The Exchanges

Q I'm so pleased that you said about kind of the product lessons there, because when I spoke to Anouk and to Anu before the show, they both stated your insane ability when it comes to products And product velocity in particular. So the question that I first had is, what do you think makes you so good at this today? And how do you have such great product velocity?

A I think a lot of what enables us to build great products is kind of simple. It's, we care deeply about it, build the organization around it. We hire well in the key roles that I think enable companies to build great products. Like we have a really, really high bar For product managers, designers, engineers, data scientists, you know, I probably spend over half my time on it myself, and so I think some of it is just simply focus. Part of it is also, I was really fortunate to work for incredible product leaders at Square. Spent time with Jack. I learned a ton from him. I worked for Brian Gracedonia, who is VP in charge of the Cash App, who I think is a brilliant product thinker. I got to work for Gokul Rajmuran, who, you know, is known as the godfather of AdSense, and so I think I was really fortunate to learn the craft. From three really great product leaders, all of whom had pretty different things to the table. And so I think in some ways, those learnings have enabled us to build, you know, a really great product organization. And then you asked specifically about velocity. I don't know that I can take very much credit for that. I think we have one of the strongest engineering organizations. That's all thanks to Marcelo and Daniele, my two co-founders. Like, I think we've built a engineering organization that takes Pride in the quality and the speed with which they operate and…

AI assessment note: “I think a lot of what enables us to build great products is kind of simple.”

Q You spoke there about kind of the mission, and you spoke about kind of the excellence of the engineering team and the product team. I spoke again to many investors on your cap table, and they said that you have a very written culture. What does a written culture mean to you, Max, first?

A Well, in the simplest terms, we generally use Written prose and documents versus slides. Anytime we've made, we've got a big decision to make, anytime we're working through strategy, all of our PRDs, the product requirement documents, we always use writing to express our ideas and to communicate. I do think that that is a major advantage for us, and I think it does have something to do with the success that we've had. I think I learned that from Gokul, was I think the person that really underscored the importance of that. When I first started working for him, it was at Caviar, and Gokul came in, Caviar when we first acquired them was a little directionless. There was a lot of really talented people. There's a lot of energy, but we didn't exactly, the Caviar didn't exactly know what they were. Were they a consumer app? Were they delivery service for companies? And Google came in and wrote this incredible strategy document that laid out, this is our strategy. You know, these are our strategic pillars. We're going to organize around the strategy. These are the problems that we're going to solve for customers. These are how we're going to measure it. And it blew me away. Like I remember reading that document and being so fired up and just the Clarity that it created for us. Then I had the opportunity to work for him for the next couple of years. And I got to write some strategy doc…

AI assessment note: “in the simplest terms, we generally use Written prose and documents versus slides.”

Q I'm sorry, I am going deep here, but I'm loving this. Like, do you do this in one sitting? How long does it take? Do you involve, you know, your other co-founders in it? Is it a bring in their head of sales, head of marketing? Is it just a your exercise? How does that writing style take place and how does it come together?

A It takes a long time. I would say it's one of the drawbacks to this approach. It's time intensive and it's tiring. If you don't give it the proper amount of time, it can end up not being worth it. And it can actually end up, I think, backfiring potentially. Usually I'll use this last year as an example. I started working on it probably in July while I was working on it. I, we have a head of strategy, Dan Hockenmayer, a brilliant strategic thinker. He was doing a bunch of research along the side, kind of exploring different ideas and different opportunities to And so I started working on it. He was doing the research. As his research came in, my ideas started to take more shape, and it was probably over a month or so that I put it together in close collaboration with him. I shared that with the board. I shared it with our leadership team. I shared it with you other folks around the company to get feedback, incorporated that feedback, shared it with the broader leadership team. We then had an offsite where we debated it, and I teed up Some key questions that the strategy doc revealed, and we did six hours of Q&A around it, rigorously debated the ideas that then, you know, led to some revisions. I then shared that with the company. The company then takes the strategy doc, builds the bottoms up strategy around that, you know, broader strategy document. And as we get bigger and bigg…

AI assessment note: “It takes a long time... I started working on it probably in July”

Q Can I ask you, Max, sorry, I'm shit at referencing. I'm like, so, how was Max to work with? And it's, I didn't ever get below the surface. Can you help me understand how to do referencing well?

