Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon: What Startup Founders Get Wrong About the CEO Job

22:08but I think with hindsight, we would have been better if we really wanted strategically to be in that business to buy a more established platform instead of starting from scratch. Now, what's also lost in the story and the narrative is we built some very, very good things. First of all, the deposit platform is very big and very successful and the firm has enormous benefits from the fact that we have this digital deposit platform. Enormous benefits and that's worth a lot, a lot of money. And it's very important for the firm's funding and the way the firm is competitively positioned. The credit card platform with Apple is an extraordinary product and service.

22:44And while it's out in the world that we're not going to be a long-term holder of that, it's something that we built with Apple that is really terrific. It's a great product. It's a great service. And it's really working now. So what prompted the decision? The decision was prompted by the fact that the regulatory environment had significantly changed. We and other financial institutions were dealing with regulatory changes, and it became very hard to organically scale that to a place that you could really make it work. The firm was feeling some pressure because it was a tough time after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and asset prices in 2022.

23:29We had a lot of regulatory pressure. And a group of us in the senior leadership said, this is not working. We can make it work, but it's going to be very, very hard. But it's small and it's distracting us from the things that can really create significant market cap and value. And so we made the tough decision to park it. It was a tough call.

23:51Brian Halligan:There's also a lot of attention on it, unfortunately, for such a small thing. I mean, if you really go back and think about it, the firm was doing well, and this was less than 5 % of the firm's revenues, and it was getting attention as though it was 40 % of the firm's revenues and 40 % of the firm's capital. But that affected the decision because it was distracting from the progress we were making in other things. you know in the long run it may or may not have been in the broad breadth of what goldman sachs will become over the next 50 years the right decision but it was definitely the right decision for that time and it helped clarify the focus of the firm and get the attention back onto all the good things the firm was doing and i think we've benefited enormously in the last few years you know from that you just talk about that decision like ceos face that type of decision all the time of like, should we double down or should we just pull the Band-Aid off and pull out?

24:50Brian Halligan:Was that bubbling for a couple months, a couple years? Was there another group saying, hey, we just need to double down and get the right people, it's gonna work. Can you just kind of take us in the room and take us inside your, it was a very tough call you made. You know, one of the things about Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs has been a partnership for 130 years. And I think one of the things that, you know, that as a leadership team, we're most proud of over the last seven years is that we've really kind of completed the journey to really getting the leadership, the broad leadership, the partnership, because we still have this concept of partnership, really focused on delivering for shareholders.

25:31And we're fully making the transition from kind of being a public company, but still operating more like a distributed partnership versus now really being a public company and really working for the whole of a company. And that was a tough thing to manage. So whenever there are headwinds at Goldman Sachs, people get very critical of anything that's not working because they see it as affecting them very directly. I think we're in a better place in terms of how we operate around that all. But there was a lot of pressure from people in the organization that thought that it was going to cost them money in the short term.

26:11But that really wasn't weighing. What was weighing was the fact that I still think there was a belief. I knew I had a belief that with a much longer term lens, we were doing something that could be very interesting and really give the firm another leg of growth. But I knew that it was going to be very rough to get there, given both the regulatory environment and the current market environment and just where kind of the culture of the firm felt. And so, you know, went and talked to the board and the board's initial response was no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. And, you know, we talked about it and we worked through it.

26:54Brian Halligan:One meeting or is this over a while? No, over a few months. I see. Over a few months. I mean, I, you know, I was over multiple board meetings, but it was over, it was over a few months. But, you know, I look back at decisions I've had to make. That was, in some ways, that was the hardest decision. In other ways, as a team, we did the work and we talked about it, it became an easier decision because it became clear this was going to be the right thing for the firm at this time. Okay. A lot of start, I work with a lot of these hot AI startups and they all want to partner with whoever with open ai with apple with sap with you name it my company partnered with google and salesforce you partner with apple um advice on dancing with giants well you know apple obviously is a bigger company than goldman sachs Goldman Sachs is no peanut startup.

