The Exchanges

Q and fundamental mission, it's easier to hire. But I do want to get started today, Andrew, with a topic that is a personal passion of mine, being connectors, and more importantly, super connectors. So tell me, Andrew, in the world of raw compute and IQ centricity that we live in, often the super connectors can almost be denigrated today. So how do you view the role of super connectors today?

A I think when I think of the people who fall into that category within my own network, they tend to be incredibly generous, and they tend to be remarkable advocates. You know, there are a handful of people whose enthusiasm for what we do and whose enthusiasm for our team, I mean, it's contagious. And when they do introductions, they don't hedge. They tell that person that you absolutely have to talk to this person, or you have to talk to them about what they're working on. And in some ways, it's almost a reason to continue working on the thing. And there are a handful of people that I have tremendous respect for who have been that for us. And frankly, we owe a lot of our expanded network to just a very small group of people who have been willing to make those introductions over and over and over again.

AI assessment note: “they tend to be incredibly generous, and they tend to be remarkable advocates.”

Q Yeah, no, I, I'm a big fan of what they're building at Ludlow. I do have to ask, it's a, it's a very challenging element in terms of, kind of, building that relationship and network of connectors. How do you ensure those continuous and frequent touch points with these individuals?

A Well, most of the people who are in venture are incredibly bright, Very logical people, but they get excited by really good stories. They get very excited by what the world could be. And that's usually wrapped in a really compelling and truthful story. And we try to do that through writing. So in a lot of our investor updates, they're not just like here, the bullet points of what you need to know for your investment. It's not just sort of this transactional relationship. It's, you know, let me tell you the story about what happened three weeks ago with a really interesting circumstance with a customer. And those kinds of things have tended to result in a lot of engagement and responses from the people who've invested in us, and it's easier for them to carry on that story with other people as they talk about the business. We anonymously count people inside of large corporate campuses to help companies better understand how their employees use space so they can design that space better. That's a rather simple concept, but it really comes alive with, I think, good storytelling.

AI assessment note: “We try to do that through writing. So in a lot of our investor updates”

Q invest. Investor updates and having kind of done the three different rounds of funding that you have, I have a lot of founders ask me, Harry, how should I structure investor updates? What are the big learnings? For you, having done this over three rounds, how do you think about the right investor update and really providing that cohesive and kind of comprehensive report with also that touch of humanity?

A I may be a little bit of a broken record, but I think the truth of your business, the facts of your business, those things are critical, but just as important are the surrounding stories around what's happening within the business. We had a circumstance where we hand-built product to deploy into customer locations, and that process was, it was rigorous, it was incredibly challenging, and it was taxing on the team, and it was imperfect. They were not these, like, beautiful finished devices. They were, like, barely there pizza boxes. And those initial people counters, those initial prototypes came alive with photographs of the process, and video of the process, and then stories of the actual deployment in some of our customer locations. And I think that, like, you know, an investor update sounds like sort of this transactional thing, but I think it's a real opportunity. Opportunity to tell the company's story.

AI assessment note: “the facts of your business, those things are critical, but just as important are the surrounding stories”

Q there? Because I completely agree with you on the importance of diversity, diverse candidate pools. It is very tough, especially when it's quite a homogenous pool like, you know, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. What can literally be done to Diversify the candidate pool away from just, you know, educational networks and local friendship networks, and how do you actively look to integrate diverse candidates into the existing candidate pool?

A First off, I just want to say I don't think there's a silver bullet. One and two, I, I don't think it's like a simple problem, and I think it's mostly a cultural problem. If the leadership in an organization doesn't buy in, and by leadership I mean CEO down, if the leadership or its board doesn't buy into the value of investing in good marketing or inclusive language Or the potential added time it takes to make sure that you have a diverse candidate pool in the process, then it'll never happen. You'll end up with a homogenous group no matter what, pretty much nine days out of 10. I think that the biggest thing that people underinvest in is that they do the easy thing first, which is they call their friends. And calling your friends is a great way to get a bunch of people together quickly, but it's also a really great way to cement a particular type of perspective on the world. And so, like, taking a step back, pausing, and saying, as much as I would love to hire my friend from Stanford or whatever it might be, I'm going to, like, Take a second to write out exactly what I'm looking for and meaningfully try to market to networks and communities I'm not a part of. And I mean that in a very straightforward way. I mean, like, I think it's a marketing problem. I think like spending the time and dollars it takes to go into communities that you have no personal connection with and tryi…

