The Exchanges

Q Not at all, but I want to get started today, and from social media platform to personalized home care, it's been a diverse career. So how did the founding of Honor come to be, Seth?

A So, as you kind of mentioned, we built our previous company, so Sandy and I had done Bebo together, and we sold it to Google, and Then Cam had done Plaxone. He'd sold it to Comcast, and we're kind of thinking about what was next for us, and we wanted to work on something where we could look a lot of people in the eye and know that we're going to make their lives fundamentally better, and we spent about a year and a half looking for that idea, and then got a little bit worried about our parents, and that's when we started kind of diving on kind of issues around the elderly in general, and then kind of settled on how to help people stay in their homes as they age.

AI assessment note: “got a little bit worried about our parents, and that's when we started”

Q No, absolutely. I'm intrigued. Have you seen your board management and how you really Evaluate the Borg chemistry. Have you seen that change over the time you've developed and scaled both Meebo and Honor?

A Uh, yeah, I mean, I have no clue for Meebo. I was, I was 25. Um, I'd never done startups before, and I think we got really lucky that, you know, our first board member was Ruloff from Sequoia. So that was a really good way to start, and then I kind of learned along the way. You know, now I'm just really careful to make sure folks are informed about what's going on. The things that are important, not like kind of, you know, small things, because it really doesn't matter. So I, you know, I might, in today's world, I might talk to our board members every other week or something. And I think that's about the right cadence. And then, you know, it's really just, frankly, it's making sure you've got the right people on the board. I, more than anything, because I kind of have this theory, I think about 80% of VCs, frankly, detract from the value of the kind of board in the discussion. I think 10% are neutral, and I think 10% are really positive. So you want to find those, like, 10% amazing VCs to be the ones that are funding your company.

AI assessment note: “I had no clue for Meebo... now I'm just really careful”

Q So if that's what you carry between the two companies, speed maybe is what you do differently. Satya at Homebrew asked, what are elements that, although you've done before, remain very difficult with both?

A Lots of things. You know, any kind of startup that you Build will have its own really unique challenges based on what the market is. So frankly, in honor's case, one of the most difficult things is that we often deal with customers who are in difficult states in their lives. So someone might have dementia, and they might not remember that a care professional is going to come to their home, and they might literally call the police and say, hi, my home is being broken into. And that's the kind of thing that we have to now routinize. So you hear this thing with tech startups, this concept of, Turn every customer call into a bug. Like if it's a, if it's a report or something that went wrong, turn it into a bug and make it sustainably fixed over time. And the level of thing that we have to kind of make sustainable in just a process, it's really simple. Like how do you deal with a customer who, you know, does call the police because they don't remember where you're supposed to go? Or how do you even deal with the customers who pass away? Because, you know, we will literally be in the homes of customers who pass away when we're in the home. Those are things that we have to make a repeatable system.

AI assessment note: “one of the most difficult things is that we often deal with customers who are in difficult states”

Q Ashana Zola, a mutual friend of ours, asked, what questions would you recommend founders really ask potential new investors when deciding who to pick as their investor or board member?

A Yeah, so the three things that we look at are personality fit, first and foremost. So, when you pick a new investor, you are going to work with this person for a really long time. So, do you really like them, and do you really want to work with them? The second thing is, do we truly agree on the vision? Like, do we agree on where we're going? So, We all want to climb Mount Everest, not Mount Whitney. Got it. Okay, good. And then the last one is, tactically, do we agree on how to get there? So, you know, let's say we all agree Mount Everest is the goal, but you say, let's climb the north face, and I say, let's climb the south face, and we're both completely convinced that we'll die on the other face because, like, of an impending storm system or whatever. That can also make for a really painful relationship going forward. So those are the three things I think have to be there. Right? It's like, do we like each other? Do we agree on the vision? And do we agree on the tactics at a high level? And then from there, it's a lot of nice to have. But I think those three are the core.