27:51And so I would say - But big company to big company partnerships are tough. I would say there was more - That's exactly what it was going to go. I would say it was more of a peer relationship. Yeah. But partnerships between companies are tough. And what I would say to accelerating or scaling up young companies that want to partner with these big platforms, most partnerships don't work. And there better be really compelling glue to that partnership or chances of it working are low. I mean, you and I know, partnerships are hard. Partnerships are very hard. Organizations have different cultures, different expectations, and partnerships are very, very hard.

28:39Now, that doesn't mean there aren't some great partnerships. But to have them really work, you've got to have really good alignment of incentives, of purpose, of incentives, and a governance structure that can assure that the, for lack of a better term, the friction in each organization doesn't make it harder for that partnership to move forward.

29:00Brian Halligan:I'm just going to go back. A minute ago, you talked about solving for shareholders. And I talked to founders and some founders, like there's three constituents you can solve for, really double down on the shareholders or really double down on the employees or really double down on your customers. Where is sort of Goldman's energy? Where's your energy on that? And I'm not going to let you off the hook and say all three. Well, you don't have to let me off the hook, but I'll talk about a couple of things in the way I think about it. So first of all, for any business, okay, if you don't have a product or service that you're selling to somebody that is value-added, you don't have a business.

29:43Okay. So let's just start with whether it's clients or it's customers or it's - You know, so what is True North for Goldman Sachs? True North for Goldman Sachs is client. You know, we know -

29:54Brian Halligan:It sounds like investors have a loud voice. Well, investors do have a loud voice. We'll come to that in a second. But just if I finish this thought, client-centricity is true north. It's one of the firm's four core values. Client service, partnership, integrity, excellence, four core values. But client service, client-centricity is kind of true north. And the general ethos of the firm is if you build trust with clients, if you take a long-term view, if you do the right thing, good things will happen. It's a long game. good things will happen. And I've watched that in my career and I believe it deeply, really deeply.

30:37Now, if good things happen with clients and our business, good things happen for shareholders. And you can't be confused. If you are not delivering for shareholders, you're not going to be able to do good things for clients. Because what do we deliver? What do we deliver to clients? We devote people, capital, and technology. And we marry those things together. And if you're not performing for shareholders, your ability to have the resources and the capability to be really good for your clients gets limited. Now, here's the tricky thing in our business. We have to have extraordinary people in our business to be able to do any of this for shareholders or for clients.

31:14So I don't want to go back to you're not going to let me do it, but I need to deliver for all three. And it's almost like as a leadership team, it's kind of like we're conducting an orchestra and we've got to conduct the orchestra between clients, people, shareholders, and we've got to make it all sound beautiful. And at the moment, we're going through a period where it really does sound beautiful and I kind of like that. But I've also been through other periods where it kind of sounded like something was out of tune and then you've got to figure out how to get it back into balance.

31:46Brian Halligan:Okay, speaking of orchestras, I had an old boss that used to say, we're not an orchestra, we're a jazz band. And I work with all these founders that they're in 40-person companies going to 400, going to 4 ,000, going to 40 ,000. And everything slows down as they get bigger. And man, they complain about it. And they always ask me, like, Brian, how do I keep the speed and the intensity and the missionary zeal as we go from 40 to 400 to 4 ,000? You seem to be moving pretty briskly for a 40 ,000 person org. Advice for these founders? Well, one of the things that's just interesting is I'm not scaling an organization from 4 ,000 to 40 ,000 to 400 ,000.

32:34You know, I inherited, I stepped into my role with an organization that had about 36 ,000 or 38 ,000 people. And today, you know, I'm in the eighth year of my tenure. Just started the eighth year of my tenure and we have 48 or 49 ,000. So we've had nice growth. But the bigger thing is that we've taken the revenues from 34 billion, kind of on average, where they were in the last decade to kind of 55 to 60 billion.