AI assessment note: “meaningfully try to market to networks and communities I'm not a part of”

Q invest. Investor updates and having kind of done the three different rounds of funding that you have, I have a lot of founders ask me, Harry, how should I structure investor updates? What are the big learnings? For you, having done this over three rounds, how do you think about the right investor update and really providing that cohesive and kind of comprehensive report with also that touch of humanity?

A I may be a little bit of a broken record, but I think the truth of your business, the facts of your business, those things are critical, but just as important are the surrounding stories around what's happening within the business. We had a circumstance where we hand-built product to deploy into customer locations, and that process was, it was rigorous, it was incredibly challenging, and it was taxing on the team, and it was imperfect. They were not these, like, beautiful finished devices. They were, like, barely there pizza boxes. And those initial people counters, those initial prototypes came alive with photographs of the process, and video of the process, and then stories of the actual deployment in some of our customer locations. And I think that, like, you know, an investor update sounds like sort of this transactional thing, but I think it's a real opportunity. Opportunity to tell the company's story.

AI assessment note: “just as important are the surrounding stories around what's happening within the business.”

Q and fundamental mission, it's easier to hire. But I do want to get started today, Andrew, with a topic that is a personal passion of mine, being connectors, and more importantly, super connectors. So tell me, Andrew, in the world of raw compute and IQ centricity that we live in, often the super connectors can almost be denigrated today. So how do you view the role of super connectors today?

A I think when I think of the people who fall into that category within my own network, they tend to be incredibly generous, and they tend to be remarkable advocates. You know, there are a handful of people whose enthusiasm for what we do and whose enthusiasm for our team, I mean, it's contagious. And when they do introductions, they don't hedge. They tell that person that you absolutely have to talk to this person, or you have to talk to them about what they're working on. And in some ways, it's almost a reason to continue working on the thing. And there are a handful of people that I have tremendous respect for who have been that for us. And frankly, we owe a lot of our expanded network to just a very small group of people who have been willing to make those introductions over and over and over again.

AI assessment note: “they tend to be incredibly generous, and they tend to be remarkable advocates.”

Q Yeah, no, I, I'm a big fan of what they're building at Ludlow. I do have to ask, it's a, it's a very challenging element in terms of, kind of, building that relationship and network of connectors. How do you ensure those continuous and frequent touch points with these individuals?

A Well, most of the people who are in venture are incredibly bright, Very logical people, but they get excited by really good stories. They get very excited by what the world could be. And that's usually wrapped in a really compelling and truthful story. And we try to do that through writing. So in a lot of our investor updates, they're not just like here, the bullet points of what you need to know for your investment. It's not just sort of this transactional relationship. It's, you know, let me tell you the story about what happened three weeks ago with a really interesting circumstance with a customer. And those kinds of things have tended to result in a lot of engagement and responses from the people who've invested in us, and it's easier for them to carry on that story with other people as they talk about the business. We anonymously count people inside of large corporate campuses to help companies better understand how their employees use space so they can design that space better. That's a rather simple concept, but it really comes alive with, I think, good storytelling.

AI assessment note: “we try to do that through writing. So in a lot of our investor updates”

Q there? Because I completely agree with you on the importance of diversity, diverse candidate pools. It is very tough, especially when it's quite a homogenous pool like, you know, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. What can literally be done to Diversify the candidate pool away from just, you know, educational networks and local friendship networks, and how do you actively look to integrate diverse candidates into the existing candidate pool?

