Episode 2: Linda Rottenberg & Miki Kuusi

0:02Linda Rottenberg: Welcome to Only Founders in the Building, a podcast from Founders Forum Group in collaboration with Audi.

0:08Miki Kuusi: Brought to you in partnership with Rothschild & Co.

0:11Linda Rottenberg: Some of the world's top entrepreneurs, CEOs and innovators. Open up in one-to-one conversations with one another. No host.

0:19Miki Kuusi: No interviewer.

0:20Linda Rottenberg: Just two people crazy enough to pursue their own ideas.

0:23Miki Kuusi: Getting into what's really on our minds. Let's get started.

0:32Miki Kuusi: Hi, I'm here with Miki Kusi, the founder of Slush, founder of Vault, now CEO of Deliveroo, head of international at DoorDash, chairman of the board at Vault. What did I miss? So excited to be with him today.

0:48Linda Rottenberg: Thank you, Linda. And I'm here with Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO of Endeavor. I've heard about Endeavor so many times over like 15 years, and this is the first time we're meeting face to face.

1:00Miki Kuusi: All right. Ladies first. I'll go.

1:02Linda Rottenberg: Ladies first. All right.

1:05Miki Kuusi: If you met me at an event, what would be the first thing you asked?

1:10Linda Rottenberg: If I knew who you were, I would definitely ask about like Endeavor and the story behind Endeavor, because it's been like I can imagine like how long have you been working on Endeavor?

1:21Miki Kuusi: We are coming up on our 30th year of supporting, investing in high growth entrepreneurs in a 50 markets around the world.

1:29Linda Rottenberg: Endeavor is such a well-known organization, but the thing that really sticks out to me is how long you've been working on it. This was way before any of this stuff was cool or mainstream in any shape or format, and I think that's what makes it really profound.

1:46Miki Kuusi: I was called Chica Loka. I was called the crazy girl for even suggesting there were entrepreneurs in Latin America, and then we were going to other markets in Africa and Eastern and Central Europe and Asia and the Middle East. But back in 1997, there was no venture capital in any of these markets. There wasn't even a word for entrepreneur in Spanish or Portuguese. And until Mercado Libre and Wences Casares selling Patagon to Santander in 1999 for three quarters of a billion dollars, that really set off this wave of people saying, hey, if they can do it, I can too. No one thought they could think big.

2:24Miki Kuusi: And I always say you have to be crazy to start things. And you, I love, first of all, I love that you're a builder. I'm a builder. That's why I still do this so many decades in. But crazy, I'm sure there were stories at Volt, but with Slush, I just love the name. And here it's dark and damp. You must have been told this name is that insane. Like, how did you deal with that?

2:47Linda Rottenberg: It's a genuinely stupid name, if you think about it rationally. The person who came up with the name Slush was a person called Peter Westerbucka, who was one of the minds behind Angry Birds, if you remember the company Rovio, which was one of the first big mobile successes. He had this train of thought that people try to copy Silicon Valley everywhere. And you're like, oh, we're not in California, because if you come to the Nordic countries, you're definitely not in California and everyone knows it. But like, you still try to play like as if you were in California. So you organize something over the summer.

3:21Linda Rottenberg: You're going to, you know, maybe bring some palm trees over and try to kind of pretend that like everything is sunny and great and you're in California. And he's got a point was that like, we should be proud about the things that make us us. In like the case of like Nordic countries, like, you know, we have this beautiful winter wonderland. But the reality is that like, you know, oftentimes you're going to have this like wet type of snow on the ground, which we call slush, which is not the nice kind of snow. It's the kind that gets your feet wet. And we should be proud about these things that make us like who we are.

3:52Linda Rottenberg: And that was the idea with slush. Let's not try to copy Silicon Valley. Let's build companies in our own way.

3:57Miki Kuusi: I'm a huge believer that every entrepreneurial ecosystem can exist. There's talent everywhere. There's just not the same opportunity and capital availability. That's really why Enver started. But everyone has to lean into what makes their ecosystem unique. So anyway, I just love that.