33:01Brian Halligan:And I think the market cap's four or five. Yeah, we've taken the market cap from 60, 70 billion to 250 billion. So we've done a really nice job at growing the firm. You know, the firm, our firm scales. There are businesses on our firm that scale with people, but there are a lot of businesses that scale with capital. And so, you know, one of the things I think we got really right that really helped our market shares, particularly in our core business, is we put more financial resources. We scaled more capital into the business and decided we were going to lean into providing more resources, which generated, you know, more return.

33:40On this point, though, of nimbleness, this all gets to culture. One of the things that I think Goldman Sachs has been around for 155 years, and there's been a lot said about Goldman Sachs' culture, and Goldman Sachs' culture is unique, but I would also say it's constantly changing.

33:57Brian Halligan:Is that an intentional change, or is it bottom-up changing? It's both. It's both, but here's the thing. You better be working at defining what you want it to be and constantly reshaping it and amplifying what you think really matters. And I'll give you an example of something we did that I think just shows you how we think about this and why it's so, so important. COVID was awful for everybody. It was awful for businesses, particularly awful for our business. Think about our business. We have 49 ,000 people. 50 % of them are in their 20s. It is an apprenticeship culture. They're coming to the firm to spend time with people.

34:37And all of a sudden, the whole ecosystem is like often a different, it's like, you know, we were on Earth, now we're on Mars. Right. Okay?

34:47Brian Halligan:Right. And so, you know, in that context, it frayed at our culture. And there was a lot going on during that period of time. It was fraying at everybody's culture. But as soon as we got to a point which was like, okay, we're going to move forward as a leadership team We said we have to Kind of reinvest and reinvigorate our culture. Okay, and here's what we decided to do We said we're gonna make a big investment in this so there are 450 Goldman Sachs partners We said we are going to take the time to send During the course of the year ultimately took us 15 months. We're gonna send all the partners off in groups of 25 offsite for two days to talk about the culture, what's important in the culture, and what their responsibility is to steward that culture and reinvigorate it.

35:36And I committed to have a three hour, four hour dinner with every single one of those cohorts over 15 months.

35:42Brian Halligan:Okay. How much weight did you gain during that time? I tried to eat very little. But the point is, think about it, The most senior people of the firm. Yeah. All going away in cohorts of 25 to spend two days together. So offline for two days. The CEO committing to do 20 dinners. Okay. It was a big commitment. Yeah. You know what? We came out of that and the firm was aligned on what mattered culturally. Okay. And there were some changes and there were some, you know, nuanced things, you know, still foundational values, but it was a kick in the pants to everybody. Hey, we own this. We have to steward it.

36:18We have to feel, figure out in the new world that we're in, how do we make this really exceptional so that all the things that make Goldman Sachs exceptional continue to be? And so one of the things that's just interesting, when I talk to founders and startups, they talk about their cultures, okay? And the first thing going on in my mind is, that's great, but the company's been around for seven years, okay? How do you find a culture in a company that's been around for seven years? How are you putting your mark on what it's going to be? What's it going to be at 15 years versus seven?

36:47Brian Halligan:It's a very different thing when you don't have, you know, that foundation. But culture in all organizations requires commitment, investment, focus. You know, that matters in a big, small, growing, scaling, established, you know. What are two things that came out of all those dinners in that big confab that were like, this is what our culture is and this is what our culture isn't. where there are a couple of things that you're like, this really changed it. I think a re-kind of underwriting of what it meant to hold the organization to a standard of excellence. I see. You felt that was slipping.