A Yeah, I think there's a couple of components of it. I think the first is being prepared, having a specific set of questions that you ask every time. And the questions that I ask are, how did you work with this person? Get in contact. What are this person's strengths? What are the weaknesses that this person had when you were working with them? And I think that actually that qualifier of like when you were working with them is important because it allows the person to speak more candidly that it's not like they can say, well, this person's probably gotten way better, you know, by now, but that time, this was a weakness. I asked on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate their performance when they were working with you? And that one to 10, I also think is really revealing because you get calibrated on like, most people will say somewhere between seven and 10, and if you do six or seven references, you can create a composite score that like, if the person's consistently getting a seven or an eight, that's not great. Like sometimes people will say nine. Ten's really, really rare. The scores are usually between seven, eight, and nine, and I would say seven is like Pretty bad. Eight is okay. Pretty good. And nine is really stellar. And then I asked, why do you give that rating? Which is another opportunity for them to, you know, reveal weaknesses or whatever. And then one thing tha…

AI assessment note: “having a specific set of questions that you ask every time.”

Q You spoke there about kind of the mission, and you spoke about kind of the excellence of the engineering team and the product team. I spoke again to many investors on your cap table, and they said that you have a very written culture. What does a written culture mean to you, Max, first?

A Well, in the simplest terms, we generally use Written prose and documents versus slides. Anytime we've made, we've got a big decision to make, anytime we're working through strategy, all of our PRDs, the product requirement documents, we always use writing to express our ideas and to communicate. I do think that that is a major advantage for us, and I think it does have something to do with the success that we've had. I think I learned that from Gokul, was I think the person that really underscored the importance of that. When I first started working for him, it was at Caviar, and Gokul came in, Caviar when we first acquired them was a little directionless. There was a lot of really talented people. There's a lot of energy, but we didn't exactly, the Caviar didn't exactly know what they were. Were they a consumer app? Were they delivery service for companies? And Google came in and wrote this incredible strategy document that laid out, this is our strategy. You know, these are our strategic pillars. We're going to organize around the strategy. These are the problems that we're going to solve for customers. These are how we're going to measure it. And it blew me away. Like I remember reading that document and being so fired up and just the Clarity that it created for us. Then I had the opportunity to work for him for the next couple of years. And I got to write some strategy doc…

AI assessment note: “we generally use Written prose and documents versus slides. Anytime we've made, we've got a big decision to make”

Q My question to you, like listening to that though, before we dive into the business itself and your leadership, you mentioned the time at Square there. It's a formative time, and it was a formative time for you. How did your time at Square impact your mindset around building FAIR, and what were some of the big takeaways for you from that time?

A That's a really good question. I don't think that FAIR would exist if not for my time at Square. I think I learned everything that Has ultimately led to the success of, of fair at square. I think there's a couple of things that really stand out. I mean, number one is just how product driven square was like Jack is a technologist through and through and a designer cares so much about building great products, like cares maniacally about building great products. I had never seen anything like that before. And I would say I really learned that from him and that Cascaded throughout the entire organization. Everyone there was so committed to just building great products and solving problems. I would say the second thing I learned is the power of a mission driven organization, seeing how powerful it is when everyone is rallied around the mission and the way that that removes politics, the way that that enables people to do the best thing for the company, because ultimately that's the best thing for customers and the level of commitment that I think Square has. Had to that mission, you know, showed up every day. I think Square did a really good job of hiring people that were mission-driven and continuing to make sure that people stayed mission-driven, and I would say those are really the two big things that I took away. There's a lot of other stuff around how to actually build the comp…

AI assessment note: “I don't think that FAIR would exist if not for my time at Square.”

Q are. And I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment, because it is actually a weakness. I agree with that. But anyway, it's fascinating to hear. I want to finish with a nice one, which is Ravi. It is 2030, and FAIR will just be getting started. That was the start of their memo when they wrote it, when they did the check. Where will FAIR be in 2030, Max?

