The Exchanges

Q I do love you, Mickey. That is such a good answer. I want to move into a quick fire around my friend. So I'm going to say a short statement. You give me your thoughts. What's your favorite book and why?

A Uh, like I read like 200 pages of internal documents a day, like welcome to a 20,000 person company, my friend. Um, my favorite book though, it's actually very clear from a professional point of view, that would be Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Uh, if there's a book I spent the most time on professionally, that's that book. I've read the paragraph, the struggle, maybe like, 20 times in my career. The paragraph about how to fire as an executive several times when I've had to do it. How to demote a loyal friend several times when I have to do it. Wartime CEO, peacetime CEO several times when I've been in a, in a fucked up competitive situation. So that's been the only book that has really given me solace, because there's a lot of these management books that tell you how to be an amazing leader. And then you're like, how are you an amazing leader when you're running out of money? Your competition is killing you. You know, you're not sure that you're going to be able to keep everyone that's working in the team. You're not sure the technology is going to work out. The product is going to work out. You're doing the right decisions. Like, you know, how did you like, you know, make great decisions and be a great leader in that instance? And that, that book I love for that reason that it gives you solace.

AI assessment note: “my favorite book though, it's actually very clear... Hard Things About Hard Things”

Q Can I ask, was there ever a point in the journey, Mickey, where you felt you were behind the scaling of the company? Several times. When was the most poignant one when you're like, I don't know if I'm growing as fast and I'm fucking worried.

A Yeah, like several times, like, you know, the CEO job, like I've been the CEO of Walt since, uh, you know, I had an idea to a founding team to around 7000 people today. So I have, you know, the role has changed quite significantly on the journey. And there's been multiple points in time when I felt like, you know, I'm underwater and I'm going to drown unless I somehow, you know, figure out a way to get back on top. Like I'll give you an example. This is a vivid experience. I remember the same case cool. And he led our series A from equity ventures. Uh, and we had this session in Amsterdam for, for eight hours, we were talking about the booking story and he was an early investor in Uber and he was very involved in the early days of Uber. And he, Explain the Uber story and so forth. And, you know, what the, what's there to learn. One of the things he said to me was that, Miki, the most important hire you're going to make next is that you need a great recruiter. That's the most important hire, your first recruiter. And I go to, I write it like great recruiter, you know, top priority. And I go to Helsinki and I'm like, I've never met a recruiter in my life. I was like 20 something year old. So never worked at a real company outside of Supercell and Supercell didn't really have full time recruiters back then. Um, and I'm like, What does a recruiter do? What does a great recruiter lo…

AI assessment note: “feeling this uncomfortable feeling of like having absolutely no idea what recruiting is”

Q Oh, God. Um, yeah, media companies are much more fun and profitable. Um, can I, can I ask, um, you mentioned, uh, the investor who said yes. Who was the investor?

A Laurel Bowden out of A&T North. Um, A&T North, you know, formerly Greylock in Europe. Um, like Laurel is, uh, hands down, probably the best growth investor I know. I look up to her immensely when it comes to Um, her impact on Walton and, and what she's like as an investor, also her partner Arnon is just well class. They were the two involved in Walton. How it went actually, he was an early, she was an early investor in Just Eat. So she sat on the board of Just Eat basically from, I think, Series A or B until IPO. So she knew the industry. I didn't know this, but they had been looking for a company, um, with our top of a model, uh, in the US. They had a hypothesis that there's a, Uh, there's an opportunity in the US in these kind of underserved long-tail markets in food delivery. They were trying to look for a company to invest in that space, and they realized that a lot of restaurants don't do delivery in these areas, so they figured that we have to invest in someone who does delivery as a service. Um, then they looked at, I think, close to a hundred companies doing what Vault does, and they concluded that this model does not work. It is impossible to have great retention and great unit economics and a viable business for the merchant and for the courier. Exist at the same time. So, um, I happened to run into someone who was like, you have to talk with Laurel and 83 North. They…

AI assessment note: “Laurel Bowden out of A&T North.”

Q I've done it for eight years. But do you ever get off the treadmill? Do you ever sit and go, ah, that was great. Well done team. I'm super proud.