AI assessment note: “the three things that we look at are personality fit, first and foremost”

Q I do have one final question from Hunter Walk with regards to the long-term nature. He said, given the long-term vision, in terms of team building, how do you think the Team will evolve over time, and do you seek to retain the people that hunger for startup life, or is that one that you let transition?

A Yeah, you know, I'm really jealous of what I think both Facebook and Google have done, so like, if you look at Google, you've got people like Sindar, who are there from, totally from the start, right, and he's still there, or you look at, you know, Ben Smith is another example, less well-known, but been there from the start, and he's still there, even Don Harrison. You look at Facebook and And you've got Cheryl, who's been there from so early, or, you know, Shrepp, Mike Shreppoffer. These people who really were foundational in the building of the company, and who are still there today, when they're both worth, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars. And I think that's pretty awesome, and I would, I would kill to have that same outcome for Honor and its team.

AI assessment note: “I would kill to have that same outcome for Honor and its team.”

Q Not at all, but I want to get started today, and from social media platform to personalized home care, it's been a diverse career. So how did the founding of Honor come to be, Seth?

A So, as you kind of mentioned, we built our previous company, so Sandy and I had done Bebo together, and we sold it to Google, and Then Cam had done Plaxone. He'd sold it to Comcast, and we're kind of thinking about what was next for us, and we wanted to work on something where we could look a lot of people in the eye and know that we're going to make their lives fundamentally better, and we spent about a year and a half looking for that idea, and then got a little bit worried about our parents, and that's when we started kind of diving on kind of issues around the elderly in general, and then kind of settled on how to help people stay in their homes as they age.

AI assessment note: “got a little bit worried about our parents, and that's when we started”

Q What moment in your life has served as an inflection point and really changed the way you think?

A Actually, probably the process of getting my pilot's license, and then a few of the things that have happened when flying airplanes, because sometimes things happen really fast, and you have to make decisions really fast. But the number one thing in flying an airplane is you learn how That you get all sorts of data coming at you, like, here's my altitude, and here's the way the plane is pointing, and here's my airspeed, and, you know, sometimes they seem to conflict. Like, it's too much information, and you don't know how to process it all, and so you have to kind of pick signal from noise and make a decision without perfect information, but based on kind of the best information you have, and that applies to running startups very well.

AI assessment note: “probably the process of getting my pilot's license”

Q Absolutely. We spoke about your founding that first with Mebo. I do want to start staying on the theme of serial entrepreneurship. We've discussed before, as I said, the founding of Mebo, and honor staying on this Theme. Question from Shana Zola. Based on your experience founding and scaling Meibo, what are the biggest things you do differently with Honor as a result?

A I think the most helpful thing is there are a lot of mistakes you make as a first-time entrepreneur or things you do that slow you down that you can just kind of speed through. So an example is I always wanted these kind of what I now call unicorn people to fulfill a unicorn role. Like, why do you need to pay for both a salesperson and a marketing person? Can't they just be one person? And second time around, you recognize that they're actually really two different skill sets and two different personality types. And of course you need like one person who kind of does sales and another person who does marketing. You just get a lot more speed because you know more about the way the world works. I think the other thing that we're really careful about second time around is really carefully selecting the team. And you hear it all the time, but you hear this concept of hire slow, fire fast. And we really are extremely careful with who we bring in, but we're even much more aggressive this time around, around if we made a mistake, then we'll ask someone to leave.

AI assessment note: “we're even much more aggressive this time around, around if we made a mistake”

Q I mean, well, first, a massive congratulations on the impending addition to the portfolio of family. I am intrigued, though, and it's one question that I love, is how's having kids change the way you think about honor, company building, and the world maybe more in general?