4:15Linda Rottenberg: 30 years of Endeavor next year, we started working on Slush roughly like 15 or so years ago. And the crazy thing is that we were solving the same problem that you started solving, which was there's a lot of people building companies, but it wasn't very global. There wasn't really venture capital. It was very self-funded. Everyone was in isolation. But at the same time, you had all this talent. But you started where earlier than that. So I have a question for you. What are you still trying to figure out?

4:46Miki Kuusi: Well, I'm still crazy, which I think is good. I think if people aren't calling you crazy, you're not thinking big enough.

4:53Linda Rottenberg: I'm still not satisfied with the map of innovation.

5:00Miki Kuusi: So to me right now with AI, everyone just talks about two points on the map, China and Silicon Valley. And I really believe if AI, and this is one of the most meaningful technology of our time, the future has to be built everywhere. We call it elsewhere. So I really want to put elsewhere on the map, which is basically everywhere else. But what I've told the Brazilians or the Indonesians or the Poles is that even with great companies, you're not going to get on the map as a single country, but collectively you can. I think we now see in Europe, we see, you know, decacorns like 11 Labs and iSci and then Lovable and Lagora and so many coming out.

5:40Miki Kuusi: And I really think that people are starting to pay attention, but not enough. So that's what I want to do. I want to change that map of innovation.

5:48Linda Rottenberg: That's a really good mission to take. We're living through this almost like industrial revolution where everything is going online, everything online is getting smarter with AI and so forth. And it's a very bleak picture of the world if that future is only defined in a couple of places around the world, because it's ultimately going to be influencing all of our lives, no matter where you live or what you do. And, you know, hopefully it's going to be more democratically spread where these companies also come from and who are who are building them.

6:17Miki Kuusi: I agree. And back to this point and your earlier point about people wanting to copy Silicon Valley, I always got frustrated when people would say, oh, Mercado Libre is just a copycat of eBay or E-Trade or even NewBank, which has obviously revolutionized neo-banking. Oh, it must be a copycat of something because they couldn't imagine something original starting in these places. And in all of these places, I find that entrepreneurs outside of the valley are solving real-world problems at scale. They're not reverse engineering and IPO. They're solving real-world problems at scale. And trust is often a big issue.

6:54Miki Kuusi: So, you know, even back, again, use Mercado Libre, No one would trust the postal system. People had to meet in cafes to actually exchange the goods and the money. All of the banking we've seen and all the great fintech and you see Revolut 2 and your neck of the woods. It's based on lack of trust of existing institutions. And even the last example I'll give is Eleven Labs. They are the top voice AI company in the world. But remember how it started. These two Polish guys are in Poland here frustrated that the movie dubbing sucks in Poland. because there's one guy who does all the voiceovers. So they started thinking about the human element.

7:31Miki Kuusi: They started thinking about how do we have empathy and that's why they went. So I think that to me, entrepreneurs outside of the valley have so many more pain points that they build into their systems. Do you agree? What have you seen?

7:44Linda Rottenberg: Yeah, like in our space, it's a good example that it's very easy for someone to look at, like, for instance, what we did and be like, oh, you saw what someone else was doing somewhere else. And you were like, we're going to do this, like in our region. And I was like, I hope I would have been as smart as to do something like that. But I think what people miss is that in the early advents of these industries, it's not like a thing. No one knows, is this going to work or is it not? Is it going to work? Like, is it not going to work? Like there's a window of opportunity that is open because of like something changing in technology or consumer behavior or something.

8:16Linda Rottenberg: And in that window of opportunity, you tend to have many teams without even knowing about each other in different parts of the world start to work the same problem. And then if you're working on the right thing at the right time, it might become an industry like what happened to our industry, that suddenly you have this massive industry. But when we were getting started, we had not known of any of these companies because they were like small startups here and there that raised a bit of funding if they had even been founded. And I think there is this easy misconception that if you come from a large home market like the US, operating in a language that everyone knows, like English.

8:52Linda Rottenberg: That's where the biggest, the best, and the original services come. But the reality is that these services can come from anywhere. And the infrastructure didn't used to be there to build these companies like venture capital and know-how and understanding about go-to-market and talent that knows how to build these companies. And now I think that talent and that capability and that access to capital is more ubiquitous and globally available than it has ever been. And this has changed literally in like 10, 15 years.