A We're just getting started thing is, is a little bit of a caricature of, you know, the whole founder thing, but I do think it's true. What we're building, we want to build it a lasting company. My hope is that FAIR is around for hundreds of years. In 2030, I think we will be everywhere. I think we'll be a major global presence. I think that we'll be in every category. We'll be in every Major country. We'll be supporting retailers across all the ways that they want to sell, whether it's offline through brick and mortar stores, whether it's online, whether it's through social channels, whether it's in virtual reality, you know, wherever people want to sell, we'll be supporting them and helping them find products wherever they want to be selling. I think we'll be doing a lot more than just connecting retailers and brands. I think there's a whole suite of services that we've already started to work on that are complimentary. And I think there's so many problems That small business owners face, both brands and retailers that we're in a position to solve. I'm really excited to expand beyond that. I do think that by that point, we will have more of a consumer brand and we'll be doing more to directly connect both our retailers and our brands with consumers. I think there's a ton of opportunity there as well. I think most importantly, I think we'll just be still just getting started.

AI assessment note: “In 2030, I think we will be everywhere. I think we'll be a major global presence.”

Q like the digging deeper. One final element before we do a quick fire. You mentioned, like, in the professional life. I really like to go deep on childhood, and their relationship with their parents, and their relationship to money growing up, and ambition. And I find so much of a person's true material and character is in that. Do you not lose that if you just focus on the professionals?

A I think I go all the way back to college. It is interesting. And actually, now that I think about it, when I'm interviewing somebody who's like just a couple of years out of school, I will go back to high school. I do think you learn a lot about somebody's motivations going further and further back. It's just, it's a question of time. This interview, if you really want to go deep on their professional experience, you know, it's a question of your time. It's a question of respecting their time. And I think you probably would get a better interview if you had it be four hours and you went and you started from like age three onward. But I think the value of that time is a little less than the value of more recent professional experiences.

AI assessment note: “value of that time is a little less than the value of more recent professional experiences”

Q I'm so pleased that you said about kind of the product lessons there, because when I spoke to Anouk and to Anu before the show, they both stated your insane ability when it comes to products And product velocity in particular. So the question that I first had is, what do you think makes you so good at this today? And how do you have such great product velocity?

A I think a lot of what enables us to build great products is kind of simple. It's, we care deeply about it, build the organization around it. We hire well in the key roles that I think enable companies to build great products. Like we have a really, really high bar For product managers, designers, engineers, data scientists, you know, I probably spend over half my time on it myself, and so I think some of it is just simply focus. Part of it is also, I was really fortunate to work for incredible product leaders at Square. Spent time with Jack. I learned a ton from him. I worked for Brian Gracedonia, who is VP in charge of the Cash App, who I think is a brilliant product thinker. I got to work for Gokul Rajmuran, who, you know, is known as the godfather of AdSense, and so I think I was really fortunate to learn the craft. From three really great product leaders, all of whom had pretty different things to the table. And so I think in some ways, those learnings have enabled us to build, you know, a really great product organization. And then you asked specifically about velocity. I don't know that I can take very much credit for that. I think we have one of the strongest engineering organizations. That's all thanks to Marcelo and Daniele, my two co-founders. Like, I think we've built a engineering organization that takes Pride in the quality and the speed with which they operate and…

AI assessment note: “we care deeply about it, build the organization around it. We hire well”

Q tell me I'm the thing, and me showing a little bit of myself, and you feeling that safety and security. I do want to ask, and just too intrigued, if you get a 10 and a two, so two separate references, and one goes two and gives reasons why it's a two, and the other goes 10 and gives reasons why it's a 10, what happens in very binary situations?

A I've actually had that happen, it wasn't a 10, but it was like a six. It wasn't a 10 and a two. I think it was like a nine and a six and a seven, and that's a really interesting situation. Those references ended up going much longer because I really wanted to dig in why. Why was this person a six here and a nine here? In that specific situation, the conclusion that I came to was that the manager who gave this person a nine had a bunch of weaknesses that this person rounded out, and they were just like blown away by the things that That this person could do. And it actually, those strengths that this person had weren't the things that we needed in the job. And actually the weaknesses that this person surfaced in when they got the six and the seven were more like the weaknesses that we were really worried about. Look, if you went and you asked all of my past managers, I would get a couple sixes and sevens. I would maybe even get a two from a couple of people, but you have to dig in to understand the why, what actually happened, what were the weaknesses that really were revealed in that situation. Situation. Are those things that this person can get better at? Are those things that this person has gotten better at? Or are those things that just don't matter? Or are they actually deal breakers?

