Intellectual stamina
April 22, 2024
One of the better podcasts I've heard in a while was where Miguel Armaza from the Fintech Leaders podcast interviewed Mike Seckler, the CEO of Justworks. As someone who's founded companies, sold companies, and wanted to do it all over again, he shared a wealth of insights and experiences that most certainly have parallels to what we've gone through.
An important thing he mentions is just how impactful a functional board can be. In 2020 and 2021, companies were picking board members based on who wrote the largest check, a textbook case of what not to do. A board member can make or break a company and can be your biggest asset or your worst detractor. We've been fortunate to carefully cultivate with intention, choosing only those who align with our goals and values. Nurturing that relationship over time is one that we've also done well as evidenced by our detailed monthly and quarterly reporting. In doing so, we've been able to lean on them when things don't go exactly according to plan (as they always do in startups) and they've stepped up time and time again.
Another key takeaway is the utmost need for focus, even when your investors or even logic is telling you otherwise. Justworks had the chance to expand to other cities after hitting $1-2M in revenue. Rather than go too broad too quick, they elected to double down on New York and making sure they hit market saturation first in order to earn the right to expand. It's not easy to turn down growth and the determination and focus required to achieve what you believe is right will not happen overnight. In the same way that our marketplace business has taken years to develop before hitting its stride, building companies that last take time.
The final and most important lesson is one of adaptability, or what he calls intellectual stamina. The best companies are the ones who have a vision for the future that they believe wholeheartedly is right. They'll be the ones to execute, test, and realize that while 80% of the vision was correct, the remaining 20% was not, and they would have the intellectual honesty to adjust that 20% to align towards a revised vision for the future. This is an exercise that doesn't happen just once, or twice, or even three times in a company's life. In the best companies, this goes on for sometimes over ten times. Our narrative is not too dissimilar - we had an idea, we brought it to life, we were nimble enough to realize that it wasn't enough, and we have continued to iterate from there without being married to one vision and one vision only. This innate ability is what's gotten us to where we are today and what will drive us into the future.
Because this journey we are on is one that has been tried and tread by others before us, there is so much we can learn about how to process what has been and also prepare ourselves for what's to come