A Yeah, so you definitely, A, spend your time more carefully. I do three things in life. I do honor, Family, and I ride bicycles to stay in shape, and that's all I have time for. I used to fly airplanes, but I don't have time to do it anymore, so I stopped. And then I think that you become much better about thinking about everyone else and less about yourself, because when you truly become completely responsible for another human, it forces you into a totally different way of thinking, and you almost understand, it helps you understand a broader swath of people, because lots of people have had kids. And so, and certainly a lot of honors customers have had kids, and a lot of honors customers have their parents are taken care of. It's like the, it's the kids who are 40 to 60 years old, have their own kids, and then have their parents who they're taking care of. So it also just gives you a better perspective on how I think other people think and feel.

AI assessment note: “gives you a better perspective on how I think other people think and feel.”

Q Absolutely. We spoke about your founding that first with Mebo. I do want to start staying on the theme of serial entrepreneurship. We've discussed before, as I said, the founding of Mebo, and honor staying on this Theme. Question from Shana Zola. Based on your experience founding and scaling Meibo, what are the biggest things you do differently with Honor as a result?

A I think the most helpful thing is there are a lot of mistakes you make as a first-time entrepreneur or things you do that slow you down that you can just kind of speed through. So an example is I always wanted these kind of what I now call unicorn people to fulfill a unicorn role. Like, why do you need to pay for both a salesperson and a marketing person? Can't they just be one person? And second time around, you recognize that they're actually really two different skill sets and two different personality types. And of course you need like one person who kind of does sales and another person who does marketing. You just get a lot more speed because you know more about the way the world works. I think the other thing that we're really careful about second time around is really carefully selecting the team. And you hear it all the time, but you hear this concept of hire slow, fire fast. And we really are extremely careful with who we bring in, but we're even much more aggressive this time around, around if we made a mistake, then we'll ask someone to leave.

AI assessment note: “an example is I always wanted these kind of what I now call unicorn people”

Q You said about kind of the speed element there being very different in terms of scaling Meibo and Honor and kind of driving through those processes. Are there foundations that you saw work at Meibo that you've successfully carried with you to Honor?

A Yeah, probably one of the most obvious ones is We are building the tech teams in really similar ways, so there are a few different philosophies on how to build a tech team, but what we do is extraordinarily selective, but low numbers of engineers, so it's really hard to find engineers that we want to work at Honor, because our bar is frankly just so high, but when we find someone, they're amazing, and they're kind of like, you kind of hear this mythical And we really do have the 10 X productive engineers, so it's really painful in the process of finding those people, because we have to say no to a lot of people, but once a team like that, it's pretty amazing, and that's something that we carried between the two companies.

AI assessment note: “We are building the tech teams in really similar ways”

Q kind of equal voices, often investors have voices, and you've had incredible experiences with VC fundraising in the past, from raising from the likes of Sequoia, Coaster, Thrive, Andreessen, and many more incredible people. I'm intrigued, though, with this experience, you've worked with some of the very best. Tell me, from your entrepreneurial perspective, what are the commonalities that you've seen in the truly great VCs that you've worked with?

A Yeah. You know, one is they really understand that the company is run by the founders, and they understand the limits of their knowledge on what's going on on the inside, kind of tactically, and so they're really, like, the truly great VCs are really good at giving strategic advice, and they're really good at helping you think through your very difficult problems, but they do not try to run your company. And when I hear stories from friends of mine who've worked with other VCs that might not be quite as amazing, you get a lot of stories of like, oh my God, I had a six hour board meeting and we're going through different product ideation ideas. And I'm just like, Ooh, like that sounds pretty bad. So it's really this like knowing where they can truly be helpful and knowing where really they have to trust the founding team to run the company is actually one of the, I think that real defining traits.

AI assessment note: “one is they really understand that the company is run by the founders”

Q I'm intrigued specifically on the tactical element. For me, always an interesting time is when there's a small element of friction. I'd love to hear, when have you not gone with a board decision? And how did you communicate this?