9:21Miki Kuusi: I also think that you've said something that I totally agree with, which is that outside the U.S., you don't have a big enough market to build for a single market. And therefore, you're building a multi-country capability from day one. So you've got to be agile. You've got to deal with different regulatory systems. And in some ways, you get better data. Because sometimes what happens if the Silicon Valley model you're looking to doesn't work or goes down in value? Yesterday, I was speaking with Carlos, the CEO of Kavak. Now, Kavak was always viewed as Carvana of Latin America. Well, once Carvana's valuation drops 70%, people are like, you're screwed.

10:01Miki Kuusi: Well, guess what he's done? He's become this vertically integrated AI and robotics company in cars. But more than that, back to the trust issue, what he said is we care about selling people their first car and their last car. And we're actually developing the trust. And we have all the data. We know their AI. We know their preferences. If their kid then needs a college loan, we'll give it. And so they're backing into financing. But it's because, to me, some of these elsewhere companies, you know, have a different relationship with the customers and with these markets. Does that resonate?

10:34Linda Rottenberg: Yeah, I think, you know, in our scene, people have over time come to appreciate more and more how ideas are cheap and execution is everything. And you can have like two teams work on technically almost exactly the same thing. And you can end up with vastly different outcomes in terms of the product, the technology, the service, how people use it, what kind of a company or success you're able to build. And I think that's something you see when you follow these companies long enough. Like Nubank is a good example. And Nubank is one of the biggest like neobanks or online banks in the world. And I wouldn't say that like neobank is a copy of anything.

11:07Linda Rottenberg: If anything, like, you know, there's many copies of Nubank.

11:10Miki Kuusi: Exactly. They're the same. Elsewhere.

11:12Linda Rottenberg: So I think like execution ultimately is the thing that sets people and companies apart.

11:18Miki Kuusi: Ideas are cheap and execution is everything. Okay. So what's something about you that would surprise people who only know you as a founder?

11:28Linda Rottenberg: Well, I know this is an easy answer for me. I have five small kids. Five? Yes, that's the general reaction I get.

11:37Miki Kuusi: Wow. How old? What's small?

11:39Linda Rottenberg: The oldest is seven and the youngest is 10 months. So they're all pretty young.

11:44Miki Kuusi: Wow.

11:45Linda Rottenberg: And he has no twins. How do you have none of that online?

11:48Miki Kuusi: That is genius. How do you have none? I know you've talked about what being a father and a partner has done in terms of focus. But that's no, how do you have no, none of that online? Wow. Okay.

12:00Linda Rottenberg: I try to keep a pretty private profile when it comes to like, you know, family and stuff. But like, yeah, that's the most surprising thing, I guess. People don't really know about me. And I always thought that, you know, if you want to build a long term sustainable company, you need to build something that is able to endure for like decades and decades and decades. And if you want to be a great company, you need to have people staying with you for a very long time. And like people are only going to be able to do that if you build a culture where it's possible to, you know, ultimately build a family and have that life also outside of what you're doing, even as like all of these companies like ours start as a very 24-7 like operation.

12:39Linda Rottenberg: and that's the balance of like how do you keep that intensity but like make sure that there's

12:43Miki Kuusi: this balance of building a family at the same time i mean alan taylor who's worked with endeavor he's basically like a late stage you know third co-founder in some ways and he's uh he runs our endeavor catalyst funds and he uh was very intentional about taking paternity leave he just took a two-month sabbatical to uh celebrate his 20 years and then said see i'm coming back everyone thought that sabbatical means you're going to leave. He's like, no, I'm coming back. But he's very intentional, especially for the guys to say, hey, you have to do this.

13:13Linda Rottenberg: It's really difficult to take a take a break, like when you're building one of these companies in the early stages, especially, but even in the later stages. And I think there's still this almost like a stigma in our type of industries that like, can you really take a longer break than than like, like a couple of weeks of holiday. And I think that's one of the things, if you want people to build families, that people need to also spend time with their family, especially when the kids are young.

13:36Miki Kuusi: Yeah, I have identical twin girls on the other end. They're about to graduate from college. They're both seniors at Yale. And when they were five and I was going on a business trip, one tugged on my leg and said, just remember, you can be an entrepreneur for a short time, but you were a mommy forever.