37:28You know, it slipped. If you think about what was going on in 2020, 21, 22, I mean, here's saying, you know what? I can do anything from home that I can do from the office, okay? It's not the same level of excellence as where do I show up today? How do I bring people along? How do I be committed? It's just

37:48Brian Halligan:different, at least in our business. I'm not going to say anything, but in our business. And so really re-underwriting that level of excellence and also getting people to really rethink, there is no perfection, but excellence is something that you can choose. And really re-underwriting that in the culture, I think was something that came out of this. The other thing that came out of it as an exercise, which wasn't really about defining the culture, but I think helps a lot, is it really allowed us as a leadership team and allowed me as the CEO to re-underwrite the strategy and the way we wanted to communicate around the strategy and really get the whole leadership of the organization, 450 strong, 100 % on board with where we're going.

38:32And when you get a big organization, you get the top 350 people all aligned on strategically where you're going, boy, you get a lot of output.

38:41Brian Halligan:I think it's absolutely fascinating how long you folks have been around and thrived. It's very rare. My company's 19 years old, super proud of it. I'd like to be around in 150, not me, but I'd like the company to be around in 155 years. What advice would you give me? What advice would you give founders like me? I think it's the wrong lens. And look, it's interesting. If you go back to companies that were founded in the middle of the 19th century, there aren't that many left. And by the way, companies founded now, 100 years from now, there won't be that many left. I think that it's a random walk to create a 100-year-old company.

39:25And in the distribution, the world changes, the competitive landscape changes. And the goal should be to build the best business you can, the best company you can. And as long as you're doing that, you're really adding value to your clients, your customers. You know, you're adding value. Opportunities will emerge that will allow you to go further, further, and further. And you never know where it will wind up. But the world changes. I mean, go look. Go take.

39:52Brian Halligan:You guys change, though. The world change. You change. Is there something about the culture? Like, you pivot. We pivot. You pivot at huge scale. We've pivoted at a huge scale. The history of Goldman Sachs is littered with moments where the firm came this close to going out of business. You can go back to 1929. But not just the crash, during the crash, there was actually something called the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, which was a public entity that we know that basically plummeted and it almost took the firm you know, almost took the firm down. We were the commercial paper underwriter for Penn Central when Penn Central went bankrupt in the 1970s, and that almost took the firm down.

40:36Brian Halligan:But just back to the question, you have pivoted at scale, and I see startups pivoting, but once they get to scale, they kind of stay heavy on the rails. They don't pivot when stuff comes. Tell me, like, for example, you pivoted pretty hard in AI. You've leaned in very hard on it. For a large company, you were pretty early on that train. I think we're good at figuring out how technology can make us better at what we do. But here's the thing I think you have to be focused on. What do we do? We are, in my humble opinion, the best investment bank in the world. We run one of the two best trading businesses in the world.

41:17And the combination of kind of investment banking and trading, that's what Goldman Sachs is. We are the best in the world at it, in my humble opinion. Certainly, nobody would dispute that we're not one of the best in the world at that. And as long as we're really good at that, and we continue to win at that, and that's something that the world needs, you can perpetuate if you make the right decisions and the right pivots. We also have become fifth, sixth, seventh, depending on how you look at it, largest active asset manager in the world. We supervise 3.3,$3.4 trillion. And that business is growing.

41:51We said publicly, we're going to grow at high single digits. We're growing it better than that. We've got an extraordinary wealth franchise. And that business, we have a right to win, and we're a leader. And so ultimately, to really sustain, you've got to really deliver value, and you've got to have leading franchises. You have to have scale, and you have a right to win. And the reason that those businesses -

42:15Brian Halligan:A lot of big banks 20 years ago are gone. You're not. Yes, you have a right to win, but there was a bunch of pivots and a bunch of bets and threw three different CEOs. What is it? You know, the culture's contributed, the quality of the people's contributed, the brand built over a long period of time - Is there a risk-seeking mentality inside the firm? We have a great risk-taking, we have a great risk management culture inside the firm. The reason that lots of financial institutions go away is not because they have a risk-taking culture, or maybe it's because they don't have a risk-management culture.

