The famous writer Robert Kabus once said to me, "Who you are is the sum of who you've known". Okay, maybe he just made that up as I was writing this blogpost.
But it's true that it takes great people to find great people. And those people are usually the ones who have been around the block more than once.
When building a company, each person you add to the team feels like you're jumping over the Grand Canyon. This metaphor applies for many reasons - one it feels as if you are taking the biggest risk in bringing that person into the team - will they make a contribution that takes you someplace average or someplace for the history books? Will they help you transition into the vision you've been attempting to deliver or beyond your wildest dreams? Two, do you have the timing right for when they should come on board. When we're bootstrapping our company, every dime matters and bringing someone on too early can mean lost resources. Three, is there a good cultural fit? We're building a heterogenous team (look it up, it means we're all very different and add different skillsets). With this comes conflict, friction and at the end of the day, great results because we've looked at things through different lenses/perspectives/angles. But there's a balance here, we're all marching toward the end result, but we may get there via different pathways.
On our road to building our company we have found that the greatest source of inspiration is our past. Because in our past we've worked at some of the best places, worked on some of the best pieces of business and met some of the finest people. And we are thankful.
Because through this road we've been on, the people we know, know people that they know and so on...And through this beautiful and wonderful journey of acquaintances and friendships come new relationships.
For those of you reading this that have been helping us along the way, you know who you are, and thank you.
Each and every add to our startup has made a world of difference from one day into the next. But at the end of the day, and at the end of this sprint, we know one thing Is for sure, it's great people who help you find great people for whatever endeavor you are on - building a company, building a marketing team, building a network to lean on.
We hope to pay it forward any way we can because we know great people, who know great people.