Builder, Inventor, or Operator? The 0-1-2 Framework for Evaluating Founders| Andre Charoo (MapleVC)

34:08Your ability to get up to speed is pretty remarkable. People talk about founders' ability to learn really quickly. How do you underwrite that in a pitch? How do you underwrite that as an investor, just underwriting them? It's like, how do they tell the story to you is evidence of how they've learned. Yeah. And what are positive signals around storytelling that get you excited that this person really has intuited their vision and will bring it to realization? It's a good question on positive signals. Again, it's probably down to just, I mean, one is, did I understand it? You know? And I will test that understanding because I will use my network as a way to diligence the founder and throw in people who might be specialists.

35:07And, like, how did they understand it, right? Based on their understanding. And so you can kind of get a sense, like, how deep can they go? How deep did the learning go? Can they break it down to a basic two-year-old learner, right? Because it was starting from scratch to a rocket scientist or someone that's super deep in domain expertise in that area and still come out with a positive signal that they actually know what they're talking about. They might not agree. And I don't actually look for the specialist and the domain expertise. I actually look for them not to agree. That's a really good sign to me.

35:51Because if you're disrupting anything, yeah, exactly, right? But when they come back saying that, wow, they know their shit, that's another positive signal. That's a couple. What are examples of bad advice that is commonly shared by VCs to founders on how to pitch a vision? You know, my partner, John Edgar, wrote a post, so I would go encourage folks to look at this post. He would articulate it way better than I can. Man, he has a really good—he believes on a summary level, because, again, I won't be able to go as deep as he can, but most people, in his opinion, confuse a vision with a dream. Okay.

36:45And he goes into... What's the difference between... I know. I don't know if I can fully articulate it as well as he can, but maybe we can pull it up on the blog post and read it verbatim. But one view of that is he's looking for founders that back to this ability to learn and to like to like help me connect the dots. he is looking for someone that can articulate a market, articulate why it's happening, articulate the tailwinds, articulate what has happened that hasn't happened before, that makes this more possible than ever before, that then can help the reader connect to why, while this is a big idea, while this could be, it could be possible.

37:40There's all these obstacles along the way. and someone that can, in his words, underwrite that for you or walk you through that journey, despite whatever their background is, to my earlier point, is someone that has a vision versus I have this dream or idea, but I can't legibly walk you through the components that make that dream more possible if you were to do a number of things or if these things were to happen. And yes, there's all these points where you have to believe along the way, and that's your choice to do so. But if someone can't walk us through that, you're just pitching a pipe dream.

38:34But isn't that a zero's job? Or maybe I misunderstood, right? The builder's job is to paint that vision and say, here's this non-obvious point to do that. And to your point, this is where the inventor comes in to say, I'm going to go create it. I'm going to go actually prototype it and build that. But it is the builder's job to say, the next step is this. Can you go build it? The next step is this. Right? But this person's capable of doing it more than the builder at the end of the day. But the builder is the one with the steps, if you will, and the narrative that will, again, require you to believe.

39:26I would argue when you hear the steps from an inventor, you might not have to believe. Again, because it's linear. Because it's more linear. Because you're like, yeah, that's... Methodical. Yeah, that's possible. That's possible. That's possible. That's possible. For when the builder tells you what's possible, it's like, let's stop there and pause. Tell me why. Tell me what circumstances allowed that to maybe happen. Yeah. But then you're getting history. You're understanding their point of view that usually is unique. There's an insight. There's usually something there that other people don't see as clearly as they do.

40:03Yeah. And that's what makes them really special. And so I encourage folks to read his blog posts. I've never heard someone articulate what he's looking for when you articulate a vision than I have seen out there. So hats off to John Edgar. And I'm sorry, John, for not being able to articulate it as well as my partner. We'll link it in the clip. And I think you already alluded to this. You're a one today at Maple. You were a two at Uber, probably Wachovia. Yeah, probably. And I knew this, Amrit. I knew this. The market started to give me feedback that I started to realize, oh, I'm the one for this.