42:50So they make mistakes, and financial firms are levered, and they get into trouble. Decisions, decisions around over decades, things we would do, wouldn't do. When the world goes left, we think left is, we go slower. You don't have to be first in financial services. I think second mover advantage is underrated. Yeah.

43:16Brian Halligan:Succession planning, I'm sure there were some folks that didn't work out, but it seems like Goldman's very good at that. And I think a lot of tech companies are going to have to go through it. What are they doing right? The last three seem like you seem like I'm a winner of a succession planning output. What are they doing? I think one of the things that's interesting about Goldman Sachs is the senior leadership at Goldman Sachs is an extraordinary group of people. I sit around the small table, whether it's the management committee, which is a slightly bigger table, or even with the closest group of senior leaders of the firm.

43:52And I'm in awe at how smart and talented and capable and committed and extraordinary that group of people. So let's just start by the fact there were lots of people that could have run Goldman Sachs. because this goes back to the serendipity point. You know, Lloyd Blankfein got sick in 2015, and he decided that he was going to deal with his treatment and continue to run the firm and then come back. There are people who would have gotten sick and said, you know what? I'm sick. I'm going to step away. Okay. Had he stepped away, I wouldn't be CEO. At that point, the firm probably would make Gary Cohn the CEO.

44:25So, because Gary was the president of the firm at that point in time. So, you know, serendipity and luck, if the succession had happened in 2013 or 2014 or 2015, it wouldn't have been me.

44:35Brian Halligan:But it happened in 2018. Did the board interview you and several other people? And was there a rigorous process? The board knows the senior leadership really well. Already knows so. The board knows the senior leadership really well. And ours is a firm where there are lots of people that can run the firm. Ultimately, there's got to be a decision. And look, I think succession is very, you know, very, very important. And one of the things I'm proud of is that we have a very stable senior leadership team at the firm right now. We've been working together and executing on this plan over the last seven years.

45:08And I think it's one of the reasons why we're making really good progress.

45:10Brian Halligan:Okay. Back to a point you made. You're an apprenticeship culture. You hire tons of young folks who are smart. My son's in business school now, and everyone in his class wants to work for you. what's going to happen 10 years from now with AI in that apprenticeship culture and bringing all these folks in do you think it changes like what's your where's your head at on that I I think there's always change at the margin but I think the substance of who we are and what we are and what we do and the fact that we need lots of very bright people interacting together yeah building trust, I don't think that changes.

45:50And here's the analogy I give you. And I've been talking about this for a number of years. And so there's some people that will listen to this will say, I've heard David say this before. When I started in 1984, one of my first assignments was to go do a common stock comparison, comparing five regional banks and how their stock had traded for five years. That was a big assignment. How'd you go do that? You went to the library. What was the only data source that existed in the world that had the closing stock price for every stock that traded for every single day? Back issues of the Wall Street Journal.

46:24So you went to the library, you went to the microfiche, and you took out on microfiche back issues of the Wall Street Journal. You did all the work to go through all the old issues of the journal and find the specific stock prices. You took out green line graph paper and you plotted the graph. You then took it to a Xerox machine and copied it. And then you went to your client and you showed them this and they said, wow, thank you for helping us understand this. It took, I mean, I don't know, four to six hours to do the work to do it. Technology has constantly made super productive people more productive, more capable.

47:00I see this the same way. Now, of course, technology also replaces certain jobs 100%. We don't have a lot of toll collectors anymore. anymore. But that doesn't mean when you get into the things that we do, which is a lot about trust, personal relationships, advice, you know, at the center of a lot of what we do, these become tools that enhance speed up and allow us to do it even in a broader context. We're still going to need a lot of people to do it. And they're just, they will be trained with different skills, with different skills in different, you know, in different ways. And of Of course, let's take one that I just think is obvious.