A So when I, I remember when, uh, I was like a lot young student at the university dabbling in the world of startups. And I, I ran into this like older student that has started a gaming startup and they raised two and a half million from index. And they had this penthouse office, 15 employees, their own sauna with a terrace of, with a view of the city in Helsinki. This is like 2000 and like 11 or something. Uh, and I was like, man, these people are cool. Like they have their own company and their own office and millions of financing and they're building games. And it was the coolest thing ever. So when we raised and I was like, you know, you've made it when you make there. So when I raised the, or we raised the, the two million round of financing are, are like, uh, Um, like, uh, seed extension round back in 2015, I was like, fuck, like, you know, we're so underfunded, like, you know, we need to get more financing, and we raised the ten million round of financing, still so underfunded, we raised a hundred million, we raised half a million, like, you get cities profitable, you get countries profitable, you sell secondary, you know, you, you know, ah, you know, exit the company to DoorDash, and there's just always the next mountain. Like what I've learned over the years is that if you're one of these personalities that, you know, just wants to build something, you're never going to …

AI assessment note: “you're never going to be satisfied. There's never going to be a mountain top”

Q I've done it for eight years. But do you ever get off the treadmill? Do you ever sit and go, ah, that was great. Well done team. I'm super proud.

A So when I, I remember when, uh, I was like a lot young student at the university dabbling in the world of startups. And I, I ran into this like older student that has started a gaming startup and they raised two and a half million from index. And they had this penthouse office, 15 employees, their own sauna with a terrace of, with a view of the city in Helsinki. This is like 2000 and like 11 or something. Uh, and I was like, man, these people are cool. Like they have their own company and their own office and millions of financing and they're building games. And it was the coolest thing ever. So when we raised and I was like, you know, you've made it when you make there. So when I raised the, or we raised the, the two million round of financing are, are like, uh, Um, like, uh, seed extension round back in 2015, I was like, fuck, like, you know, we're so underfunded, like, you know, we need to get more financing, and we raised the ten million round of financing, still so underfunded, we raised a hundred million, we raised half a million, like, you get cities profitable, you get countries profitable, you sell secondary, you know, you, you know, ah, you know, exit the company to DoorDash, and there's just always the next mountain. Like what I've learned over the years is that if you're one of these personalities that, you know, just wants to build something, you're never going to …

AI assessment note: “you're never going to be satisfied. There's never going to be a mountain top”

Q Can I ask, what has been the hardest decision around focus for you with Volt?

A I mean, we started with this grand vision of The everything app, every local service, everything you can buy in a city, you can get on our platform. You know, we want to do everything. We want to do restaurant, grocery. We don't want to do like clothes, electronics. We want to do services. We want to sell you movie tickets. Uh, that's the vision of the company. And for the five first years of our existence, restaurant, food, delivery. When we saw that it worked, we were like cut everything else. This is really difficult to do. We're only going to focus on doing this with great, quick, consistent customer experience and efficiency and good unit economics. That was a very difficult decision over years to keep on bringing people back to the fact that like, we still want to do these, all of these other things, but right now we need to focus on this.

AI assessment note: “we were like cut everything else. This is really difficult to do. We're only”

Q Can I ask, was there ever a point in the journey, Mickey, where you felt you were behind the scaling of the company? Several times. When was the most poignant one when you're like, I don't know if I'm growing as fast and I'm fucking worried.

A Yeah, like several times, like, you know, the CEO job, like I've been the CEO of Walt since, uh, you know, I had an idea to a founding team to around 7000 people today. So I have, you know, the role has changed quite significantly on the journey. And there's been multiple points in time when I felt like, you know, I'm underwater and I'm going to drown unless I somehow, you know, figure out a way to get back on top. Like I'll give you an example. This is a vivid experience. I remember the same case cool. And he led our series A from equity ventures. Uh, and we had this session in Amsterdam for, for eight hours, we were talking about the booking story and he was an early investor in Uber and he was very involved in the early days of Uber. And he, Explain the Uber story and so forth. And, you know, what the, what's there to learn. One of the things he said to me was that, Miki, the most important hire you're going to make next is that you need a great recruiter. That's the most important hire, your first recruiter. And I go to, I write it like great recruiter, you know, top priority. And I go to Helsinki and I'm like, I've never met a recruiter in my life. I was like 20 something year old. So never worked at a real company outside of Supercell and Supercell didn't really have full time recruiters back then. Um, and I'm like, What does a recruiter do? What does a great recruiter lo…

AI assessment note: “I remember like feeling this uncomfortable feeling of like having absolutely no idea”

Q I do love you, Mickey. That is such a good answer. I want to move into a quick fire around my friend. So I'm going to say a short statement. You give me your thoughts. What's your favorite book and why?