AI assessment note: “Those references ended up going much longer because I really wanted to dig in why.”

Q We're going to touch on Europe. I am intrigued, and I mean this with total respect. You are a very structured thinker and a very structured mind. When faced with a macro event or a cataclysmic change which forces you to change strategy overnight, how do you deal with that? Do you find it challenging?

A I like change. I don't find it challenging. I would argue that it's more of a weakness and Than a strength that I've learned to manage. I get bored easily, and I find change to be exciting, and intentionally tried to hire people around me that are a little bit steadier. Like, one of my co-founders, Daniele, doesn't like change as much, and is a lot more deliberate, and I actually think that we balanced each other out really well. In some ways, it's almost like I have to guard against my instinct to change quickly, and in some ways, I have a harder time driving the aircraft carrier. Carrier than I did the speedboat. The way that I approach it, I try to take a structured approach to it, and that's what we did with COVID, and that's what we've done with Europe as well. The beginning of COVID, we wrote a doc that basically laid out three scenarios for how we saw things playing out. We built a strategy that ensured in all three of those scenarios, we would be successful. You know, we took the time to make sure that we were being really deliberate in the way that we approach it, but it is hard when you've done all this work to just throw that out the window and to kind of Take a blank sheet of paper when something like COVID hits. That is challenging. It's tiring. It's really hard for the organization. I think the change management part of it is really difficult. For me, it's kind of…

AI assessment note: “I like change. I don't find it challenging.”

Q they go, well, let me take you back to my days at Stanford. Final question. I do just have to ask this. You mentioned Europe. It's a big capital allocation decision moving, you know, with Europe as, you know, ambitiously as you are. How has your approach to capital allocation changed over time? I always think the best CEOs are the best capital allocators. How has that changed over time?

A We've definitely gotten a lot more rigorous in the way that we've approached it financially because the dollars at play are just, are so much larger. Our business has gotten more predictable. We have more inputs Into the financial model that we actually understand and can model around. So I would say the number one thing that has changed is just the level of financial discipline we use when making decisions. Like when you're an early stage startup, speed is so important. And there's so many unknowns that you can easily waste time trying to predict what's going to happen. And a lot of times the best way to figure out what's going to happen is just to do it. Again, going back to that speedboat analogy, when you're a bigger company, a, you have more ability to To predict what's going to happen because you have more data to predict and be the dollars that you're putting to work are so much larger that I think you've got to be a good steward of capital and do your best to predict what's going to happen. So I think we've built a really good and invested very heavily in our FNS function to build, you know, an operating model for all of the major decisions that we made. We did that for Europe and we've done that for several other things as well. So I would say that that's probably the number one thing that's changed.

AI assessment note: “the number one thing that has changed is just the level of financial discipline we use”

Q We can change the question to that, which is like, what are some of the biggest lessons you have in terms of hiring and attracting the very best talent?

A The number one thing, build a really disciplined process, and to be very deliberate about the way that you approach the process. To use the process to prevent yourself getting carried away with any one candidate. The big mistake that I used to make is I would fall in love with candidates. I still have this problem. But I get enamored with candidates. All of a sudden, I move into confirmation bias mode. I totally ignore any sort of red flags, just focus on all the positives, and I get other people excited about the candidates, so other people also have the same sort of blindness. Almost all of the hiring mistakes that we made in the early days, I think, really stemmed from me getting so excited. Either I skipped over important steps of the process, or I treated important steps of the process as Rubber stamping.

AI assessment note: “The number one thing, build a really disciplined process”

Q Can you ask Max, how wedded to the strategic decisions in that strategy, Doc, are you? And what I mean by that is there are macro situations like COVID, or there are externalities that are outside of our control. How do you think about how wedded you are to the strategic decisions outlined in that document versus being plastic to move with markets and times and customers?