13:55Linda Rottenberg: That's well said. You have smart kids. There's one realization I had getting our kids, which was that up until the moment you have kids, You're kind of like, you know, even if you don't think about it, you know, a lot of times it feels like you're the main character of your own life. And then you get a kid, your first kid, and you realize I'm a side character of my kids' lives. It's a strange change in perspective that happens that, like, you know, it's difficult to even, like, understand before you've gone through the experience.

14:24Miki Kuusi: Well, that's funny you say that because I'm married to a writer. So his name is Bruce Viler, and he wrote these experience books. He was a circus clown, and he walked the Bible. He has a book called Walking the Bible, and he did all these things. And then we got married and had kids, and I became a character in his books. So we had The Secrets of Happy Families when we were clueless parents trying to figure out how to raise kids. And then he got cancer and wrote a book called The Council of Dads. We didn't think he was going to make it. I, you know, had to juggle three-year-old twins, a husband going through chemotherapy and a growing organization.

15:04Miki Kuusi: And then NBC did a series on it. So I was literally a character in that. And now and then his last books on transitions and ritual. So weirdly, I've been the side character.

15:18Linda Rottenberg: That's a very literal way to become a side character in someone else's life. Let's see. I got another one for you. So if we peeked inside your calendar, what would embarrass you the most?

15:31Miki Kuusi: I relish my calendar. I schedule in my walks. Because if I don't walk, I'm on Zoom or in meetings all the time or flying. And that irritated me so much, which sounds idiotic. Like, really, you don't know when to take a walk? And I'm like, no, if I don't do it, so I purposefully do that. That's good.

15:53Linda Rottenberg: I don't know if that's embarrassing. What would you say? As a CEO, it would probably be people seeing my wife's calendar invites to me. Because like at work, like, yeah, I'm like a CEO, but like at home, I'm like barely next to a janitor in my level of duties and like responsibilities that I get. And my wife can be very prescriptive when it comes to do this, do that, like, hey, remember to do that thing and like so forth. So it's very much like an un-CEO-like calendar. Here's the thing.

16:26Miki Kuusi: I had to learn, this is back when Bruce got sick, right? And I felt, especially as a female CEO, I had to be like, have it together and never let them see you cry, never let them see you sweat. And it was really interesting because after he's doing, well, more than 15 years in. And he had to have his entire femur replaced with a titanium rod. It had only been done twice in history. This was like very aggressive bone cancer. And when I came back, I said, I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to. And my team asked me a question, of course, that I burst into tears. And I was so embarrassed. I went into my office and I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to lose everybody.

17:11Miki Kuusi: They're going to think, you know, who's. And instead, people came into me and said, look, Linda. We always thought you were superhuman. They did not mean that as a compliment. And they said, now that we know you're human, now that we see your vulnerable side, we'll follow you anywhere. And so I came up with this model like, oh, it's less super, more human. And I think that female CEOs all the time get asked about juggling characters. We make, I mean, I remember being in Davos and having to make a play date in Davos because it snowed and my husband didn't have the names of the other parents. And I'm like, how many other CEOs are making a play date from Davos?

17:46Miki Kuusi: Michael, Del, you doing this? Anyway, so I think after COVID, it was super interesting to me that suddenly all the male CEOs had kids running around their Zoom room. I think this is fantastic. And I think this new generation of men, back to you and Alan and Mark Zuckerberg and others taking paternity leave, I think why not? I don't believe in balance, but this idea of work-life integration, why is it un-CEO-like? Like, as you said, if we want people to make careers out of, you know, and stay 10, 20 years, I want to model that you can be kick ass and ambitious and a builder and actually have a family that at the end of the day still talks to you and thinks you were there for them.

18:31Linda Rottenberg: I'm a big believer in this. So like everyone in our company knows that like I have five kids and they like, you know, know about, you know, the things that I do also outside of work. Because for me, it's important that when you're spending as much time together with people as you do with the people that you work closely with, it's important that you know each other also as persons, like people. And I think it's a good thing that people bring themselves to work because that helps us basically understand each other better at work together better. And it also helps create trust. You know, I think one thing I've seen is that I remember like in the early advent of the internet thinking that like, you know, do people need to still get together?