40:45A couple things. One, start - I'm the one to be a one. Maple, yeah. I'm the one to do this maple thing. Okay. And one was like most people were confused of my initial thesis of backing Canadians in America. That while that was hard to take as someone fundraising and raising funds and people not understanding your thesis or thinking it's too niche. And advisors I look up to love you, Samil Shah. You know, but he was like too small, too niche. Like going to be rough with LPs. that actually fed that gave me more confidence that i see something other people don't and there's a much bigger vision that people might not see that maple will become it's not going to be just this canadian fund that people think it might be but i believe you got to own a niche and it was my uber black product um and so that was that was one the second was i started over the years.

41:50As you know, I built this bench of advisors who are from a host of really important companies that were early, like me, at Uber, that I shared a bit of my carry with, which, fortunately, I'm proud to have two partners now. So, Maple is not a solo fund, solo GP fund. Jane Lee, who was early at Shopify, and John Edgar, who was early at DigitalOcean have joined me as we go into Fund4. But I started to see the range of people that were attracted to what I was building, and that gave me confidence. I was like, wow. It's not just one archetype that was starting to pay attention or starting to want to work with me on this when they really got to hear my ambition and the vision for what I wanted to build.

42:47and so that gave me encouragement along the way that was like oh I this might be the thing that I'm a builder for because of the range of talent the thing I see that doesn't connect to the thing today the steps that have become clear in my mind of how we're going to get there so those are two things along the way that that while there was ironically like pushback from the community gave me actually strangely more confidence that, no, you're actually on the right path, but it's not legible to the market yet. That's okay. Keep going. It will be. That's beautiful. And today in Fund 4, you're no longer focused on Canadian founders.

43:35Correct. Where is Maple today, and where do you predict Maple will be in 10 years? Thanks for asking. The vision at the time was these Canadians, like the illustrious list I rattled off, were going to get me into some important companies. And then those companies across a wide range of industries, because I'm a generalist and I wanted to prove that it could be across a wide range and be in one of the most important companies in those industries. And then those companies will earn me the right to partner with a broader set, a broader set, a broader set, a broader set. And so proud to be in one of the most, I think, one of the top go-to-market AI tools out there.

44:16And as you would probably imagine, the set of founders we get to see and partner with, I wouldn't have been able to be in a position to do so before pre-Clay. We are in a company called Stadium Live that launched a collectibles product called Stadium Vault that has gone from zero to over 100 million of GMV. It's insane in less than six months. And it might be one of the most important companies in the collectible space. And that's so pure consumer. But a Canadian got me into that opportunity. And I could only imagine that's going to open up another broad range of opportunities. Jane, coming from Shopify really early and building a venture studio focused on consumer founders, can help us even more credibly underwrite.

45:11Let's call it like the application layer, which we're really excited about, making sure we can see opportunities before others. Like see as in not necessarily first, but just be able to underwrite and see something special that might not be as clear to others with her background. And then we're having a breakout at the moment in Fund 3, which you guys are LPs in, and I'm grateful for your partnership, in a company called Inference.ai. When I invested, it wasn't called Inference.ai, but it was a founder who was obsessed and had a belief in the future of what Inference was going to mean in the AI tech stack.

45:51And this has gone from zero to 40 million run rate in 11 weeks. Wow! Yeah, and I haven't told you that yet as an LP, but we're about to raise a$20 million Series A. And it's crazy to think that we might be in one of the most important companies in the infra stack all of a sudden. But again, in all these three scenarios, it took the niche that we focused on that I believed deeply that other people didn't see that were going to get me into a wide range of really important companies across a wide range of industries. And then those companies will start to earn us the right to partner with a broader set and a broader set.