A That's a really good question. I think that the answer Also changes as the organization gets bigger. One of the analogies that I like to use is when you're a small startup, when you're 15 people, you're a speedboat. You can move really fast. You can change directions really fast. You know, you don't have a ton of firepower. You have speed as a major advantage. As you get bigger, start to look more like, you know, an aircraft carrier. Therefore, need to chart your course more deliberately, and it becomes a lot harder to change course. Once you get to where you're going, you've got an insane amount of firepower that you can Bring to bear on whatever problem it is that you're focused on, but it does put a premium on more advanced planning on being more deliberate, which is why the planning process takes longer. That said, I do think having the ability to change directions quickly is a superpower for even a large organization, and we've been deliberate in the way that we've built our culture to enable us to maintain that. One of our core values is embrace the adventure. It's one of our most important values, and we look to reinforce that. The subcomponents of Embracing the Adventure are we dare greatly. We are resilient. We have a bias towards action. We laugh, and I think making sure that the organization maintains that flexibility is key, and I think we saw that both with COVID. …

AI assessment note: “When COVID happened, we completely said, okay, everything that we planned four months ago”

Q We're going to touch on Europe. I am intrigued, and I mean this with total respect. You are a very structured thinker and a very structured mind. When faced with a macro event or a cataclysmic change which forces you to change strategy overnight, how do you deal with that? Do you find it challenging?

A I like change. I don't find it challenging. I would argue that it's more of a weakness and Than a strength that I've learned to manage. I get bored easily, and I find change to be exciting, and intentionally tried to hire people around me that are a little bit steadier. Like, one of my co-founders, Daniele, doesn't like change as much, and is a lot more deliberate, and I actually think that we balanced each other out really well. In some ways, it's almost like I have to guard against my instinct to change quickly, and in some ways, I have a harder time driving the aircraft carrier. Carrier than I did the speedboat. The way that I approach it, I try to take a structured approach to it, and that's what we did with COVID, and that's what we've done with Europe as well. The beginning of COVID, we wrote a doc that basically laid out three scenarios for how we saw things playing out. We built a strategy that ensured in all three of those scenarios, we would be successful. You know, we took the time to make sure that we were being really deliberate in the way that we approach it, but it is hard when you've done all this work to just throw that out the window and to kind of Take a blank sheet of paper when something like COVID hits. That is challenging. It's tiring. It's really hard for the organization. I think the change management part of it is really difficult. For me, it's kind of…

AI assessment note: “I like change. I don't find it challenging.”

Q Max, how do you structure the process then? I'm super intrigued. You said be very disciplined around the process. What is your process? And if I was a founder today, I mean, genuine, I am a founder. Help me. How do I structure the process?

A There's a really good book called The Who Method that I think does a very good job of laying out a process that we use quite a bit of in our interview process. I think, number one, having good top of funnel. Like, don't fall in love with the first candidate that you meet. Make sure that you are properly calibrated. I do think Particularly really key leadership roles using an executive search firm can be phenomenal. So I think meeting with multiple candidates, not just the first candidate that you meet driving forward, making sure that you actually have got enough people in the process starting all at once that you're going to get properly calibrated. We use a combination of deep behavioral interviews and structured work exercises that we try to do our best to really reveal the key things that the person is going to be doing.

AI assessment note: “We use a combination of deep behavioral interviews and structured work exercises”

Q tell me I'm the thing, and me showing a little bit of myself, and you feeling that safety and security. I do want to ask, and just too intrigued, if you get a 10 and a two, so two separate references, and one goes two and gives reasons why it's a two, and the other goes 10 and gives reasons why it's a 10, what happens in very binary situations?

A I've actually had that happen, it wasn't a 10, but it was like a six. It wasn't a 10 and a two. I think it was like a nine and a six and a seven, and that's a really interesting situation. Those references ended up going much longer because I really wanted to dig in why. Why was this person a six here and a nine here? In that specific situation, the conclusion that I came to was that the manager who gave this person a nine had a bunch of weaknesses that this person rounded out, and they were just like blown away by the things that That this person could do. And it actually, those strengths that this person had weren't the things that we needed in the job. And actually the weaknesses that this person surfaced in when they got the six and the seven were more like the weaknesses that we were really worried about. Look, if you went and you asked all of my past managers, I would get a couple sixes and sevens. I would maybe even get a two from a couple of people, but you have to dig in to understand the why, what actually happened, what were the weaknesses that really were revealed in that situation. Situation. Are those things that this person can get better at? Are those things that this person has gotten better at? Or are those things that just don't matter? Or are they actually deal breakers?