A Uh, like I read like 200 pages of internal documents a day, like welcome to a 20,000 person company, my friend. Um, my favorite book though, it's actually very clear from a professional point of view, that would be Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Uh, if there's a book I spent the most time on professionally, that's that book. I've read the paragraph, the struggle, maybe like, 20 times in my career. The paragraph about how to fire as an executive several times when I've had to do it. How to demote a loyal friend several times when I have to do it. Wartime CEO, peacetime CEO several times when I've been in a, in a fucked up competitive situation. So that's been the only book that has really given me solace, because there's a lot of these management books that tell you how to be an amazing leader. And then you're like, how are you an amazing leader when you're running out of money? Your competition is killing you. You know, you're not sure that you're going to be able to keep everyone that's working in the team. You're not sure the technology is going to work out. The product is going to work out. You're doing the right decisions. Like, you know, how did you like, you know, make great decisions and be a great leader in that instance? And that, that book I love for that reason that it gives you solace.

AI assessment note: “my favorite book though... that would be Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.”

Q things that I want to touch on, and in terms of kind of leaders that you bring into the team, what have been some big lessons for you that you think are really important in terms of, I don't know, I don't know where we can start here, because it's like, Yeah. What have been your biggest lessons in terms of getting those great people? What works? What doesn't work?

A So one of my biggest lessons on hiring came from a guy called Case Koolan. He was the CEO of Booking.com from a like a 20 person company to like one of the biggest, I think the biggest consumer software company out of Europe. Um, and Case told me that, you know, one mistake people make in hiring is that they're looking for the person that has already done, uh, you know, what you need. And you're like, we need to hire that person. He's done this before. He's going to do it for us. And it's going to be amazing. But what people don't realize is that very few people do these things twice in their life. And actually what you need to be looking for is this person before they did the thing. Like you look for the person that, okay, in this company, there's a person that did the thing that we now need. I need to look at what was that person like before they started at that company. You're looking for that person. And that's been my biggest learning in hiring is that, you know, you ultimately need to be able to grow a lot of people with your company, take a lot of bets on people, and you need to be able to hire for that potential. Like it's so easy to go to this mode that you're just trying to hire the logos into your company and the past experiences and the whatnots. But actually you build a successful company by having a large group of people that do those things for the first time wit…

AI assessment note: “So one of my biggest lessons on hiring came from a guy called Case Koolan.”

Q I totally get you. I mean, speaking kind of doing talks and being in public, you know, there's this real idolization of CEOs today and leaders in, especially in Silicon Valley, I think. And we've spoken before about kind of the, the myth of the CEO and the superhero CEO. What do you think people get wrong about these notions? And Why should we maybe rethink them?

A So when I was an early stage CEO of Slush, my previous company, um, my chairman of the board at the time, an experienced investor told me that like, you know, Mickey, you're a CEO. You're like the knight on the white horse. Like you want to be there at the front with your sword in the air, leading the troops to the battle. But if you really want to build something big, something scalable, Like you need to be able to build a team that is able to succeed, succeed without you. And your biggest KPI at the end of the day is if you die tomorrow, is the company still going to succeed? Like, are you able to build something that succeeds, uh, you know, in your absence? Uh, and I think if I look at the, like the, the methodology of the founder or the, like the, the all powerful CEO, it's almost like creating this picture of someone that, you know, like, you know, hires everyone up until a thousand employees, which to me tells that, oh, you don't trust your people to hire people. Like, you know, because ultimately your job as a CEO is to build a team that succeeds without you. Your team is to build a team that you can trust To hire really good people, because if you're required for every hire, your company is not going to be, you know, a very scalable hiring operation.

AI assessment note: “your job as a CEO is to build a team that succeeds without you”

Q pain, my friend. Can I ask, do you think your jobs got harder? With consumer expectations increasing more and more, where we now have 10 minute delivery, you're totally right. Before, two hours, it doesn't matter. It came and we were happy that it came. Now, It has to be now, and it has to be hot, and it has to be incredible. So is it harder now than ever?

A I think it's always harder than ever. I think consumer expectations will keep on increasing, not just like from where we started and where we are today, but also like where we're going to be in five or 10 years. Like, you know, consumer experience in our case, like, you know, we like to think that it's okay. It's selection. It's what you can order on the platform. It's affordability. Is it like, uh, inexpensive to use? Can you use it every day? It's quality. Uh, you know, like, is it quick? You know, we promised X that we deliver on X. What if something goes wrong? And all three, The expectation goes up. It has to be cheaper. It has to be better. It has to be more reliable. You have need to have better selection. You need to have things available that are not available in the physical world. And the race to build a company like us is to just be able to continue to improve as consumer expectations also improve. Otherwise you're out of business.