46:31So it's crazy to think that now John, who has a CapEx-heavy developer-oriented, having built cloud storage with DigitalOcean from zero to IPO, can credibly help that founder and also credibly underwrite that space more than I can, having written the first check, great. But he can help underwrite that and more to come. Jane can help on the application layer on the consumer side. And I'll sit as the marketplace guy, let's call it, or just a generalist, keep doing what I'm doing. But Maple truly can see a much broader range of stuff than we could have ever done and seen before. It all came from this one insight that I had that other people did not believe or see.

47:17and it was painful for 10 years because it doesn't attract LP dollars. It's painful, but I believed in it deeply, and now we're reaping the rewards. Yeah, it's really exciting. Amazing. So what does Maple 20 look like? We are a top first check, I call it pre-seater seed fund, that is a generalist fund that we want to be known where we see what other people don't see, and we help make that legible to the market. And I think that will remain the case for the test of time in venture capital. And it's not just the founder. I would argue John Edgar is more markets-first driven investor. Jane is founder, brand, has a consumer lens.

48:16And I generally look for that insight. People might think I lean to the founder thing because of my talent framework. And while that is true, I've never actually written a check. You know this when we wrap on our updates. I've never written a check just because the founder is awesome. I've never done that. I needed to believe in Clay's ambition and the insight that he saw in the world. Yes, while I thought they were great, I needed to have that thing that they saw that other people didn't. It's the same for Stadium Live and his ambition around creating a participatory experience for Gen Z users as they relate to culture.

48:56And then for inference.ai, he painted this future that cloud storage is going to look very different in the age that we're entering. and it's going to be disrupted. And this would be the first time you could ever potentially imagine having a fourth or a fifth or a sixth winner. And I needed those insights. Like it wasn't just a blanket because you're a builder, let's go. And so I think that's the mission of Maple, is to find those founders who have something they see that the world doesn't see. and go on a journey to prove it. And that's what I'm doing with Maple. That's literally what I'm doing with Maple.

49:39It's really beautiful because you and I have had a close collaboration over the last few years, and I've gotten to see that up front in real time. You are one of those rare VCs who, when he has conviction, he really doesn't care what the market says about his founders. Totally. You know that for a fact. When you get feedback, obviously, you need success. That drives the confidence, right? And this is worth a plug. While I wrote the first check in Clay, and that's a tiny check out of a million-dollar fund, which is a 7x, by the way, and a 2x DPI, it put us in a position to write a$15 million check that's worth$160 million today when others didn't see what we saw because of the history we had the six years prior.

50:38And seeing one of the things they said early play out. And you're right. We are high conviction investors. And as you know, we're doing the same thing with Stadium Live right now. And we might do the same thing with inference. There's only going to be one or two per fund. But you're right. You're absolutely right. When we have conviction, we love it when other investors don't see it. That fuels me. It literally fuels me. So I actually don't think I would invest. If a bunch of investors see it, I'm not interested, to be honest. Because as a first check seed investor, if everyone sees it, then what journey are we going on?

51:23What's the journey? What's the point? What's the point, dude? It's a 10-year journey. You got to pitch me something that people don't see. And the way I'm going to know that is I'm going to call my friends like Amrit. I'm going to call my friends like, you know, like I'll call my mentors, Alfred, Lynn, Sequoia. I need a bunch of people to push back, right, to say, like, don't see it. And literally that's what I'm looking for, to write that check and then go on a journey to prove it wrong. and we might not prove it wrong, and that's okay. But I need that. I need that piece. That's beautiful. And obviously, I was joking, you have so many friends in this business.

52:04It's one of the things that I admire about you. I appreciate that. What's an example? So you're calling Alfred at Sequoia, and you're looking for him to basically convince you to not do the deal that you end up doing? Is that what I'm hearing? Well, I want to hear other smart investors who have a lot more resources to be able to see things that I might not be able to see in a tiny fund with strapped for resources. And so, yeah, you want to see what your peers that you respect see. And it's also a stress test of what the founder has said to you that they believe that other people don't believe.