A First off, I just want to say I don't think there's a silver bullet. One and two, I, I don't think it's like a simple problem, and I think it's mostly a cultural problem. If the leadership in an organization doesn't buy in, and by leadership I mean CEO down, if the leadership or its board doesn't buy into the value of investing in good marketing or inclusive language Or the potential added time it takes to make sure that you have a diverse candidate pool in the process, then it'll never happen. You'll end up with a homogenous group no matter what, pretty much nine days out of 10. I think that the biggest thing that people underinvest in is that they do the easy thing first, which is they call their friends. And calling your friends is a great way to get a bunch of people together quickly, but it's also a really great way to cement a particular type of perspective on the world. And so, like, taking a step back, pausing, and saying, as much as I would love to hire my friend from Stanford or whatever it might be, I'm going to, like, Take a second to write out exactly what I'm looking for and meaningfully try to market to networks and communities I'm not a part of. And I mean that in a very straightforward way. I mean, like, I think it's a marketing problem. I think like spending the time and dollars it takes to go into communities that you have no personal connection with and tryi…

AI assessment note: “market to networks and communities I'm not a part of”

Q It is. What skill or trait do you most look for in a VC? When you have your selection, when the 20 term sheets come in, as I'm sure they will do for every round, tell me, what is the trait that you most look for?

A Assuming the premise. You're always working with imperfect data, and so taking what data you have and sort of putting it in front of someone. The best venture capitalists I've ever spoken to assume your premise and then ask, okay, what could happen if you were right? And you spend 45 minutes talking about that portion of the idea and not 45 minutes justifying your existence. Meaning like, oh, you couldn't do it this way, you couldn't do it that way. Assume I'm right for a second, and let's talk about how big this could be, because that is what everyone is trying to invest in. And all the smaller stuff, those are tactical details, and that has much more to do with execution than it does with vision.

AI assessment note: “The best venture capitalists I've ever spoken to assume your premise”

Q a reduction in quality. You know, it's a massively commonly cited misnomer, which isn't true, but I do want to discuss kind of extrapolating a little bit outside maybe the candidates themselves to the org design of the company, so to speak. When we chatted before, you said the company is its own product. I love that analogy. So how do you think about and assess all design today, Andrew?

A First off, I want to say like, I am making it up as I go along. So a lot of this is other people's ideas applied to, applied to our model. But I heard something a long time ago on a podcast by Jason Calacanis, who's one of our investors and is on our board. And it was one of his earliest interviews. And I remember the person who he was talking to said, founders often are so focused on designing and shipping their first product. That they forget to look up at the broader organization. And when the organization eventually evolves away from that first product, the founder looks up and doesn't recognize the organization they're within. And it's not that the company doesn't get designed. It gets designed. It just gets designed by other people. And I think that taking a minute to realize that the products you ship are a result of the dynamic of the team and its abilities is a very important thing to realize. And when you're super small, It's very hard to notice that they're almost indistinguishable from one another. You know, that the team is the product, the product is the team, but eventually the team dictates what that product looks like. And I think it doesn't take a lot, but a small shift in how much time you spend thinking about how people collaborate and how they communicate with one another, how they resolve conflict, how they give feedback to one another, how they comp one a…

AI assessment note: “a small shift in how much time you spend thinking about how people collaborate”

Q No, I think that's a great one. I'm sure when I'm writing my next investment memo, the five minutes will feel very, very long, but I do want to finish today. On the next five years, For you and for density. Let's actually, let's paint that vision that we said earlier. What if all the stars align? What does density look like?

A I think that San Francisco gets designed slightly differently. I don't know the time horizon, but I think if we're right, then architects won't have to guess at what rooms to build, and interior designers won't have to argue about whether or not a particular asset got used, and trains won't run on time schedules. They'll run on actual Predictable demand based on foot traffic. I mean, if you think about schedules, most like staffing schedules, like cleaning or trains or whatever else, those schedules and the frequency of those cars is essentially a proxy for people count. We have all these proxies for people count. Like, why do we clean rooms that haven't been used? Most buildings, their staff shows up and they clean whatever the rooms are within, you know, the office. Like, what if you knew that half of them weren't used? You could essentially clean double the number of rooms. And so I just think that there's this really fundamental piece of data that's missing from, it's a really important ingredient, and it's missing from all of these systems. Did you know, like, we can eliminate tailgating. I mean, I'm not entirely sure that that's true, but I think we might be able to eliminate tailgating. And when I say tailgating, I mean, like, two people go into a secure facility through a door and only one badge is in. That's never been possible before. And I think that within the conte…

AI assessment note: “if we're right, then architects won't have to guess at what rooms to build”

Q a reduction in quality. You know, it's a massively commonly cited misnomer, which isn't true, but I do want to discuss kind of extrapolating a little bit outside maybe the candidates themselves to the org design of the company, so to speak. When we chatted before, you said the company is its own product. I love that analogy. So how do you think about and assess all design today, Andrew?