19:12Linda Rottenberg: Like, you know, as a slush organizer, event organizer, like do people still need events? Like online, we can do all this stuff like we're doing right now. And then actually funnily enough, events have done better than ever during the time of the internet. And I think it's because we are spending more time than ever with each other, you know, with different kinds of people over the internet. And as a result, there's more demand to meet each other because nothing really replaces yeah understanding a person craving to know them like spending time with them like doing things that are not like strictly mission oriented but we're trying to do this thing in this like half an hour one hour window so i'm a big believer in that that helped like make it also more normal that everyone is a human not just like this like perfect like you know superhuman as you said love that switching

19:58Miki Kuusi: gears, I love these cards, is move fast and break things still a useful philosophy?

20:05Linda Rottenberg: I think like the ultimate outcome is that everyone needs to figure out their own path and usually has characteristics of like, you know, different ways to approach the problem. And like moving fast and breaking things is a classical like hacker ethos of how do you build products fast? How do you experiment and try and, you know, make progress very quickly? And I think it has a very important employs when you're talking about zero to one product, when you're talking about, you know, experimenting something with something, building something from the ground up, like, but at the same time, if you are in the scale of millions or hundreds of millions of people that are relying on you for information, for work, for earnings, for, you know, many other things, you have a lot of responsibility.

20:48Linda Rottenberg: And it can be a very detrimental thing to just move fast and break things, because you might be impacting a massive amount of human lives in a profoundly negative way. And I think that's one of the reasons why Meta has been, for instance, criticized for a philosophy that in the early days was glorified. And I think that's a good example of something where you need to be mindful about how you strike these balances. But I believe that even in massive scale as a company, you still need to be able to have these pockets where you can be startup-like. But you can't be startup-like as a massive global company having a profound impact on the life of so many people.

21:24Miki Kuusi: I totally agree with you on the zero to one versus like the one to 100. One of the things about European founders that I found, and this is working across, you know, Europe is because there was relative scarcity of capital and of role models until recently, which we can dig into after, you know, people are just kind of gritty and just kind of bootstrappy and, you know, empowered through and did things. Do you think there's almost to this paradox that with all the attention, with now the Silicon Valley investors looking to Europe because you have these success stories, right? And it seems like, oh, maybe there's that it will actually change in a maybe not so positive way that ethos of it's hard and we're in it for the long term.

22:10Miki Kuusi: What's your thought?

22:12Linda Rottenberg: I think the important thing is that there are many ways to success. So it's not like there is only this one way to succeed as a company. And Europe, if I look at the previous generation of founders and companies, basically before the financial crisis of 2008, 2009, many of the successes that came from Europe were self-funded for a very long time. Like the usual case was that you did consulting or you had some product that was able to provide enough value very early on that people would pay for it. And that's the way that you paid salaries and were able to keep going. And then like, you know, the, uh, scaled successes that came from Europe at the time tended to be these companies basically started to build like a more scalable product, funding it originally themselves.

22:57Linda Rottenberg: And then, uh, Silicon Valley VC is the, for the only VC is around the globe at the time would like cherry pick the most promising companies by making like this one investment in, uh, you know, in Europe in like the, uh, the, the guys who funded a DFJ. who funded Skype as an example. One of their partners had like family roots in Estonia and that's why he invested into Skype as an example.

23:21Miki Kuusi: We lost the great Bill Draper this week who was Prince of a Man. And yeah, Tim was on my board for a while. So I just was speaking with him.

23:28Linda Rottenberg: Yes, I remember him very well talking about the story of like why he ended up investing in Skype. And without him and that connection to Estonia, they wouldn't necessarily have been Skype. And without Skype, they wouldn't be a Nicholas and like the whole like Estonian tech scene that's come out of Skype and so forth and great things have humble beginnings certainly but the point i'm going for is that we have this history certainly as europe and that has has been like a more risk conscious history because you couldn't really take big swings because everyone would lose their jobs and the company would go bust i think the good thing about the world the way the world is going right now is that there are more people that can take big swings i don't want the bay area to be the only place in the world where you can be crazy enough to start a space Axe.

