On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Natalie Dillon of Maveron
- Sandesh Patnam of Premji Invest
- Eric Ries Author of The Lean Startup
We asked guests to discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with and what makes them so special.
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 TFR. On today’s special segment, we ask guests to discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with and what makes them so special. Here’s the segment called Visionary Founders. On today’s special segment, we have Natalie Dillon of Maveron. Natalie, can you tell us about an exceptional founder you’ve worked with in the specific thing they do that’s unique.
0:45
The story that comes to mind, and the person that comes to mind is Jessica Rolfet at Love Every. She’s built an amazing kids play essential brand, and when she came in and pitched our team, she turned off all the lights, which also was very unique and had us for about five minutes just read customer reviews of what parents and grandparents had said about the Love Every product and it doesn’t sound like much but five minutes in the dark just reading these reviews was was so powerful but it was just a tiny glimpse into who Jessica was as a founder, who is absolutely customer obsessed and product obsessed, and you could see that both in the reviews of how much parents love these products, but then getting to work with her, I mean, the detail of every coloring, the shape, the feel, I mean, every product has been iterated 1015 you know, many, many times, and I just, I so admire that quality of staying incredibly close to your customer and being customer obsessed, but also showing up for your customer and your product, and, and she, yeah, she has that in stripes, I
2:04
On today’s special segment, we have Sandesh Patnam of Premji Invest. Sandesh, tell us about an exceptional founder you’ve worked with, and the specific thing they do that’s unique.
2:13
You know, a great founder is all of them. Like, I feel like for me the sort of the resonance on product and their view of the world, and how they think about mission orientation, goes a long way, but I call out Ariel Gohan at Lavan as an exceptional founder. I think the thing about Ariel is that he is maniacally focused in ways that I think he lives and breathes the business, but I’d say a manifestation of everything he does is he’s always trying to figure out how to disrupt himself. There’s always an incubation team internally saying, what does Nivan look like five years from now? If there is a Navon disruptor, I want to disrupt myself, and he always invests in that, you know, in some ways. And you wonder, like, you know what first principles thinking. You have to protect the team, you’ve got to think about product, you got there’s so many things that go in there. And since the day I’d met and he always said, like, I’m gonna, if there’s gonna be a disruptor, I’m gonna disrupt myself, and so I need to know what’s coming, I’m gonna separate the team, gonna build a Navan inside in the van, so that’s gonna be the next gen Ivan, and no matter what happens, I want to be the winner of that category, I think is sort of a unique capability in my mind, and because he has a view of the world and a vision of the world that made the world not see yet, and I kind of think that he is Flis principle based and incredibly maniacally focused, so I absolutely enjoy working with him across every, you know, every dimension here.
3:29
Amazing.
3:35
On today’s special segment, we have Eric Reese, founder of the Long Term Stock Exchange and author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible, Eric, tell us about an exceptional founder you’ve worked with and the specific thing they do that’s unique. I work with so many great founders, this is like my favorite, that’s been my favorite child, very difficult, and no disrespect to any of the founders I didn’t pick. But let me tell you about Todd Park,
4:00
because Todd’s not that famous, but he should be. He doesn’t like the spotlight, so he probably would be mad at me for making him more famous, but he deserves it. He’s a really great person. Todd was the CTO of the United States under President Barack Obama. He has founded a bunch of companies, he founded Athena Health and Castle Health, and he’s been a very successful health entrepreneur. But his new company that he started, I don’t know, five six years ago now. It’s called Devoted Health, and it’s one of the fastest growing private companies in the country. It is a full stack reimagining of the American healthcare system, and I won’t get into all the details. You can find out about it. I tell his story in the new book, but if you ask him what is the product that you make, he will say, look, we do have a health insurance company, we have a care delivery company. We have a technology company, but none of those things are our product. We make those things. The product we make is love, and people are like, what I thought I was going to get some kind of ruthless business strategy. Now, what are we talking about? Like, if you were very.. but he’s very serious about this. The way they run this company is they tell their employees your instructions, like you’re marching or. Orders are to treat every customer the way you would treat your own parents, and people hear that, like, it sounds vague, but no, we’re just used to these nonsense strategy documents that are over prescriptive. This is the most specific, easiest to follow instruction any employee has ever received. Someone calls in for customer service and they have a problem, well, if your mom called you and had a problem, would you be like, get off the phone, mom, I don’t. I, our terms of service don’t know you’d be like, okay, let’s get the problem fixed. You wouldn’t be like, sorry, that’s not really our thing, you’re calling me about the wrong topic, you need to call somebody else. No, you, we want to help. So, just to give you one example of why I buyer taught so much, the customers of Devoted Health call the customer service agents who work there the Guardian Angels, because if you call them with a problem, they will fix your problem, and I give a bunch of these amazing examples in the book of people who’ve literally had their life saved by a customer service agent. Now, is this squishy, soft-hearted emotionalism? Maybe, but I want you to consider this story from the perspective of some a whole private equity roll-up guy. Okay, he hears about devoted health, he sees how much money they’re making. He’s like, ‘I’m gonna roll up all the local health insurance companies and care. I’m gonna do the same thing as them with my roll up. I’m gonna charge a lower premium, drive them out of business, and then I can jack up the prices. This is like classic strategy. People do this all the time. You go into the market and you call up these people, and you’re like, ‘Hey, I need you to switch away from your guardian angel to save him a couple bucks, and they won’t even take your call. So, is love soft-hearted, or is this actually the most ruthless business strategy ever? Because when you create a bond of true loyalty with a customer, you are literally shrinking the total available market that is available for your competitors to access by one person. I don’t think it’s that soft-hearted, actually, I
6:45
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.