52:45And the only way to test that is let's go talk to 10. I always say this in a pitch. I'm going to go call 10 of the smartest people that I can get to in and around this space or that I think has seen a bunch. And I want nine of them to disagree with what you're about to tell me. If they don't, then I'm not interested. I'm just not. I think I have this crazy chip on my shoulder. And it might have been through all of my experiences that when something was ridiculed or people didn't see it and then it turned out to be the opposite, I was like, oh. And especially when it's against my own belief system.

53:30So as simple as when I went to my friends, my smartest friends, I got this job offer at Uber, Uber Cab, and they were ridiculing me. I'm like, I love it. why do you think it's such a douchey product? But like, am I dumb? And so it's a check. And then obviously I went. And then funny enough, those engineers now work there. And I'm like, oh, you just took some time to get there. You took like six years to figure it out. Right. I was there early. And then just every single time I see that where, oh, I brought that and people poked holes. And it just comes down to it wasn't stupid. But it was just they didn't see it yet.

54:14It wasn't legible yet. And that's OK. And so I think that is what this entire job of seed investing really is. And it's motivating to be able to someone to put a vision out in the world and know that the likelihood is really low. But, man, they see something that other people don't. and just get on that journey with them to help in any way. Obviously, where VCs were passive in the passenger seat, but if you can help them go on, that just makes it so worthwhile. On the Alfred thing, he pointed out on the talent framework, which I thought no one else pointed out, was, Andre, you listed all the greats, and what's fascinating to me were the hybrids.

55:04I was like, oh, good eye, Alfred. He's just like, Mark Zuckerberg is your hybrid. Jeff from Amazon is your hybrid. And, yeah, I don't know. Again, I was an intimate in those stories, so I'm not sure. Maybe there was a zero around. But oftentimes, in Alfred's point of view, like maybe finding the founders who truly waffle between a builder and an operator and an inventor are actually the really great ones versus the ones that are just clear and then find the other people to fill the buckets. And I thought that was interesting to hear from him. And that was like the first thing he saw and said. And I was like, wow, thank you for that feedback.

55:53I wrote the thing and I didn't even think about it that way, that maybe I should be looking for hybrids. I was like, wow, thank you, Alfred. Chameleons. Or chameleons, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think is... I can't help but project some of my experience. I think you and I both like finding the people who are illegible and making them legible to the market. Pre-consensus, if you will. What do you think... You described the journey for the last 10 years at Maple VC as one that was really hard, despite 7X, fun wine, et cetera, et cetera. What do you think is the most illegible part of Maple that we should get into here?

56:41Good question. All right. Well, my partners might not love this part, but I have brought on two people that I love dearly and so excited. I mean, in many ways, they've been advisors to me for seven years, so we've been building, but now full-time together as two full-time partners. I think when you look at us three, I could have chosen much more legible partners. We're a ragtime bunch of guys. And when you're going into a fundraise on a much larger fund that that have people on the other side that truly want legible investors. And you're like, this guy's doing it again. He's literally bringing two illegible people to the fold and can try to convince us that they are great because they didn't do venture.

57:45They've done it in their own light where Jane ran a venture studio out of Shopify that incubated consumer-oriented founders that she picked, and then they paid her to go and launch and build their product. I think she actually played the job of venture, but without the dollars. And then John, yes, he's legible from... Both of them, like, wow, both early at double-digit billion-dollar publicly traded companies. Insane. So the operating bucket, oh my God, totally checked the bucket. But like, you're lending them right checks? Like, how are you able to do that? John ran an accelerator that also picked founders where he didn't have cash.