24:11Linda Rottenberg: And, you know, a SpaceX, you don't get that started without massive amounts of financing and ambition and craze for like years and years and years, even decades to build that thing. And I think that's a good thing. But I think it's also important that we build companies with values from the ground up so that the only value is not growth or success, but there's going to be values in terms of like, what's the impact we create on society and so forth. And I think that's something that I appreciate about all these companies that are coming from different parts of the world is that they have very different kinds of values that make, I think, the world a better place in the sense that, you know, we don't have a monoculture of companies.

24:50Miki Kuusi: All right, this question is from Rothschild & Co. What's a conversation you know you need to have but haven't had yet?

25:00Linda Rottenberg: That's a very good question. I think there's a conversation I need to have somewhere down the line with myself about what I want to do when I grow up. This is one of my favorite questions I ask people in interviews and when I get to work with new people, that like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Because I believe that no one of us, not one of us ever grows up. We're constantly in this process of trying to figure out what makes us happy and what is the best way to create an impact. And for me personally, that's one question that I've been avoiding in the sense that I'm so busy right now.

25:32Linda Rottenberg: There's so much to work on. We have so much going on as a company. But at the same time, I kind of feel that at some point you need to almost like pause and be like, where is this leading? Where do you want to go with this thing? So that's for sure one question I'm hoping to ask myself when I have the time. All right. So this is my Rothschild & Co question. So should successful people make the path they took easier for those who come next?

25:58Miki Kuusi: Well, this is a question that goes right to my heart because Endeavor's philosophy is that you can't build one successful company if you don't have a successful ecosystem. So we talk to founders about becoming multipliers and we actually trace the multiplier effect. We used to think it was just role models, but in addition to being a role model and inspiring the next generation, are you training the next generation, the equivalent of the PayPal mafias? You have the new bank mafia the raw pay mafia in the middle east the kareem mafia right i'm sure you have your volt mafia this is incredible people who are trained who are starting new companies to encourage that versus discouraging that um not having non-competes instead investing in them are you investing in them are you mentoring them so we really believe that founders founder-led ecosystem is the best ecosystem.

26:49Miki Kuusi: And so to me, yeah, your success depends on you actively promoting and allowing others to achieve the success you have. And some of that means also co-creating an ecosystem with your frenemies, right? Oftentimes, we have this kill or be killed model doesn't usually work. Usually, to your earlier point, you don't know what's going to work. You're educating the system together. So we tell founders, it's not only about the next generation, your current peers, you've got to find ways to work together. Yeah.

27:20Linda Rottenberg: I mean, our industry is a funny example of this, that, you know, there's around 10 to 15 companies that got to some light level of global scale, and the CEOs of all the companies knew each other and know each other. Because, you know, it was a new industry, and everyone was kind of trying to figure it out. And it sometimes felt like you're this, you know, sailing boat out in the sea, and you kind of, you don't know where you're going, you don't know if it's the right route, and you're trying to figure it out. and then you see a competitor and even as it's a competitor you're kind of like awesome to see someone else like what have you learned you know how is the weather been for you guys you know how are you navigating the boat because it feels so lonely when you're building building an entirely new industry and that certainly has been true in our industry which is if I told our teams that are in like a country competing to death with this other company that like I'm like friends with the CEO they would be like like that's so wrong you know we hate those guys.

28:14Linda Rottenberg: So I think there is this element of you can be in competition, but you can also not be enemies.

28:20Miki Kuusi: But I do want to ask this question. You know, we support so many founders who are thinking about their sometimes their exits. How have you managed to integrate the cultures of now Volt, DoorDash and Deliveroo? Because some of the one of the hardest there's two issues. One is a founder that's now going in and working for another founder. And the other is that culture that's so hard to get right.

28:49Linda Rottenberg: It is, and it's never easy. Like certainly like in the scale of like our three combined businesses, DoorDash, Vault and Deliveroo are like over 30 ,000 people. If you look at the team that we have like working at our different offices. And I think the most important starting point, which is true for us, is that there is a high degree of similarity. I mean all three companies are underdogs all three companies were companies that were not supposed to win we were up against like formidable odds outsized amounts of funding and so forth and we had to figure out a way to succeed and I think this having this kind of an under underdog culture figuring things out having to be scrappy uh goes a very long way but uh but at the same time like you know your cultures are never going to be exactly the same it's the same as like engineering has different culture to sales.