AI assessment note: “Those references ended up going much longer because I really wanted to dig in why.”

Q My question to you, like listening to that though, before we dive into the business itself and your leadership, you mentioned the time at Square there. It's a formative time, and it was a formative time for you. How did your time at Square impact your mindset around building FAIR, and what were some of the big takeaways for you from that time?

A That's a really good question. I don't think that FAIR would exist if not for my time at Square. I think I learned everything that Has ultimately led to the success of, of fair at square. I think there's a couple of things that really stand out. I mean, number one is just how product driven square was like Jack is a technologist through and through and a designer cares so much about building great products, like cares maniacally about building great products. I had never seen anything like that before. And I would say I really learned that from him and that Cascaded throughout the entire organization. Everyone there was so committed to just building great products and solving problems. I would say the second thing I learned is the power of a mission driven organization, seeing how powerful it is when everyone is rallied around the mission and the way that that removes politics, the way that that enables people to do the best thing for the company, because ultimately that's the best thing for customers and the level of commitment that I think Square has. Had to that mission, you know, showed up every day. I think Square did a really good job of hiring people that were mission-driven and continuing to make sure that people stayed mission-driven, and I would say those are really the two big things that I took away. There's a lot of other stuff around how to actually build the comp…

AI assessment note: “number one is just how product driven square was... second thing I learned is the power”

Q We can change the question to that, which is like, what are some of the biggest lessons you have in terms of hiring and attracting the very best talent?

A The number one thing, build a really disciplined process, and to be very deliberate about the way that you approach the process. To use the process to prevent yourself getting carried away with any one candidate. The big mistake that I used to make is I would fall in love with candidates. I still have this problem. But I get enamored with candidates. All of a sudden, I move into confirmation bias mode. I totally ignore any sort of red flags, just focus on all the positives, and I get other people excited about the candidates, so other people also have the same sort of blindness. Almost all of the hiring mistakes that we made in the early days, I think, really stemmed from me getting so excited. Either I skipped over important steps of the process, or I treated important steps of the process as Rubber stamping.

AI assessment note: “The number one thing, build a really disciplined process”

Q they go, well, let me take you back to my days at Stanford. Final question. I do just have to ask this. You mentioned Europe. It's a big capital allocation decision moving, you know, with Europe as, you know, ambitiously as you are. How has your approach to capital allocation changed over time? I always think the best CEOs are the best capital allocators. How has that changed over time?

A We've definitely gotten a lot more rigorous in the way that we've approached it financially because the dollars at play are just, are so much larger. Our business has gotten more predictable. We have more inputs Into the financial model that we actually understand and can model around. So I would say the number one thing that has changed is just the level of financial discipline we use when making decisions. Like when you're an early stage startup, speed is so important. And there's so many unknowns that you can easily waste time trying to predict what's going to happen. And a lot of times the best way to figure out what's going to happen is just to do it. Again, going back to that speedboat analogy, when you're a bigger company, a, you have more ability to To predict what's going to happen because you have more data to predict and be the dollars that you're putting to work are so much larger that I think you've got to be a good steward of capital and do your best to predict what's going to happen. So I think we've built a really good and invested very heavily in our FNS function to build, you know, an operating model for all of the major decisions that we made. We did that for Europe and we've done that for several other things as well. So I would say that that's probably the number one thing that's changed.

AI assessment note: “We've definitely gotten a lot more rigorous in the way that we've approached it financially”

Q Can you ask Max, how wedded to the strategic decisions in that strategy, Doc, are you? And what I mean by that is there are macro situations like COVID, or there are externalities that are outside of our control. How do you think about how wedded you are to the strategic decisions outlined in that document versus being plastic to move with markets and times and customers?