AI assessment note: “I think it's always harder than ever. I think consumer expectations will keep on increasing”

Q Can I ask, what has been the hardest decision around focus for you with Volt?

A I mean, we started with this grand vision of The everything app, every local service, everything you can buy in a city, you can get on our platform. You know, we want to do everything. We want to do restaurant, grocery. We don't want to do like clothes, electronics. We want to do services. We want to sell you movie tickets. Uh, that's the vision of the company. And for the five first years of our existence, restaurant, food, delivery. When we saw that it worked, we were like cut everything else. This is really difficult to do. We're only going to focus on doing this with great, quick, consistent customer experience and efficiency and good unit economics. That was a very difficult decision over years to keep on bringing people back to the fact that like, we still want to do these, all of these other things, but right now we need to focus on this.

AI assessment note: “cut everything else. This is really difficult to do.”

Q Can I ask, sorry, going back to the hiring, there's always challenges that one faces. What were the biggest mistakes that you made in the hiring?

A Hmm. Hiring for logos. Like, I remember, like, we had another company. I'm not going to say any names. That would be impolite. But we had another company that was interested in acquiring our company many years ago. I'm not going to mention the year. And they had a, like, very impressive team. Their management team came to Helsinki, and we spent time with them, and we had all these dinners and stuff and so forth. And ultimately, they gave us an offer on the company that we ultimately said no to. And I remember my co-founder, who's a little bit like autistic, you know, The developer, like, you know, doesn't really care about, uh, care about other things than, you know, how things are in the rational world. And he was like, you know, talking about the VP of engineering of that other company was like, yeah, he's a really impressive CV. Like he was in this company in Silicon Valley and that company in Silicon Valley and that company in this role. And he's involved in that project we all hear about. Yeah. Like, it's like, this is a very similar person to the best people or some of the people we see in Helsinki, but the logos are more well known. And I just remember like being like, yeah, that's a really good point. Like, you know, you, you get dazzled by these logos because there are global services you've heard of, but it doesn't mean that you wouldn't have fantastic people in compa…

AI assessment note: “my biggest mistakes in hiring were going after logos.”

Q Can I ask, do you start from a relationship of full trust, and it's yours to be lost, or do you start with little, and it's there to be gained?

A Hmm, that's a very good question. Depends on the thing. Like, I try to start with an assumption of trust, and that's what we, what we also say within the company. Like, assume good intentions. Assume that people are trying to help the company succeed. That's my starting point. But if I have something that I'm personally very passionate about, something that I've, you know, been close to during the history of the company, like, you know, I'm not going to be very trusting until I see that you got it. You know, the first person to lead product outside of myself in vault. The first person to lead brand outside of myself in vault. Like, these kind of things that are very close to my heart, and I have a very strong opinion about those things. Like, I'm not just gonna let someone take it over and do whatever they can out of it before I see that they get it right. Because I don't want us to, like, you know, fuck the thing up.

AI assessment note: “Depends on the thing. Like, I try to start with an assumption of trust”

Q I totally get you. I mean, speaking kind of doing talks and being in public, you know, there's this real idolization of CEOs today and leaders in, especially in Silicon Valley, I think. And we've spoken before about kind of the, the myth of the CEO and the superhero CEO. What do you think people get wrong about these notions? And Why should we maybe rethink them?

A So when I was an early stage CEO of Slush, my previous company, um, my chairman of the board at the time, an experienced investor told me that like, you know, Mickey, you're a CEO. You're like the knight on the white horse. Like you want to be there at the front with your sword in the air, leading the troops to the battle. But if you really want to build something big, something scalable, Like you need to be able to build a team that is able to succeed, succeed without you. And your biggest KPI at the end of the day is if you die tomorrow, is the company still going to succeed? Like, are you able to build something that succeeds, uh, you know, in your absence? Uh, and I think if I look at the, like the, the methodology of the founder or the, like the, the all powerful CEO, it's almost like creating this picture of someone that, you know, like, you know, hires everyone up until a thousand employees, which to me tells that, oh, you don't trust your people to hire people. Like, you know, because ultimately your job as a CEO is to build a team that succeeds without you. Your team is to build a team that you can trust To hire really good people, because if you're required for every hire, your company is not going to be, you know, a very scalable hiring operation.