47:45All companies have massive financial reporting and accounting functions. The operational processes for that are going to be different, and they're going to have a different number of people associated with them. But that doesn't mean that you're not going to have people in other ways. I mean, for me, I'm excited about what this technology does because we're looking at how we can reimagine processes that actually free up the capacity for us to invest in more people for our businesses that actually scale with people. Because we're somehow limited. We've got to deliver returns every year. We can't scale as quickly as we want or as fast as we want.

48:23So I think it's an unbelievable opportunity. It's accelerating certain things that are very cool, but I also don't think it's fundamentally changing the core of what we do and how we do it. It just makes it, you know, more, it's a very powerful tool for very productive people. Okay.

48:39Brian Halligan:I'm going to ask you one more question that your team told me not to ask so we can cut it out. You can ask me anything. I thought it was super cool that you were a CEO DJ, like it elevated your brand in this one consumer's mind in Goldman's brand. It seemed like, I just thought it was fucking cool. It It seemed like you got talked out of that. Well, a couple of things. First of all, I mean, I have to go back and tell my team. It's not me telling my team I don't want to talk about this. It's for some reason, you know, people on my team thinking that we shouldn't talk about this. And that's something you stopped doing it.

49:17I stopped doing it publicly.

49:19Brian Halligan:Yeah, I still do it. It seemed like people were complaining that you were doing it. Well, what happened, you know, what happened at the beginning of the first few years? Yeah. I was doing it eight to 10 times a year publicly. It's not, I was giving money to charity every time I did it. It's not as though I was doing it every weekend or something like that. But it's a hobby. It's a passion. I really enjoy it. It's creative. And when everything was going right, it was great. In 2022, when the firm started having some speed bumps because the environment changed and we were wrestling with some of this stuff around consumer.

49:53Brian Halligan:So you caught some flack. I caught some flack. And by the way, I thought I was going to catch some flack if things weren't perfect. But boy, I caught a lot more flack than I thought I would. And by the way, I caught a lot of flack on a lot of stuff, not just the fact that I DJed occasionally. And so I kind of reached the conclusion, this is becoming a distraction. And look, I think it's unfortunate because nobody cares that I do lots of other things with my free time. They really shouldn't care about this. I still do it privately and I'll do it publicly again because I really enjoy it. And it's a great, it's a great creative outlet.

50:28And I feel lucky that I've had the opportunity to do it.

50:30Brian Halligan:I think you're cool. Hardly. I think you're a great steward for the company. They're lucky to have you. I want to congratulate you on all your success and thanks for coming on the pod. Well, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. All right. Pleasure. Thanks a lot. Okay. Hope you like that. He's very sharp. just my take on his vibe is very polished very articulate very ceo-ish and it's a similar vibe to other professional ceos i've interviewed like nikesh at palo alto is also like this and i don't know you well but i bet you could use a little polish yourself so maybe watching him you'll learn a few tips well i ask everybody on these pods like what's important when you're hiring people.

51:16Brian Halligan:And he likes to say, I want them smart enough. They don't have to be rocket science, but kind of smart enough. But he really values judgment and experience. Most startups don't. I look at HubSpot, like half our exec team is kind of homegrown, and half is higher from the outside. I don't know if that's the right ratio. But his is a lot of kind of been there, done that people. I think that's pretty interesting the way he thinks about it. We talk a lot about decisions. We talk about the Apple decisions. And to me, it's just like you're always choosing as a CEO between two shitty decisions. No easy decisions ever reach your desk.

51:51Brian Halligan:And to me, that's just life in the big city. You've got a lot of that and get used to it. Okay, I like the segment on his Apple decision. They made a bet on the consumer business and a big partnership in Apple. And it reminded me of a book a guy named Seth Godin wrote a long time ago. and on the cover of the book was something called the dip. It's a line and there's a dip and then it comes across. And when you're heading down the dip on a new project like they were, you don't know if you're about to hit the bottom and come up the other side. You don't know if it just keeps going down. In his case, he was like, I think it's going to keep going down.