A First off, I want to say like, I am making it up as I go along. So a lot of this is other people's ideas applied to, applied to our model. But I heard something a long time ago on a podcast by Jason Calacanis, who's one of our investors and is on our board. And it was one of his earliest interviews. And I remember the person who he was talking to said, founders often are so focused on designing and shipping their first product. That they forget to look up at the broader organization. And when the organization eventually evolves away from that first product, the founder looks up and doesn't recognize the organization they're within. And it's not that the company doesn't get designed. It gets designed. It just gets designed by other people. And I think that taking a minute to realize that the products you ship are a result of the dynamic of the team and its abilities is a very important thing to realize. And when you're super small, It's very hard to notice that they're almost indistinguishable from one another. You know, that the team is the product, the product is the team, but eventually the team dictates what that product looks like. And I think it doesn't take a lot, but a small shift in how much time you spend thinking about how people collaborate and how they communicate with one another, how they resolve conflict, how they give feedback to one another, how they comp one a…

AI assessment note: “a small shift in how much time you spend thinking about how people collaborate”

Q It's a phenomenally cool potential outcome. I'm too intrigued. This is clearly a huge thought for you in terms of distribution successfully. What is your thinking at currently then on the right way to distribute density successfully?

A Weirdly, I think you start with conference rooms. I think you start with offices. The reason for that is because no matter what industry you're in, if you have a relevant human space, You should have a method of being able to measure how that space gets used. And you can't put cameras in conference rooms. You can't put cameras in bathrooms. You have to be able to deploy something that protects someone's privacy and is completely anonymous by design, but it's still highly accurate. And I think that what's really cool is regardless of the industry that you're in, if you are sufficiently large, you have an office space, which means if we can help you with your office space, then we get exposure, our systems, technology, and platform, our people count platform, which is really what density is. Gets exposure to all of the other interesting applications and spaces you may have under your purview. I should just say, like, our product has taken a while to manufacture and design for a reason. I mean, it's shipping in volume today, but there are 800 individual subcomponents in each device. It goes through three forms of calibration, every single one of them, and we run onboard localized deep learning to be able to measure plus one, minus one. Humans do the strangest stuff in doorways. And so we've had to design what we call a depth net to be able to understand all the stuff, all the weir…

AI assessment note: “I think you start with conference rooms. I think you start with offices.”

Q processes and operations, which Create for a successfully running machine. I have to ask, choose one thing from either side. What's something that you have which works seamlessly well, and you think, you know, you've really excelled at, be it, you know, comp design, be it feedback systems, and then what one thing do you think, you know, over the past few years you've struggled with, and why is that?

A Well, nothing works seamlessly. I think, uh, I don't know that we have something that falls into that category. I can say, you know, we have a hundred percent retention since our founding four years ago, We've never voluntarily lost anyone. You know, we've had to let some people go along the way based on, you know, work product, but I'm very proud of that, and our team is very proud of that, and it will change as we grow. I have no illusions to the fact that that will change as the company grows, but I think that that's a result of trying to stay ahead of people's needs, and I'll give you an example of this. When someone asks for a raise, I think oftentimes companies think, okay, well, this is the first time I've heard of it, so I can get to this, but it's not like necessarily super urgent. Maybe I get to it at the next cycle. Maybe we do it. We've got feedback coming up in six months. We can do it. Then I kind of push it off. What I think sometimes people fail to realize is that the first time that someone brings it up to you, the company is probably the 32nd time that they've talked about it. And at times one through 31 were with their spouse or their significant other or their friend or their coworker. And then the 32nd time was with you. And so they just worked up the courage to tell you, and then you're going to kind of drag your feet because you think you have time. So th…

AI assessment note: “nothing works seamlessly. I think, uh, I don't know that we have something”

Q connectors that can move the needle for the company. In terms of those that do the same, it's always the team itself internally. I often hear, especially in SF, that the hardest element of scaling is talent attraction and retention, and we chatted before, and you said to me that employee retention is a key indicator of broader success. Can you unpack this for me in the thinking here, Andrew?