A I literally can't think of a time when we've had a board decision. First of all, board decisions don't happen that frequently. This might be part of having really great VCs, but if something actually comes to like a split vote in the board, or the board has to go through a formal process to make a decision that kind of everybody didn't already kind of agree on, that's probably a pretty bad sign. So I can't think of any, but it's almost because I can't think of a time when we really had to have kind of a quote unquote board decision. I think are there times when, you know, I've gotten advice from one of my investors and done something else that Yeah, of course. Um, but that's what they kind of expect. Like, the good ones expect you'll listen to them. Like, I think a good entrepreneur listens really closely to what other people say, takes it in, integrates it into their model, but then ultimately does what they think the kind of combination of all the right things plus their own intuitive sense or data-driven sense drives them to. Because that's, I think that's usually where you get the wins.

AI assessment note: “I literally can't think of a time when we've had a board decision.”

Q So if that's what you carry between the two companies, speed maybe is what you do differently. Satya at Homebrew asked, what are elements that, although you've done before, remain very difficult with both?

A Lots of things. You know, any kind of startup that you Build will have its own really unique challenges based on what the market is. So frankly, in honor's case, one of the most difficult things is that we often deal with customers who are in difficult states in their lives. So someone might have dementia, and they might not remember that a care professional is going to come to their home, and they might literally call the police and say, hi, my home is being broken into. And that's the kind of thing that we have to now routinize. So you hear this thing with tech startups, this concept of, Turn every customer call into a bug. Like if it's a, if it's a report or something that went wrong, turn it into a bug and make it sustainably fixed over time. And the level of thing that we have to kind of make sustainable in just a process, it's really simple. Like how do you deal with a customer who, you know, does call the police because they don't remember where you're supposed to go? Or how do you even deal with the customers who pass away? Because, you know, we will literally be in the homes of customers who pass away when we're in the home. Those are things that we have to make a repeatable system.

AI assessment note: “one of the most difficult things is that we often deal with customers who are in difficult states”

Q Ashana Zola, a mutual friend of ours, asked, what questions would you recommend founders really ask potential new investors when deciding who to pick as their investor or board member?

A Yeah, so the three things that we look at are personality fit, first and foremost. So, when you pick a new investor, you are going to work with this person for a really long time. So, do you really like them, and do you really want to work with them? The second thing is, do we truly agree on the vision? Like, do we agree on where we're going? So, We all want to climb Mount Everest, not Mount Whitney. Got it. Okay, good. And then the last one is, tactically, do we agree on how to get there? So, you know, let's say we all agree Mount Everest is the goal, but you say, let's climb the north face, and I say, let's climb the south face, and we're both completely convinced that we'll die on the other face because, like, of an impending storm system or whatever. That can also make for a really painful relationship going forward. So those are the three things I think have to be there. Right? It's like, do we like each other? Do we agree on the vision? And do we agree on the tactics at a high level? And then from there, it's a lot of nice to have. But I think those three are the core.

AI assessment note: “It's like, do we like each other? Do we agree on the vision?”

Q Yeah, no, absolutely. It makes sense and a challenge, definitely. One interesting element that we discussed before and discussed with some of your investors is the interesting element of two married couples on the founding team. I'm interested, how do you address opposing points of view on the team with this maybe slightly different dynamic?

A You know, we actually, in a way, are really simple because there's the founding team that is two married couples, and then you've got the other executives who are kind of all on the exec team who report to me. And the way we make most decisions is we kind of lock ourselves in our room for three hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then everybody has their role. So, you know, Cam, who's been my friend since we were 18, has his role as running tech, and Sandy, who is his wife, has her role of running kind of the bridge between technology and care. You know, my wife runs business operations, but at the end of the day, everybody kind of has their role, and then you've got the other execs who run care. Austin runs care, and Nita runs demand, and Everyone really just has an equal voice in that room.

AI assessment note: “Everyone really just has an equal voice in that room.”

