What If You Are In The Wrong Role?

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0:13Frederic Petitpont:We walk your factory floor and jog the local 5K, though sometimes we walk that too. Wherever you're coming from, we're right there with you. Wherever you're going, we'll get you there. CLA, CPAs, consultants and advisors. Learn more at claconnect.com slash with you. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney+. Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time! New friends. Gary the Snake. And your last name? The Snake. Dream Team. New habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG.

0:50Frederic Petitpont:And right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months, plan auto-renews at$12.99 a month. Terms apply. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show that solves entrepreneurs' toughest problems. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and each week I take a problem that you're probably dealing with and get tactical solutions from people who have been there and solved that. So let's get solving. Have you ever wondered if you're in the wrong position? Maybe you're a CEO and honestly, you should not be CEO?

1:26Frederic Petitpont:Or maybe you are not CEO and And honestly, you should be. These are the kinds of questions that we often keep to ourselves. I mean, imagine saying it out loud. I am the CEO, but I really shouldn't be. I mean, that is a major ego blow. It could feel downright embarrassing. Who doesn't want to think of themselves as the leader? Also, who doesn't want to tell everyone who's leading them? Or rather, also, who doesn't want to tell everyone who's following them that maybe they shouldn't? And conversely, who has the courage to step up and say, hey, I should be running this thing? Like for real, you should step down so I can run this thing.

2:01Frederic Petitpont:People don't say stuff like that, but maybe they should. For evidence of this, I offer you these guys.

2:09Philippe Petitpont:Hi, I'm Pierre. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Moments Lab. Hello, I'm Fred. I'm the other co-founder. We got a pretty similar voice who are actually identical twins. And I'm CTO, so managing the tech team and product team at Moments Lab.

2:24Frederic Petitpont:This is Phil and Fred Petipa. They're identical twins. They are also French, if you couldn't pick that up from their accents or my earnest, but probably terrible attempt to pronounce their last names. It's Petit Pont. Petit Pont. Phil is CEO, Fred is CTO. But here's the thing. When they started this company, those titles were reversed. Fred was CEO and Phil was CTO. And when they decided to switch titles, well, the response was not exactly what you'd expect. And it can tell you a lot about what's required to find the right role for you. And more importantly, the right way that you can serve your company.

3:04Frederic Petitpont:Because the thing you must remember, and the thing that Phil and Fred learned, is that this isn't about ego or titles or anything other than what's best for the company. And the more you're able to focus on that, the easier every other decision gets. But we'll get to all that. First, let's back up. these twins founded Moments Lab. And Moments Lab is pretty interesting.

3:26Philippe Petitpont:It is a video discovery platform that is using AI to understand massive amount of video content. And we're helping journalists, producers to build video way faster using AI. So we're working with top US TV networks, post-production companies, so that instead of taking days to produce shows, they can do it in minutes.

3:48Frederic Petitpont:So here's a use case for that. Imagine you're the producer on a reality TV show. You filmed hundreds of hours of footage. Now you need to cut it all down to the truly interesting stuff that'll make the final cut of an episode. And this could have taken weeks before. But now with Moments Lab technology, it can understand the video you took, identify the right moments, and give it to you, making production way faster. They now work with post-production companies that make lots of shows on Netflix and other streamers, as well as major US news outlets, sports outlets, and more. So how did these guys end up in the wrong roles at their company?

4:20Frederic Petitpont:That's just the first part of the story. Today on Problem Solvers, we're going to learn how Phil and Fred took on the wrong roles, what it took to get them to swap, and what everyone can learn about finding the right place at their company, and how much humility is required to get there. It's all coming up after the break. Every entrepreneur has the same problem, and that problem is time. You're doing too much, and you definitely don't have time to chase down office supplies or tech gear from five different stores, that is why there's Walmart Business. With one free account at business.walmart.com, you get access to a huge selection of business essentials, from cleaning supplies and office tech to workwear and even fresh food, all at Walmart's everyday low prices.

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6:32Frederic Petitpont:All right, I'm back with Phil and Fred Petipan of Moments Lab. And to remind you, they are identical twin brothers. Phil is currently the CEO. Fred is the CTO. But wait, why did they start in the reverse positions?

6:46Philippe Petitpont:I think that's a good question before explaining why we revert. Well, actually, it was a bit random, I think. So I used to work in TV and video engineering before. And so I projected myself as the CTO, and Fred, the CEO, because as a CTO, I was into technical video stuff and everything. And that was a terrible idea anyway, but we'll explain why. And then Fred was the first, I think, to leave the company, to leave his company to start the business. I follow him like a few weeks, months, remember, just after. So as the first one, you don't really ask yourself, I'm going to be the CEO because he really kicked off the company and everything and I joined the staff there.