AI assessment note: “ultimately your job as a CEO is to build a team that succeeds without you.”

Q things that I want to touch on, and in terms of kind of leaders that you bring into the team, what have been some big lessons for you that you think are really important in terms of, I don't know, I don't know where we can start here, because it's like, Yeah. What have been your biggest lessons in terms of getting those great people? What works? What doesn't work?

A So one of my biggest lessons on hiring came from a guy called Case Koolan. He was the CEO of Booking.com from a like a 20 person company to like one of the biggest, I think the biggest consumer software company out of Europe. Um, and Case told me that, you know, one mistake people make in hiring is that they're looking for the person that has already done, uh, you know, what you need. And you're like, we need to hire that person. He's done this before. He's going to do it for us. And it's going to be amazing. But what people don't realize is that very few people do these things twice in their life. And actually what you need to be looking for is this person before they did the thing. Like you look for the person that, okay, in this company, there's a person that did the thing that we now need. I need to look at what was that person like before they started at that company. You're looking for that person. And that's been my biggest learning in hiring is that, you know, you ultimately need to be able to grow a lot of people with your company, take a lot of bets on people, and you need to be able to hire for that potential. Like it's so easy to go to this mode that you're just trying to hire the logos into your company and the past experiences and the whatnots. But actually you build a successful company by having a large group of people that do those things for the first time wit…

AI assessment note: “actually what you need to be looking for is this person before they did the thing”

Q pain, my friend. Can I ask, do you think your jobs got harder? With consumer expectations increasing more and more, where we now have 10 minute delivery, you're totally right. Before, two hours, it doesn't matter. It came and we were happy that it came. Now, It has to be now, and it has to be hot, and it has to be incredible. So is it harder now than ever?

A I think it's always harder than ever. I think consumer expectations will keep on increasing, not just like from where we started and where we are today, but also like where we're going to be in five or 10 years. Like, you know, consumer experience in our case, like, you know, we like to think that it's okay. It's selection. It's what you can order on the platform. It's affordability. Is it like, uh, inexpensive to use? Can you use it every day? It's quality. Uh, you know, like, is it quick? You know, we promised X that we deliver on X. What if something goes wrong? And all three, The expectation goes up. It has to be cheaper. It has to be better. It has to be more reliable. You have need to have better selection. You need to have things available that are not available in the physical world. And the race to build a company like us is to just be able to continue to improve as consumer expectations also improve. Otherwise you're out of business.

AI assessment note: “I think it's always harder than ever. I think consumer expectations will keep on increasing”

Q Can I ask, do you start from a relationship of full trust, and it's yours to be lost, or do you start with little, and it's there to be gained?

A Hmm, that's a very good question. Depends on the thing. Like, I try to start with an assumption of trust, and that's what we, what we also say within the company. Like, assume good intentions. Assume that people are trying to help the company succeed. That's my starting point. But if I have something that I'm personally very passionate about, something that I've, you know, been close to during the history of the company, like, you know, I'm not going to be very trusting until I see that you got it. You know, the first person to lead product outside of myself in vault. The first person to lead brand outside of myself in vault. Like, these kind of things that are very close to my heart, and I have a very strong opinion about those things. Like, I'm not just gonna let someone take it over and do whatever they can out of it before I see that they get it right. Because I don't want us to, like, you know, fuck the thing up.

AI assessment note: “Depends on the thing. Like, I try to start with an assumption of trust”

Q for most of the days and nights. And I go like, are you kidding me? Like, look at my fucking to-do list. Am I lonely? What a luxury to be lonely. Um, and so I'm almost quite grateful for it, because otherwise I would be quite lonely. I'm really going off, but I really like you, Mickey. Is that weird and random, and have you been the same? Like, genuinely?

A So, It is a lonely job to be the CEO of a company because there is, there are a lot of things that by definition, like I, I describe being a CEO as being like the single point of failure between two pyramids, you know, one at the bottom and one at the top, uh, you know, connected by their tips, uh, because like, you know, on the top, you have your shareholders, you have your investors, you have your former employees, your board, all these other people, and they're looking down and they're like, yay, Mickey, you got this. And then you have like, you know, everyone in the top bottom, which is like all of your, Employees, everyone in your team, your co-founders, everyone, everyone's looking up like, Mickey, you got it. And you're standing in the middle, like, why is everyone staring at me? That's oftentimes what it feels like being the CEO. Like, you know, there's a really difficult decision. Everyone has, you know, opinions and, you know, a good conversation. And then ultimately people look at you and like, okay, so what do we do? Uh, so it's a very lonely job. One thing that has helped me is that, you know, since founding Walt in my previous company, I realized that You know, you oftentimes in an inexperienced leader, you try to protect the team from things you're afraid of for things that keep you up at night. You're like, I'm going to like protect the team from these things. A…

