The great companies are able to attract people who are very good at what they do but who, if they weren't working at the company, would be doing something very similar outside the company. And I think that's the mark of a great company — when you get people who are just so consumed by what they're doing that the boundaries between work and non-work just dissolve.
The thing that's really hard to appreciate unless you've been involved in it is how difficult it is to build a great company. People on the outside assume that it's a lot easier than it actually is, and most people who've tried to build great companies will tell you that it's one of the most excruciating, painful, difficult things they've ever attempted.
I think the most counterintuitive thing about company building is that the biggest risk is not moving too slow — it's moving too fast. When you move too fast, you make decisions before you have enough information, and those decisions are very hard to undo.
Most people think about company building as: you get a great idea, you find product market fit, and then you scale. But the most durable companies are built by people who are obsessed with a problem, not a solution — because the solution will change many times, but the problem stays constant.
Most people think about company building as: I have an idea, I'll go raise money, I'll hire a team, I'll build a product, I'll go get customers. Kareem's approach is almost the inverse of that. He starts with the customer, lives with the customer, and lets the product and company emerge from that deep customer intimacy.
Most people think about building a company as building a product. I think about it as building a system of people and incentives and culture that then builds the product. The product is an output, not the thing you're actually building.
The most important signal that I look for is: are the best people in the world trying to work for us? And are we retaining the best people in the world? Because if we are, we're going to be okay. If we aren't, we have a problem.
5mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