29:37Linda Rottenberg: Sweden has different culture to Germany, to Japan, like different cultures have are different coming from location function and so forth. But as long as the 70 to 80 is similar, that the principles that people like, you know, do you want to do great work? Do we care about the quality of the work? Or do we want to move fast? You know, do we have a high level of ambition? These are the like the important pillars of culture. And if you share dose, it's easier to deal with the dissimilarities. All right. How about this one? What is something entrepreneurs are routinely told to do that you think is completely wrong?

30:14Well, I would actually answer a slightly different question, which is what do the

30:24Miki Kuusi: investors and board members not focus on that I think is a problem? And to me, I've been on a number of private turned public company boards. We Endeavor works with, you know, 3 ,100 entrepreneurs. There are a hundred, you know, unicorns. And most of the funders and board members are focused on the product market fit, the product, the finances, the, you know, the IPO, everything's on the investors. And the things about, we talked about culture, people, storytelling. These are the softer things that end up killing companies, I've found. And especially as companies prepare to go public, if you don't get your story right, you're dead.

31:11Miki Kuusi: If you don't get your culture right after, you're dead. And if you don't get the people right, you're dead. And I've been on boards where none of those things are discussed, right? It's really about who's on your book. You know, let's Let's just get the pitch. But the pitch to get people to invest at the IPO is different than the storyline that is going to actually mean whether or not people continue to invest or you become the walking dead. And so I think that those under told softer issues become the hardest things. So that's the first thing. And the other thing is I think founders don't realize how much achieving success is not going to necessarily be the outcome they view.

31:54Miki Kuusi: The number of entrepreneurs who come to me and said, I sold or I achieved this secondary and suddenly my bank account is the number I want and I'm more depressed than ever. The number of people talking about mental health of founders, it never comes up. So that's what I would say is what's not being discussed. I don't I don't it's not like one one one thing go this way or go that way is a mistake. But the mental health issue has come up. I can't tell you how many and the most successful founders, and it's not discussed.

32:24Linda Rottenberg: I can really well imagine that because I think a lot of founders are very competitive and very goal-oriented in terms of that there's a mountain that needs to be climbed and it's motivating because you want to climb that mountain. You can show that we're going to figure it out, we're going to do it. But the thing that they don't tell you is that when you get to the top of the mountain, you're just going to see the next mountain. And you don't get to this, like you think that like oh once we have raised this much or become profitable or sold the company or ipo'd or then i'm gonna be like successful and happy and so forth and you're just always gonna see the next thing and then if you jump out of it like you suddenly don't have anything uh anything to strive for and that i think is what like leads to people being like unhappy and even

33:06Miki Kuusi: depressed why do we keep doing it is you said you're a builder i'm a builder i always see another mountain you always see another mountain that that we're the lucky ones actually it's when When you get to the top of your mountain, you're like, what's my purpose? I don't see another mountain. This was my mountain. And I've kinded. What's next? What do I do? What's my purpose? What's the family if I hadn't spent time that I have to get to know? Those are the really tough questions. And as I said, it's come up more than ever. And I think back to what's, let's lean into what's human. It's back in this world.

33:42Miki Kuusi: This is something that we're going to need to confront a lot more. And I don't think a lot of founders are and then they feel alone because no one talks about it. So they don't know that so many others are experiencing what they're experiencing. So it's compounded that they feel isolated and like they're the only ones going through it when they're not alone.

34:01Linda Rottenberg: One of my favorite books related to building companies is Hard Things About Hard Things from Ben Horowitz. And there is a beautiful chapter of that book called The Struggle that talks about the struggles that you have when you're building a company. And I think that everyone who succeeds struggled in the way, but everyone who succeeds also struggled after success. These things don't come naturally. They're not easy. And people don't just talk about it so much. And that's why people think that they're alone with it. But you're not alone.

34:36Miki Kuusi: I'm Linda. And I'm Miki. And you've been listening to Only Founders in the Building.

34:41Linda Rottenberg: Next time, we'll keep the conversation going and pass the mic to another two founders at the very top of their games.

34:47Miki Kuusi: Only Founders in the Building is a podcast by Founders Forum Group in collaboration with Audi. This season is brought to you in partnership with Rothschild & Co. Thanks for listening.

34:57Linda Rottenberg: And goodbye.

35:01Thank you.