A I've always wanted to do a study of Companies can graph them based on their retention rates and then sort of their relative success, but I, I'm not exactly sure how to find the data or the time. I'm really curious if high levels of churn or high levels of retention correlate with the company's broader success. My hunch is that it does largely because the cost of finding really exceptional talent and having to find a replacement in the event that they churn is really high. It's high in terms of dollars and it's high in terms of time. And when you look at sort of industry averages of how much time it takes to go from a job description to first day, US averages, I believe, uh, 90 days. The tech industry's averages is 75 days. I think we average about 45 days and maybe a bit too tactical, but like everything from when you begin the process and how transparent you are in the hiring process and your selection criteria and who they're going to be interviewing with all the way through to how you and when you give raises. Staying ahead of an employee's questions and staying ahead of an employee's needs is the best way to retain exceptional talent. I also think doing your absolute level best to fill a team with diverse candidates is not only hard, it is probably the single best thing you can do as an early stage startup. Because when you have people from different backgrounds early on, c…

AI assessment note: “My hunch is that it does largely because the cost of finding really exceptional talent”

Q processes and operations, which Create for a successfully running machine. I have to ask, choose one thing from either side. What's something that you have which works seamlessly well, and you think, you know, you've really excelled at, be it, you know, comp design, be it feedback systems, and then what one thing do you think, you know, over the past few years you've struggled with, and why is that?

A Well, nothing works seamlessly. I think, uh, I don't know that we have something that falls into that category. I can say, you know, we have a hundred percent retention since our founding four years ago, We've never voluntarily lost anyone. You know, we've had to let some people go along the way based on, you know, work product, but I'm very proud of that, and our team is very proud of that, and it will change as we grow. I have no illusions to the fact that that will change as the company grows, but I think that that's a result of trying to stay ahead of people's needs, and I'll give you an example of this. When someone asks for a raise, I think oftentimes companies think, okay, well, this is the first time I've heard of it, so I can get to this, but it's not like necessarily super urgent. Maybe I get to it at the next cycle. Maybe we do it. We've got feedback coming up in six months. We can do it. Then I kind of push it off. What I think sometimes people fail to realize is that the first time that someone brings it up to you, the company is probably the 32nd time that they've talked about it. And at times one through 31 were with their spouse or their significant other or their friend or their coworker. And then the 32nd time was with you. And so they just worked up the courage to tell you, and then you're going to kind of drag your feet because you think you have time. So th…

AI assessment note: “I can say, you know, we have a hundred percent retention since our founding”

Q connectors that can move the needle for the company. In terms of those that do the same, it's always the team itself internally. I often hear, especially in SF, that the hardest element of scaling is talent attraction and retention, and we chatted before, and you said to me that employee retention is a key indicator of broader success. Can you unpack this for me in the thinking here, Andrew?

A I've always wanted to do a study of Companies can graph them based on their retention rates and then sort of their relative success, but I, I'm not exactly sure how to find the data or the time. I'm really curious if high levels of churn or high levels of retention correlate with the company's broader success. My hunch is that it does largely because the cost of finding really exceptional talent and having to find a replacement in the event that they churn is really high. It's high in terms of dollars and it's high in terms of time. And when you look at sort of industry averages of how much time it takes to go from a job description to first day, US averages, I believe, uh, 90 days. The tech industry's averages is 75 days. I think we average about 45 days and maybe a bit too tactical, but like everything from when you begin the process and how transparent you are in the hiring process and your selection criteria and who they're going to be interviewing with all the way through to how you and when you give raises. Staying ahead of an employee's questions and staying ahead of an employee's needs is the best way to retain exceptional talent. I also think doing your absolute level best to fill a team with diverse candidates is not only hard, it is probably the single best thing you can do as an early stage startup. Because when you have people from different backgrounds early on, c…

AI assessment note: “the cost of finding really exceptional talent and having to find a replacement... is really high.”