58:33They paid him to have advice from him. So both of them, I saw this ability where like, you chose these founders. They chose to pay you to like do the job of like what we do. We usually give them money, and that's why they spend time with us, not the other way around. That's what I saw. And I'm now going to go on a journey to prove it to the world that I think they are amazing venture capitalists. And I'm pumped about that journey and excited for everyone and every rebuttal that's going to come my way that's going to be like, I don't know. I don't see it, Andre. And I'm just like, welcome to the next stage of the journey for Maple.

59:16I'm pumped about it. I literally think they are better investors than I can ever be. And the world is going to wait to see that. And the results are going to... And I feel grateful that I created this thing that was right for them. We all feel like the market doesn't recognize us. And performance will speak volumes. And thankfully, it's put us in a position to have a shot, thankfully, for what I did in the first 10 years. But this next 10 years, yeah, they're going to take it to the next level. I'm pumped about that. So that's it. Chips on shoulders. Chips on shoulders, man. It's like, without it, I don't know what I would do.

1:00:05It's a way of life for you. It's a way of life. Now, I got to ask, because you're a very soulful person. clearly extremely thoughtful. You've chosen two partners that are illegible to LP Capital. Tell us about the culture of your firm. The last time you were in this office, you had a box of candles. That chain. Yeah, it was great. It was so great. So I know where there's smoke, there's fire. Right, right, yeah. It's a really good question. I mean, this is a very timely topic that we are spending a lot of time codifying. And I'll go back to what we've landed on recently, which is what we all stand for, but from different vantage points, which is what do we see that they don't see?

1:01:08and let's go help them prove it to the world. And not to be religious per se, but I did grow up in the church as a Christian and I wrote this blog post when I announced them to the world that said in the title, which I credit Jane for encouraging me to write it the way we did, was that this business has always been about faith for me. And the definition, biblical definition of faith, is having hope in something that is not seen. I think that we come about that in three different ways, but the commonality was, you know, John likes to come about it from the market perspective and he is able to underwrite founders from their view of a market that other people might not be seeing.

1:02:13And his job in his accelerator was helping people articulate that when you go for your seed round. And here's all the things you need to do to get there. And Jane has an intuition on people that I literally believe is top 1 % in the world that can know people in a way that they might not even know themselves. And obviously, a lot of this is underwriting people. And in a consumer context, I think that is actually really important because you're probably underwriting mostly at the early stage pretraction the DNA of a human that's going to imprint themselves on some digital consumer product. And then as you heard about it from me, I'm looking for that insight that people don't see.

1:03:00And so there is a, and maybe it's chips on shoulders too, but that is the ethos of what the culture is going to be like. And it's going to come not just from, again, the founder perspective, but it's like, I mean, can I pull it up really quickly? Of course. Because this is awesome. It's very timely that we've been working on this. And last week is when we settled on it, and we're going to codify it very shortly, but we haven't yet. So here it is. So, yeah, what we see, we see what others miss, then help founders prove it. We look for three things before they become obvious. The person capable of building the company, the change in the world making it inevitable, and the specific reason the market is misreading both.

1:03:57So one, we see the person. Great founders do not share a resume, sort of personality or path. We look for judgment, resilience, learning velocity, self-awareness, the ability to attract exceptional people before conventional proof exists. Adversity is not a credential. What matters is how someone responds to the obvious path that fails. That's one. Two is see the inevitability. The best opportunities are non-obvious before they become obvious. We are drawn to hard businesses where the difficulty is the work itself, not merely competing inside whatever category venture is chasing. We ask, what is becoming inevitable?

1:04:38What is already true but not yet obvious? Why is this founder early rather than just wrong? And then last, we see the delta. So every investment needs a specific testable reason for us to believe something the market does not yet believe. The delta may be in the founder, it may be in the market, it may be in the product, or it may be an interaction of all of the three. But contrarianism alone isn't conviction. If we can't explain what we see, why others are missing it, and what proves us wrong, we don't have a thesis. Wow. Yeah. It was like when we summarized that, I was like, let's go. Dude, this is awesome.