A That's a really good question. I think that the answer Also changes as the organization gets bigger. One of the analogies that I like to use is when you're a small startup, when you're 15 people, you're a speedboat. You can move really fast. You can change directions really fast. You know, you don't have a ton of firepower. You have speed as a major advantage. As you get bigger, start to look more like, you know, an aircraft carrier. Therefore, need to chart your course more deliberately, and it becomes a lot harder to change course. Once you get to where you're going, you've got an insane amount of firepower that you can Bring to bear on whatever problem it is that you're focused on, but it does put a premium on more advanced planning on being more deliberate, which is why the planning process takes longer. That said, I do think having the ability to change directions quickly is a superpower for even a large organization, and we've been deliberate in the way that we've built our culture to enable us to maintain that. One of our core values is embrace the adventure. It's one of our most important values, and we look to reinforce that. The subcomponents of Embracing the Adventure are we dare greatly. We are resilient. We have a bias towards action. We laugh, and I think making sure that the organization maintains that flexibility is key, and I think we saw that both with COVID. …

AI assessment note: “When COVID happened, we completely said, okay, everything that we planned four months ago is no longer relevant”

Q Max, how do you structure the process then? I'm super intrigued. You said be very disciplined around the process. What is your process? And if I was a founder today, I mean, genuine, I am a founder. Help me. How do I structure the process?

A There's a really good book called The Who Method that I think does a very good job of laying out a process that we use quite a bit of in our interview process. I think, number one, having good top of funnel. Like, don't fall in love with the first candidate that you meet. Make sure that you are properly calibrated. I do think Particularly really key leadership roles using an executive search firm can be phenomenal. So I think meeting with multiple candidates, not just the first candidate that you meet driving forward, making sure that you actually have got enough people in the process starting all at once that you're going to get properly calibrated. We use a combination of deep behavioral interviews and structured work exercises that we try to do our best to really reveal the key things that the person is going to be doing.

AI assessment note: “We use a combination of deep behavioral interviews and structured work exercises”

Q Max, help me. Obviously, you know the shit out of strategy docs. What makes a great strategy doc, and what makes a not-so-great strategy doc? For founders listening who are going, huh, we don't do that. We should probably adopt that, but actually, we don't have a benchmark for what good is, what bad is, what

A I'd recommend a couple of books, actually. I think Good Strategy, Bad Strategy is a great book on how to craft a really good strategy, and I'll talk a little bit about what that is. I think Working Backwards, the Amazon book, is also really excellent on this. Amazon, at least as far as I know, they were really the first to introduce this idea of writing, and we borrowed pretty heavily from them in the way that we structure our, our strategy documents, but there's a couple of things that make for a really good strategy document. One is a really good diagnosis of the situation. So I always start up front with a context section lays out, you know, here's the strategic context. Here are the key challenges that we are facing. And then moving into the strategic pillars that actually allow you to create a strategy that enables you to solve those challenges. So I think it's getting really clear on what are the problems that you're trying to solve. I tend to think about problems as being business problems and customer problems. Like ultimately your job as a company is to create business value, create profit by solving problems for your customers. And so being really good at identifying what are the problems that matter most? And what are the problems that offer the most opportunity to create business value? And then laying out your solutions in the form of what I call strategic pillars …

AI assessment note: “there's a couple of things that make for a really good strategy document”

Q Max, help me. Obviously, you know the shit out of strategy docs. What makes a great strategy doc, and what makes a not-so-great strategy doc? For founders listening who are going, huh, we don't do that. We should probably adopt that, but actually, we don't have a benchmark for what good is, what bad is, what

A I'd recommend a couple of books, actually. I think Good Strategy, Bad Strategy is a great book on how to craft a really good strategy, and I'll talk a little bit about what that is. I think Working Backwards, the Amazon book, is also really excellent on this. Amazon, at least as far as I know, they were really the first to introduce this idea of writing, and we borrowed pretty heavily from them in the way that we structure our, our strategy documents, but there's a couple of things that make for a really good strategy document. One is a really good diagnosis of the situation. So I always start up front with a context section lays out, you know, here's the strategic context. Here are the key challenges that we are facing. And then moving into the strategic pillars that actually allow you to create a strategy that enables you to solve those challenges. So I think it's getting really clear on what are the problems that you're trying to solve. I tend to think about problems as being business problems and customer problems. Like ultimately your job as a company is to create business value, create profit by solving problems for your customers. And so being really good at identifying what are the problems that matter most? And what are the problems that offer the most opportunity to create business value? And then laying out your solutions in the form of what I call strategic pillars …

AI assessment note: “there's a couple of things that make for a really good strategy document.”