AI assessment note: “It is a lonely job to be the CEO of a company”

Q Can I ask Miki, when you sell a company, you obviously get liquidity and your financial profile changes. How do you think about your relationship to money today, your relationship to money then when you could have sold and made really good money? Like, how do you think about that relationship to money today?

A So for me, this has genuinely never been about money. And the moment I realized that this is not just something you say to investors to make, you know, them feel like you're in it for the long term and you don't just want to run when someone gives you a check or offers you a check. The moment I realized that was when we got our first acquisition offer. This was 2015. We're a one year old as a company and we get an acquisition offer, which had like cash or stock involved. And I was like, you know, 2015. I was 26. It was a big amount of money. Like when I started Walt, my credit card was maxed out. I was zero euros in my bank account. I was literally living from like hand to mouth. Like I wasn't one of these people that had like money to go around or whatever. Um, and I remember contemplating on it, uh, for quite a few nights and same with my co-founders. And I just ultimately came to the conclusion that like, I want to see what comes out of this. And there's the same thing. The next acquisition offer we got was the same thing. Like sure. There's a lot of money that you could have made in the moment, but we are not done. So like, for me, I realized over that time that for me, it was really never about the money. Like, you know, for me, it was about the fact that, you know, we get this maybe once in a lifetime opportunity to build something. I want to see what comes out of it. And…

AI assessment note: “So for me, this has genuinely never been about money.”

Q I spoke to him before the show, always a lesson when I speak to Tony. Um, tell me, what's your biggest guilty pleasure, Mickey?

A Fortnite. I'm, I'm a gamer by background, so I, I spent my growing up years, like, being a shit ton of games, like, you know, Dota. I grew up with that game. My first, uh, leadership experience was starting a Dota clan on, like, Walker III, like the battle net, and we had, like, 60 people, and I was the chieftain of the clan. That's the first time I fired someone. I still remember firing a person that's, like, I was, like, 15, and the other guy is, like, 15, and you're not, like, making it work for the clan anymore. Like, sorry, you have to go. Um, so I'm a gamer, and like, I hadn't played games for a very long time. You can notice I have a gaming rig on, because this gaming rig I bought myself as a present in January, twenty-twenty, and you know what happened to this game in, like, March, twenty-twenty, when COVID started. But, uh, Fortnite, I picked up with some friends, uh, when COVID started, where you couldn't, like, go out and do stuff, and we kept on doing it since. Like, with a small group of people, like, just, like, you know, hanging out, you know, talking shit about stuff, you know, maybe drinking a beer. Uh, it's a really nice pastime.

AI assessment note: “Fortnite. I'm, I'm a gamer by background”

Q they are the, I don't know, deputy assistant rising star of their function. No offense, Mickey, they've never heard of you, they don't know you, they don't know what you do, and they're probably at a pretty good company in a more junior position, but how do you convince those when they have no prior knowledge, and you have no brand, and really, you need to sell the hard way?

A It's your last, you're asking a CEO. Uh, this question is like asking a developer, like, so how do you write code? Like, you know, like, you know, lines, like that's what you do. Like if you, if you want to build a company from the get go, like what are growth companies? Growth companies are glorified recruiting operations. And every single senior person in a growth company has to become a great recruiter. What is a great recruiter? A great recruiter is someone That can get people as excited about the opportunity as they are. That is the art that there's a lot of things that you could do. Like I remember when we expanded to new countries as well, that no one had ever heard of us. And we had, we didn't announce a round of financing for three years. We had raised financing, but we kept a low profile. We didn't do any press because we didn't want anyone noticing what we were doing. So we're hiring people and people are like, oh, vault sounds like a company that's going to go bankrupt because you haven't raised funding in such a long time and so forth. So we just started hacking this thing. We noticed, for instance, that when using my LinkedIn profile to contact someone for like a GM position hire in a country where no one has ever heard of, heard of us, my profile had better conversion of the people responding back to me. Uh, so I started writing these cold messages to people abou…

AI assessment note: “recruiters had my LinkedIn password and username, so they could write messages as Mickey”

Q Do you agree with the statement, never meet your heroes, they'll disappoint you?