Q Yeah, no, absolutely. It makes sense and a challenge, definitely. One interesting element that we discussed before and discussed with some of your investors is the interesting element of two married couples on the founding team. I'm interested, how do you address opposing points of view on the team with this maybe slightly different dynamic?

A You know, we actually, in a way, are really simple because there's the founding team that is two married couples, and then you've got the other executives who are kind of all on the exec team who report to me. And the way we make most decisions is we kind of lock ourselves in our room for three hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then everybody has their role. So, you know, Cam, who's been my friend since we were 18, has his role as running tech, and Sandy, who is his wife, has her role of running kind of the bridge between technology and care. You know, my wife runs business operations, but at the end of the day, everybody kind of has their role, and then you've got the other execs who run care. Austin runs care, and Nita runs demand, and Everyone really just has an equal voice in that room.

AI assessment note: “we kind of lock ourselves in our room for three hours on Mondays and Wednesdays”

Q You said about kind of the speed element there being very different in terms of scaling Meibo and Honor and kind of driving through those processes. Are there foundations that you saw work at Meibo that you've successfully carried with you to Honor?

A Yeah, probably one of the most obvious ones is We are building the tech teams in really similar ways, so there are a few different philosophies on how to build a tech team, but what we do is extraordinarily selective, but low numbers of engineers, so it's really hard to find engineers that we want to work at Honor, because our bar is frankly just so high, but when we find someone, they're amazing, and they're kind of like, you kind of hear this mythical And we really do have the 10 X productive engineers, so it's really painful in the process of finding those people, because we have to say no to a lot of people, but once a team like that, it's pretty amazing, and that's something that we carried between the two companies.

AI assessment note: “that's something that we carried between the two companies.”

Q No, absolutely. I'm intrigued. Have you seen your board management and how you really Evaluate the Borg chemistry. Have you seen that change over the time you've developed and scaled both Meebo and Honor?

A Uh, yeah, I mean, I have no clue for Meebo. I was, I was 25. Um, I'd never done startups before, and I think we got really lucky that, you know, our first board member was Ruloff from Sequoia. So that was a really good way to start, and then I kind of learned along the way. You know, now I'm just really careful to make sure folks are informed about what's going on. The things that are important, not like kind of, you know, small things, because it really doesn't matter. So I, you know, I might, in today's world, I might talk to our board members every other week or something. And I think that's about the right cadence. And then, you know, it's really just, frankly, it's making sure you've got the right people on the board. I, more than anything, because I kind of have this theory, I think about 80% of VCs, frankly, detract from the value of the kind of board in the discussion. I think 10% are neutral, and I think 10% are really positive. So you want to find those, like, 10% amazing VCs to be the ones that are funding your company.

AI assessment note: “now I'm just really careful to make sure folks are informed”

Q I'm intrigued specifically on the tactical element. For me, always an interesting time is when there's a small element of friction. I'd love to hear, when have you not gone with a board decision? And how did you communicate this?

A I literally can't think of a time when we've had a board decision. First of all, board decisions don't happen that frequently. This might be part of having really great VCs, but if something actually comes to like a split vote in the board, or the board has to go through a formal process to make a decision that kind of everybody didn't already kind of agree on, that's probably a pretty bad sign. So I can't think of any, but it's almost because I can't think of a time when we really had to have kind of a quote unquote board decision. I think are there times when, you know, I've gotten advice from one of my investors and done something else that Yeah, of course. Um, but that's what they kind of expect. Like, the good ones expect you'll listen to them. Like, I think a good entrepreneur listens really closely to what other people say, takes it in, integrates it into their model, but then ultimately does what they think the kind of combination of all the right things plus their own intuitive sense or data-driven sense drives them to. Because that's, I think that's usually where you get the wins.

AI assessment note: “I literally can't think of a time when we've had a board decision.”

Q Can I ask, how do you do that? You've built multiple successful businesses. What's been your learnings in terms of doing that in the right way, so to speak?

