt like it was below the bar, that I felt like was obvious for us in terms of just the quality of work and the feedback they shared, which is quite prescient, was to you, this is obvious that this is below the bar, but it is the ways in which it is below your bar are not purely objective, which is fine, but if they’re not objective, then you don’t have the right to you sort of waive your right to be frustrated, or at least to stay frustrated, if you haven’t explicitly communicated what that bar is to the team. And I thought that was quite good feedback, because it’s very easy for me, at least, to get to find myself frustrated when I feel like things are below the bar. And I think one of the most important things founders do is maintain a very high bar across the organization and just be obnoxious about it. But they’re oftentimes where it’s just a gut or this, like, highly subjective bar. And so I actually just today, or, Yes, this morning, sent out a note to the team about something, about the way that we do something, and I wrote, I wrote a truly page doc, and I just said, this is how I want this, this particular work, work stream, to happen. And here’s it, spelled out in very specific detail. And almost all of it was subjective. It wasn’t objective. And the reason I did that was so that I could, I could make it very clear what the standard in the bar was, what I expected everyone to hit. And then if we didn’t do that in the future, it’d be very clearly referenceable to the team. And so I think it’s easy for founders, this probably generalizes to any leaders, to have these kind of gut feelings, which are very, very important for the organization to act on and to share that feedback. But you can’t expect everyone else to operate with that same level of gut, and you got to be willing to be exp. Sit about the bar you want them to hit, if you expect other people to hit that bar you know going forward. Love it.
5:10
That will conclude this installment of investor stories. If you’re enjoying the program and would like to see it continue, take a moment and leave a five star review in iTunes. Okay, that will wrap things up for today until next time over. Prepare, choose carefully and invest confidently. Thanks for joining me.