A Hmm. I've met a lot of my heroes over the years, um, and some of them are still my heroes, and I've made new heroes along the way. Like you meet, you meet people where you over time realize that these are people you want to look up to. These are people you want to learn from. Oftentimes they're not the same people that you look up to from the outside, you know, from the magazines and the whatnots. Um, I think the reality is like one of my co-founders said it really well, that the greatest strengths of any individual are often the sources of their greatest weaknesses. Like if you have great energy, You're also maybe going to be a bit disruptive on the organization. Like one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses as an example. Um, and that means that like, you know, the, the heroes, you only see the strengths. You don't see the weaknesses. And when you get to know them, you see the weaknesses and they might not be quite the kind of people that you thought they would be.

AI assessment note: “some of them are still my heroes”

Q I have to ask, when you started, was it immediate product market fit? Did you know instantly that it was a service users loved? When was that moment when you were like, we have something here?

A No. So, uh, Volt's founding thesis was that, okay, the world is going online. Consumers want to be able to interact with like different services, uh, using their phone. You know, it's going to start with things that are easy to do as like a pure digital service, like music or entertainment or video or news and so forth. And eventually you end up with all the physical services, like the things that are more difficult to do as an online thing, because you have to do like a hybrid of online and offline. And I was like, you know, what is this going to mean to local services? The restaurant is the biggest local service. We eat every day. You know, what is the button for food going to look like on the phone? So we started with like a vision. Like we, we didn't start with like, you know, we have a problem. We're going to fix this problem. We were like the restaurant and food is going to end up as a button on the phone and we're going to figure out how it happens. And, you know, argument thesis was that we're going to do everything about the restaurant online. We're going to take the order online, the transaction online. If there's a reservation, we do reservation. If there's delivery, we do delivery. We do takeaway. We do discovery. We're going to build the Spotify. Of people figuring out what are the most popular dishes in the city. Like you like chicken and avocado. We're going to f…

AI assessment note: “No. So, uh, Volt's founding thesis was that”

Q Totally. Um, I also have a, uh, great large ego and deep insecurity and you don't. So there's, you know, maybe reasoning behind that. Wow. No offense. Why the fuck did you choose Japan? I'm sorry. I remember reading this. I was like, huh?

A I mean, we've looked at always like, uh, always at the globe, um, as our kind of home base. Like the reason we stick to stuck to Europe in the early years was that time zones are expensive. Like longer flights are more expensive. Uh, if you need to support like, you know, customers six hours times away, it means there's going to be engineers up every night pretty late. Uh, and if you have a 20 person engineering team, like, man, that team is going to be under a lot of stress very quickly. So, okay, let's go south. Because the, like the time zones are going to be similar, but we were always looking at the whole club and we just saw that that's an interesting market because it's underpenetrated. It's a very difficult market, but it's an underpenetrated market in our industry. And that's, you know, how we've expanded. We've always looked for the places where we can create, uh, the most value with the most efficient investment.

AI assessment note: “an interesting market because it's underpenetrated... where we can create, uh, the most value”

Q I totally get you. You mentioned compensation earlier as part of that trust building exercise. I just want to understand, just so we nailed it down. You said before, it's such an important driver of shaping culture. Like for founders listening, how can we use compensation intelligently to shape culture?

A So my feeling was always that I'd rather be a little bit more generous than a little bit more stingy. That was my guiding principle. It's the same thing about like culture. I, Always err on the side of transparency. If there's something I can share with the company, like I always ask, is there a reason I couldn't share it? If there's not, I'm going to share it. If I'm thinking about sharing it to the smaller group and I'm like, is there some reason I couldn't share it to the bigger group? I will default to the bigger group. It's the same thing with, uh, with compensation. I try to err on the side of treating the employees, treating the team more fairly than not. Um, I think a lot of companies try to be a little bit too smart around like all the terms and, you know, how quickly you need to subscribe your shares if you leave the company and the vesting periods and, and the whatnots. Like I will, I, my kind of thinking has been make it as vanilla, as fair, uh, as possible for the team. Like our approach, since we, like up until we were like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people, uh, you know, every single, uh, comp, uh, employee in the company was eligible to get stock options in the company. Even when we were thousands of people and you came to customer support as a part-time employee, there's a way to become a stock option holder in the company. Uh, and the thing was that l…

AI assessment note: “make it as vanilla, as fair, uh, as possible for the team.”