A If someone's not a good fit for a company, then it's actually bad for them too, right? And so if you figure that out really quickly, um, You can point that out to them before having joined the company, even if it becomes a thing on their resume and they are better off because they'll be more successful in a place that they're better suited for. And it'll kind of just fade from their resume. And then the way you have to really think about it, especially when you're such a mission driven company is having the right team is what will make us succeed at making the lives of the elderly and their kids and the care pros better, right? Like that is how we sustainably change the world at scale. Because really, Honor is nothing more than the team of people that work on it day in and day out, and so if your goal is really to fulfill on that mission for the world, then you have to be very careful about how you built the team that works on that goal.

AI assessment note: “if someone's not a good fit for a company, then it's actually bad for them”

Q Can I ask, how do you do that? You've built multiple successful businesses. What's been your learnings in terms of doing that in the right way, so to speak?

A If someone's not a good fit for a company, then it's actually bad for them too, right? And so if you figure that out really quickly, um, You can point that out to them before having joined the company, even if it becomes a thing on their resume and they are better off because they'll be more successful in a place that they're better suited for. And it'll kind of just fade from their resume. And then the way you have to really think about it, especially when you're such a mission driven company is having the right team is what will make us succeed at making the lives of the elderly and their kids and the care pros better, right? Like that is how we sustainably change the world at scale. Because really, Honor is nothing more than the team of people that work on it day in and day out, and so if your goal is really to fulfill on that mission for the world, then you have to be very careful about how you built the team that works on that goal.

AI assessment note: “having the right team is what will make us succeed”

Q the next 10 to 20 years of your life. With that in mind, I'm intrigued we recently had David Barrett at Expensify on the show, and he said that too many founders and VCs in the Valley are focused for and building for the quick flip and early exit. Would you maybe agree with that, having been and witnessed the front line of the Valley now for over 10 years?

A Yeah, you know, I think things come and go, and I think there was definitely a period where a lot of people were kind of building to flip, and that might be true of a number of people today, but I don't even really know. I do think it's the wrong way to build a company because you will make the wrong decisions. Like, if you're building to flip, you'll make short-term decisions, and that will come back to bite you. So I think that people should really work on what they're super passionate about. Like, that, that is the most important thing. Here's the difference between Mevo and Honor. I used to go to way more industry events, and now I just don't. Like, I'm almost like a hermit. And it might be because I have a son and another one on the way, and I don't have enough time, or it might be because I've determined that the highest value isn't really going to industry events or whatnot. It's really just concentrating on working with the team here and working with our customers. But I feel like I've become a little bit more detached from maybe what The pulse is of the moment for a question like that, because I'm a little more focused than I used to be on just honor.

AI assessment note: “there was definitely a period where a lot of people were kind of building to flip”

Q the next 10 to 20 years of your life. With that in mind, I'm intrigued we recently had David Barrett at Expensify on the show, and he said that too many founders and VCs in the Valley are focused for and building for the quick flip and early exit. Would you maybe agree with that, having been and witnessed the front line of the Valley now for over 10 years?

A Yeah, you know, I think things come and go, and I think there was definitely a period where a lot of people were kind of building to flip, and that might be true of a number of people today, but I don't even really know. I do think it's the wrong way to build a company because you will make the wrong decisions. Like, if you're building to flip, you'll make short-term decisions, and that will come back to bite you. So I think that people should really work on what they're super passionate about. Like, that, that is the most important thing. Here's the difference between Mevo and Honor. I used to go to way more industry events, and now I just don't. Like, I'm almost like a hermit. And it might be because I have a son and another one on the way, and I don't have enough time, or it might be because I've determined that the highest value isn't really going to industry events or whatnot. It's really just concentrating on working with the team here and working with our customers. But I feel like I've become a little bit more detached from maybe what The pulse is of the moment for a question like that, because I'm a little more focused than I used to be on just honor.

AI assessment note: “might be true of a number of people today, but I don't even really know.”