1:05:22You guys are awesome. You're taking Maple to the next level. This is great. That's beautiful. It's awesome. That's beautiful. So thank you for letting me read that. Of course. Thank you for sharing that. Do you have a ritual that you have across the three of us in terms of communication? because each of you have such different backgrounds. Yeah, no. I think we've been talking about how we are going to operate as a team in terms of our weekly scheduling and all that, and the thing that I have been pretty adamant on, and I guess I get this from, you know, I look up to Bill Gurley. I met him during the Uber days, and he also happened to put a term sheet for the Series A at Hired.

1:06:14We didn't take it, but it's nice to know that he wanted to invest. And so everyone kind of does their own work, and we come together and have sort of unscripted meetings that don't necessarily – I think they do this Mondays where it's just like a seven-hour block or six. I don't know. And they just – you bring whatever. There's no crazy – That's what you do. So we don't have a seven-hour block, but we totally don't come to meetings with an agenda. I believe we are in the business of it's a bit random. There's a lot of edgy, edge case stuff. And so when they came on board, I was like, while John Edgar believes in systems, he's a systems thinker, very much a systems thinker, how he organizes his day, how he even communicates with us.

1:07:02Now with AI, he's built Maple OS. Like, I think I'm talking to his agent now on Slack, not necessarily John. All the time. It's pretty cool what he's doing. But when we come on person and we hang, it's open-ended. And I think that's how it should be. I also look up to Founders Fund and how it seems to be quite random. and when someone has conviction in something, you're going to hear about it or the whole conversation is going to be about that thing. And so I think as a first check firm, we're going to have to be as malleable and flexible and less rigid to mirror the job. Like, how do you notice things that aren't rigid and aren't going to be packaged well and are going to be random and they're going to come from wherever?

1:08:04Like, I think the culture needs to mirror that as much as possible while still professionalizing and institutionalizing a fund that started with one person to now three. There's obviously areas where we're going to institutionalize. the firm and the fund. But yeah, right now, that's a lot of open-ended conversations that zigzag wherever it goes and sometimes not even time-bounded. And a lot of beautiful stuff like that came out of that, came out of those spaces. Are Jane and John, I guess, zero and two respectively? Oh, we did the... So it's funny because, yes, I'm building the firm and I want to have the range of people at the table.

1:08:54It came out that I waffle between one and zero. Jane waffles between one and zero. And John was, I think, squarely in the zero. Oh, wow. So no twos. No, we don't have a two yet. I'm courting someone who I believe can be our two. Okay. And I do think it's important sometimes when the two comes in, right? You know the Clay story. Varun is the two. and he didn't join until four or five years into the founding of Clay. Yeah. And has obviously helped take it to the... Yeah, and you look at Eric Schmidt joining Google or Dara, while Travis is not at Uber, but you get the... There is a point in time when a two can come in and take this thing to the next level.

1:09:38Yeah. I don't know if we're there yet. Yeah. Maybe that's when we raise our$500 million fund. Probably. Or whatever it ends up becoming. But, you know, we're raising 75 for fund four. And the two will eventually come. But it's nice that I can lean on ones and zeros where I was all in my head. Or leaning on them as advisors. But you can only optimize so much time when they were in that role or in that capacity. That's been beautiful. And I've just seen where they've taken stuff. John building a bunch of stuff that I could have never built. Like really leveling up how our systems and how we think about the internal job of venture capital and what we can use with AI and whatnot.

1:10:34And yeah, Jane, even with the vision of what it could become and what we represent and this culture stuff, like articulating it all wasn't my strength. And so they are the right people for this stage. Yeah, it's great. It sounds like you probably advocate at some point in a company's journey, you need a two. You're about to be in that journey at that stage, it sounds like, which is exciting. What advice do you have for founders who are thinking about bringing on a two when they themselves are zeros or ones? How do you frame the role to unlock the benefits of a two onto an organization that's hit product market fit without tampering with the magic of a zero-on -one founder visionary-ness?