52:26Brian Halligan:We're going to kill it. That's very hard to do. We have lots of these inside of HubSpot over the years where projects going okay, we funded it pretty well. and the people inside that project are like, just give us six more months and give us some more money and we're going to get through the dip and it's going to rip versus just killing it. And we tend to give it a lifeline. And I think more often than not, we should say no to those things. Anyway, those are kind of my thoughts on decision making. Say no more often and kill stuff more often. I think people aren't disciplined enough about that.

53:04Brian Halligan:Those big partnerships are hard. And people always want to partner with a giant in their industry. And the life expectancy of those partnerships are pretty low. A few tips on kind of dancing with elephants. The first is if you're going to do a partnership, you need to make sure your incentives are really well aligned. And you need to make sure like if we do this, your P &L is moving and their P &L is moving in the correct direction. Because if the spreadsheets aren't moving, there's no point really in doing it. And the third is you kind of need to know the CEO, the CEOs need to be committed, because as you go through annual budgeting cycles, partnerships can get defunded.

53:49Brian Halligan:So if the CEOs are connected, that helps a lot. Those are, if you're entering into a big giant partnership, trying to get those things right. Okay, I asked him, you want your company around for 150 years, what's your advice? First of all, he credited luck quite a bit, but he largely credited culture. And I'll tell you my journey with culture at Upspot. When we first started the company, all the first three years, my co-founder and I were like, culture's BS, don't even bring it up. Let's not talk about it. And then I joined a CEO group and one of the CEOs in the CEO group was Colin Engel. He made the, he was iRobot, made the room of vacuum cleaners.

54:31Brian Halligan:And I remember he sat down next to him at that, at first, it was a CEO group meeting and it was my first one. I didn't know how it worked, but they have a topic for the whole day. And the topic on my first meeting was culture. And so we went through the whole morning and I was talking with Colin at lunch And Colin says, you know, you don't seem to like this topic much. I'm like, nah, I think it's a waste of time. And he says to me, you know, Brian, culture is how people make decisions when you're not in a room. Culture is how you really scale. Yeah, yeah. And dug in. Colin says it's true. I'm in.

55:08Brian Halligan:And I go back to the office the next day. I have my co-founder. So, well, how was the meeting? How's Colin? And I said, it was great. I loved it. What did you talk about? So we talked about culture. Oh, that's too bad. Wasted time. He said, no, Darmesh. Culture is how people make decisions when you're not in the room. Culture is how you really scale your company. And in a very weak moment, he agreed to be our culture czar. And we did two things on culture that really works. One was we started measuring net promoter scores of our employees. And we've been doing that for 19 years. Really useful metric.

55:44And the other is we basically design the culture.

55:48Brian Halligan:We designed the relationship between the company and the employee, and we built a deck called our culture code. And the way we thought about it was we have a product that we sell to our customers. It has to be unique and really valuable, and it pulls customers in. Our second product we sell to our employees has to be unique and really valuable to pull those employees in. So we spent a lot of time on it, and it's part of HubSpot's secret sauce is our culture code and the way we kind of think about that. So I would encourage you folks to do that. if you want to be around for 150 years, think a lot about culture.

56:22Brian Halligan:I like the way he talked about serendipity in there. And I think that matters. There's a book by Jim Collins on why amazingly successful companies fail. And if you look at like the top 100 most successful companies in the world, you know, even 25 years ago to today, man, it's just totally changed. So like, there's a lot of disruption that happens. And Jim Collins studied these companies that stumble. And he's got this whole kind of ladder of things that go wrong. But the first step on the ladder is hubris born of success. And he talks about these companies falling into the trap. And he's got a great quote.

57:02Brian Halligan:And it goes, those who fail to acknowledge the role luck may have played in their success, and thereby overestimate their own merit and capabilities will have succumbed to hubris. I wish all of you to avoid that hubris trap, and I'll see you all on the next episode of Long Strange Trap.