7:30So I think it was like maybe a natural choice

7:34Philippe Petitpont:and we don't really ask ourselves who should do what based on our skills, what we love to do. And it was like a no-brainer decision, but not probably in a good no-brainer definition of it.

7:50Frederic Petitpont:I mean, that sounds like startup life, right? I mean, everyone's got to do something. And you're not exactly thinking about how the decisions that you make at the very beginning are going to scale. You're just thinking about getting the thing going. So it makes sense. So Fred, you had left your old job first. You were therefore first to be full-time into this, and therefore you were the CEO. Does that sound basically right?

8:14Philippe Petitpont:Yeah, I mean, exactly. It sounds natural. I mean, you had to create everything from the ground. I mean, all the dirty work, paperwork, and stuff like that. You don't, I mean, ask yourself. I mean, it would be a nice question, but there are more important problems to solve before addressing that question. I mean, for us, it was like creating value for a customer. and actually to continue the story well most of the customers and prospect were actually people feel new very well so i was in a kind of situation where he was in a better position to actually do business because he had the connection so every time i was going to those prospect and customers first of course they were thinking i was phil which was kind of special at first and and then I mean, the more important thing is business is kind of creating the connection, creating the relationship.

9:05Philippe Petitpont:And he had that network before, which is one thing I didn't have. And I had many things around AI, around big data, that kind of stuff. But I didn't have knowledge of this industry.

9:15Frederic Petitpont:So how did you get to the point where you decided to switch?

9:21Philippe Petitpont:Yeah, that's a really interesting story. So when you're hiring people early stage in a company, sometimes you are like asking for help to advisors or different freelancers that will help you finding people. And we started to work with a guy that is doing some kind of leadership profiling. We were about to hire our first sales rep. And we say, yeah, we want to make sure that we'll take the good decision. then the guy said okay i will help you finding the search rep you need but first i want to interview yourself both of you in two different times and then i will ask you some questions so this guy is a very unique guy so we uh we get interviews during half day each one of us separate meetings and um so this guy is asking many many questions about yourself like he's kind of breaking your shell to kind of extract really who you are what's your way of thinking what's your comfort zone what's in not in your comfort zone and then he's delivering kind of a report explaining what you like and what you don't like and then after a few maybe one week on 10 days he said okay feel afraid i want to speak to you because there's something here and then he explained that, well, actually, we have, of course, two different characters.

10:48Philippe Petitpont:And like, we're not acting the same. We have not the same behaviors. And he said, well, actually, you should revert your role because Fred is more like this and Phil, you're more like that. That's what you like. That's what Fred's like. And actually, you are both doing something you don't like today, but you don't figure it out. And so.

11:06Frederic Petitpont:How did that feel to hear?

11:10Philippe Petitpont:Oh, it was a relief. It was a relief. you use the word during the just a preparation before which is humility and i think that's i mean we we got that picture of the super founder etc etc but humility is key and i think humility here was i was so natural and you trust this guy i mean this is a former military the whole i mean the whole interview process was really mind-breaking it was like almost manipulation you know and um yeah i mean you trust him of course because you deliver the most intimate details with that guy and then when he tells you that well he got the figure of authority you know and yeah relief i think it's a maybe good world and i think we kind of had that feeling before we had like that kind of perception that maybe would have been better but there were more important things to to you know to challenge or to solve but actually solving this is solving many other things in the company.

12:09Frederic Petitpont:You know, I want to tell you about the most memorable conversation I've had about shifting roles and see how you relate to it and how you don't. So the story is this. Years ago, I talked to Mark Randolph. Mark Randolph was the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix. And he co-founded that, of course, with Reed Hastings. And so they got this thing off the ground and it started to grow and then it started to plateau and one day Reed, the co-founder, comes into the office and says, hey, Mark, CEO, I would like to talk to you and show you a presentation. And Mark says, sure. So Reed launches into this presentation about the company and where it's going and so on.

13:00Frederic Petitpont:And the punchline of this presentation, which Mark thought was a strange presentation, he's like, where is this going? What is the point of this? The punchline of the presentation was that Mark, the CEO, should step down and shift into a president role, and Reed should become the CEO. And Mark said that this felt like a punch to the gut because he had always thought of himself as the big company CEO, the guy who would lead. and now he was being asked to essentially step aside so that his co-founder could lead and he painted this picture of sitting there in the early Netflix office I mean you know we're talking really early days of Netflix here and the lights shutting down around him and then he went home and he had a glass of wine with his wife and he came to this realization which was that Reed was correct.