1:11:33Yeah. Great question. And I think it's looking at some of those examples and I will look at some of the ones that I happen to witness and see early days. The twos that wanted to join Travis early at my time at Uber didn't work out. Why? Maybe it was we weren't at the right point. And maybe it was also fit with Travis at that time. But it's not like he didn't try. There was a lot of effort to get COOs in the seat. And so I think the time will reveal itself to founders if there's not someone there already. Because oftentimes if they are there already, you will find yourself potentially moving or chasing stuff that might be too early for the time that it's necessary for that type of archetype.

1:12:43Like, for example, I was at a company called Cinemagram, which was— Five times so. Which I know, right? I know. But go Google Cinemagram versus Snapchat. We were number one in the app snorer. And obviously no one knows about us now. But Series A led by Menlo. And we had more downloads than Instagram had in a shorter period of time. And we kind of invented the three-second video and thought it was – I bet on the right category, wrong horse. But obviously Snapchat is the winner. And one lesson I learned from that, I don't know if the founder would say this, but I was hired as employee one.

1:13:23I'm a two in that context. I went out and struck all these distribution deals with Hollywood at the time, because they organically picked it up. It actually influenced the product at some point. I think I'm a good salesperson, I guess. And I think the reason we lost, despite a terrible name for our company, we influenced the direction of the product too early. And while I do believe distribution usually wins over the best product, usually, I think, especially for consumer, the product genius, which I believe those founders had and have, needed to be harnessed, needed to be cultivated, needed to be iterated on, needed space.

1:14:16And I think I fucked it up. I think I literally went in there and changed the trajectory of the company. and literally I think the company failed because of it. Because you're too good at your job. Too good. Too good. Too good. And so I'm mindful even now when I refer twos, which I can often do that. I helped hire Uber's current COO and president. I hired him, Andrew McDonald. I'm the one who brought him into Uber. Fourteen years later, he's the president and COO. And in many ways at Uber, they hired enough mini twos to get the job done of a two that the two needed to do, right? Like the operator needed to do.

1:14:55I was going to say, my wife's HBS class is full of early Uber people. Of course, of course, of course, of course. I told you they're all twos. Of course, of course. They hired a lot of twos. They hired a lot of twos. And I want to say I hired one of the very OG first twos, and everyone who came after basically looked the same. But everyone post early 50, sub 50, did not have the consulting investment banking background. They all came from a very wide range. We were testing, but Mac, who was consulting in business school or whatever, started to have the stamp. And it worked, right? Hats off more to Travis being able to witness that this guy was going to go really, really far.

1:15:39And he said that to me in the middle of the interview process. Like, I don't know how you found this guy. He's going to go really, really far. He now lived him, which is wild. And if Dara were to leave, I would argue Andrew would likely be, Mac would likely be CEO of Uber. But when you bring on that person is actually really, really important. It could change the trajectory of your company. In my case, to the Cinemagram story, I think it changed it for the worse. But in the Uber case, I think it changed it for the better. And so it's not going to be a perfect formula as to when to bring them in.

1:16:09And sure, product market fit should be there. But for product-oriented things, it needs to have been codified enough. Marinated. Marinated enough that someone coming in won't be able to box with this too much. They're going to have to work within this sandbox. I created the sandbox. I codified the things we care about. In clay, it needs to be flexible and powerful. You're not going to mess with that. Here's your box. Go. Do whatever you want in this box. If you don't have the box yet and you're still making the box, twos can come in and be like, they're dominant, dude. They're coming in like, you don't know what you're talking about.

1:16:52Like, we need to do this. We need to do that. And these builders are quite, I mean, they have their own personalities. But, like, oftentimes they can be swayed because they want their thing to be in the world. And you come in to tell me you're going to bring it to the world. Let's do what you say. Totally. You know? And that's tricky. So it is not a perfect science when to bring them in. But when you study history and the ones who started to bring the Eric Schmitz in, it's amazing. We're going to put Varun in that context or the Daras in for Uber. And there's probably a bunch of others that I don't know that weren't necessarily in the founding team.