Q I, I, I totally agree. Do you agree with hire fast, fire fast?

A No. Uh, my thinking is that hiring is a commitment. When we hire someone, we're serious. We are hiring someone because we want to commit to them, and we want them to commit to us. We will have failed as a company if we part ways with you. We will still have to make those difficult decisions because, like, we're not going to be a successful company if we don't make the difficult decisions. But companies that are like, oh, we're going to hire 10 people and fire half of them, I don't think that's a great company. I don't think that's like a very high level of trustworthiness or integrity or, You know, like, you know, that the company is showing, like, I want to work for a company that, you know, I can work my asshole for, and the company is going to stick it, uh, you know, be there for me, even if, you know, you know, I fumble and things go a little bit wrong because they see all the work I've done for the company. Then it needs to be a two way street. That's the trust I was talking about.

AI assessment note: “No. Uh, my thinking is that hiring is a commitment.”

Q Yeah, I think that's probably what happens, but I'm a VC, so who fucking knows. Um, I do want to ask, in terms of like, lessons learned scaling to 7000 people, what's the most difficult but valuable lesson that you've learned that you're also really quite pleased to have experienced?

A Hmm. It's a good question. Um, I think one realization in hindsight is that You're not going to be, when you're a 20 person company or a five person company, you're not going to be able to, like, I look at people we hire today into Vault, that's like, you know, different roles. Like, if Mickey founding Vault applied to hire, you know, work at Vault today, like, I would at best work in customer support. At best. Like, I would never qualify for the top 95% of the jobs in the company, if I even qualified in the first place. Like, I'm not a, like, I dropped out from university, and like, I, I didn't, you know, study at IMDB, like, at, like, Stanford or MIT, and, um, I, I didn't like, you know, work at McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group and all the biggest and the fanciest companies in the world and whatnot. So, like, I think the big realization is that, you know, as a company, you know, you have to take more bets on people in the early days, and you also find people that take a bigger bet on you as a company. And as a result, you get this very entrepreneurial type of bunch of people that, you know, can go through, Uh, many very, very interesting and intriguing paths with the company's growth. And then when it will become bigger and bigger, you're just able to choose like more and more merited and smart and, uh, and driven and motivated and, uh, and so forth people from around the…

AI assessment note: “at every stage you're going to be hiring the best people that you can get”

Q What advice do you give to founders who are contemplating selling?

A So there's a good piece of advice. Petri, our chairman of the board, uh, you know, later years said, you know, from Lifeline Ventures that, you know, he once spoke with someone from Sequoia, uh, and they said that Out of their research of, I think, like a 400 companies or something. One thing they noticed was that founders, because it's so difficult to get something up and going, that as a founder, you are paranoid and fearful about losing that momentum. You're like, it was so difficult to get this thing moving. So you're like, what if it stops? Like it's this competitor, that regulatory thing, you know, there's money running out, this, you know, economic change, something. So you're so afraid of losing that thing because it was so difficult to get it that you're almost like always mentally trying to run for the exit. Like, let's like, you know, take, you know, you know, you know, you know, sign this off as a success before it's too late, before people see that we're in reality a fraud and none of this was real. And like, people just thought we were better than we were. And the Sequoia thing was that Out of looking at 400 entrepreneurs, if you have achieved momentum, that momentum is statistically so incredibly difficult to lose. Like, of course, there's going to be the cases like the FTX and so forth that where things go horribly wrong, but those are the edge cases. But, uh, m…

AI assessment note: “manage your mentality as a founder and switch that like, you know, we need to see where this goes”

Q I, I, I totally agree. Do you agree with hire fast, fire fast?

A No. Uh, my thinking is that hiring is a commitment. When we hire someone, we're serious. We are hiring someone because we want to commit to them, and we want them to commit to us. We will have failed as a company if we part ways with you. We will still have to make those difficult decisions because, like, we're not going to be a successful company if we don't make the difficult decisions. But companies that are like, oh, we're going to hire 10 people and fire half of them, I don't think that's a great company. I don't think that's like a very high level of trustworthiness or integrity or, You know, like, you know, that the company is showing, like, I want to work for a company that, you know, I can work my asshole for, and the company is going to stick it, uh, you know, be there for me, even if, you know, you know, I fumble and things go a little bit wrong because they see all the work I've done for the company. Then it needs to be a two way street. That's the trust I was talking about.

AI assessment note: “No. Uh, my thinking is that hiring is a commitment.”