13:56Frederic Petitpont:And the reason that Reed was correct, he realized, was because Mark has a special skill. And that special skill, as he describes it, is turning an idea into a company and then getting that off the ground. But that is not the same skill as turning that company into a multi-billion dollar company. That's a different skill. He is the startup guy, and Reed could be, and it turned out to be, the scale guy. And that there's not anything wrong with that. That's actually a great thing, because if you recognize what you're great at, then you can put yourself in a position to deliver greatness. And, you know, he said that to me, and I came up with this line that I now use when I'm talking about this, which is, nobody ever said Shaquille O 'Neal was a terrible basketball player because he couldn't shoot three pointers, right?

14:46Frederic Petitpont:Like it didn't matter that he couldn't shoot three pointers. All that mattered is that he was really good at the thing he was really good at. And yet that took some time for Mark to come to because, you know, he was the CEO and it's hard to give up the CEO role. It's interesting to hear both of you say this was just a relief. It seems like in some way or another, you both knew that you were in the wrong roles, but you either didn't think it was worth talking about or didn't know how to or maybe thought you might have been wrong but i'm curious what you hear in that story about mark randolph and what resonates and what doesn't

15:22Philippe Petitpont:i think one of the one of the big differences is the connection we have with fred um you mean the connection you have his brothers yeah exactly and um so i i think the beginning was probably the same like there's a start of a relief when he was discussing with his wife the evening on the evening probably he was feeling relief was also saying that yeah actually someone might do a better job and that's good for the company and when you are dedicated for the company wow i think you're kind of okay with it then after it's more like maybe asking yourself did you take the good decision or should you have done things differently which was i think on our case very different because we we were very early stage so it was like maybe after two or three years so as a deep tech company two or three years is not that much and i think the but fred mentioned like humility we don't have a lot of ego and so being able to see like fred under the spotlight or fred seeing me more under the spotlight, we will be proud anyway.

16:30Philippe Petitpont:I'm super proud when he's doing some stuff and I think it's the same for him. I don't like this idea of twins on singularity or whatever, but I think we want the same thing and we don't like, we're not looking after being famous or whatever. It's not something really we want. Because people are like all the time confused with who is who, I think it's like when Fred will be famous, that will be famous and the opposite will be true. So even if it's not what we're looking for. But I think the no ego stuff is probably the most important thing. So I think the part of the story is probably similar, like being able to accept that someone can do a better job at what you're doing.

17:12Philippe Petitpont:And here we're speaking about CTO versus CEO, and both are very important. And to me, for us, the CTO role was probably even more important than the CEO role at the time. So there was no really comparison. and there's no more comparison result now. So I tend to say that it's probably easier for us.

17:30Frederic Petitpont:Yeah. Do you think that, well, first, Fred, anything to add there?

17:36Philippe Petitpont:No, we would say the same thing. Really the same thing, 100%.

17:40Frederic Petitpont:Do you guys think that this would have been any more challenging if you had co-founded this company with someone other than each other?

17:49Philippe Petitpont:That's a good question. For sure, we discussed about that. we discussed many times about that but it would have been i think different would have been more difficult for that person because the connection we do have won't be exactly the same with that person i think even if it was the same figure yourself out with like two people exactly the same that understand each other that don't really need to talk to understand them themselves i mean that's i think that's what our wife would said actually it's like i mean you guys are not communicating that much and if there was a third person that person would not really understand i guess would it would be a bit slower to make sure that person understand everything so i think would be it would have been harder i'm not so sure actually the idea of co-founding a company with someone that you don't know before i think is uh takes a lot of courage takes a lot of risk we're here actually the kind of connection we do have being twins helped us raise money it helped us in many times because this is a sign of stability oh that's interesting you mean so when you were talking to investors they're looking at the two of you and they're thinking

18:58Frederic Petitpont:this is a very strong partnership there's no risk these two are going to start fighting and

19:04Philippe Petitpont:hate each other is that what you mean yeah and so feel here so i'm the one really uh like in the frontline when it's about like fundraising and there's wow there's a flip side of it many people are saying wow you are working with your brother how is that possible and actually it's it's either it's a very strong advantage either or it's the opposite but actually at the very beginning of the company the vcs were asking the question wow that's a risk and now what VCs, so let's say our last round, actually our current VC says, well, to the new VC and to the lead one, they said, well, actually it's an advantage.

19:46Philippe Petitpont:The founders are very close together, very strong. And when you see the reason of failure for startups, many times, I don't have numbers, but maybe 30, 40%, I don't know, it's because of conflict between founders. and this is something that cannot happen with us. So that's why actually it's removing a risk here of crash for the company because founders are very linked together.