1:17:31There's likely a pattern to emerge, is my guess, as to when they brought them in and when they were most valuable to say. And in my little blog post, right, in the zero to five, they need to come in at the two. Yeah. It's tough to bring them in when you're still at the zero to one, one to two phase. Yeah. You need to have some inkling of, like, there's something here. Now take it. When it's ready to scale. Take me two to three, three to four, four to five. I didn't even know how to scale this thing. Yeah. Like, go. That's your whole domain. Go. And I think Sheryl Sandberg would arguably be that version whenever she came in.

1:18:09That's another one. Yeah. I think probably four years into Facebook, I think. Right? And Mark filled it with other people. Because you're going to have to fill it. Maybe that was Sean Parker. Maybe that was Chris Cox. Maybe it was a bunch of folks. but that powerful COO-like type oftentimes might come later. Cloudflare was in the founding team. Michelle Zatlin is the COO and president of Cloudflare, so it's interesting. That's a good point. Also HBS. HBS team, though. HBS team, but the other two were so engineering heavy that I think she just like, I don't have a business if I don't let them do their thing to go after.

1:18:56So I'll just kind of take a back seat. I think she talks about that a little, of how they really led the early stuff. And she just filled in. But now it's her show in a way. It's incredible. One last question. In this conversation, it's just so transparent just how important it is to see people, see founders. illegible founders and see their value and their future legibility. I can't help but go back to the beginning of this conversation and how you couldn't get a job in Canadian investment banking. Sure. How dare they? Sure. What was an early time in your career or your life where you felt the most seen at a time when you might have felt the least appreciated?

1:19:52And how has that influenced the way that you meet folks today? It's deep, dude.

1:20:03Wow. Oh, man. Thank you for asking the question. Two things come to mind, and maybe one personal, maybe, yeah, and one professional. And it might be a little touchy-feely, but before the banking jobs or whatever,

1:20:34I happened to go to some private schools, and those schools wanted to kick me out. For what? They were like, don't think you can keep up with the other kids. Wow. And I have such an amazing mom that was like, no, they don't see it. And having that person behind you, in this case personal, was like everything because I thrived at the school from three years old through to high school, through to college at that private school. and grateful for it. It shaped me in all sorts of ways. But it was like, yeah, you can keep up. Like we'll figure out what's necessary. But like having that person in your court was like everything.

1:21:31I look back, like everything. And so it's mom on the personal side who like saw me. And I know that's like maybe cliche because like whose mother doesn't see them. But I still think it's special and wouldn't be here without her. And then on the professional side, I think there's been a few people. But it's the time when, right when, like, it's not the failure. It's what do you do after and the people that see what you're doing after. So to the investment banking time, it was like, oh, you just got rejected by these five banks. So what are you doing? Oh, you're getting on a bus to go to Wall Street.

1:22:26And one year before you graduate, you're going to insert yourself in an interview process. Lie, basically, and convince them so that you can practice. Like, I bet on you. Like, oh, that's your response to it? And so it was, you know, in that case, I was cold calling at a band called Bimo Nesbitt Burns. And it was like those people who were like, I'll make a bunch of intros for you. It was like, oh. Find your ally. Find your village. Yeah, you're going to. Yes, yes. Oh, you're going to help me get there? Like, wow. And so I got a bunch of interviews, scored really high. And I remember they were like, so we're going to extend an offer and you can start in September.

1:23:15I was like, actually, I have one more year of school. How did you even get in this process? You're not even graduating? I'm like, so you remember me when I come back next year? And they were like, you're insane. This is crazy. And so I was like, thanks to the people who opened up those doors. and I imagine that was really helpful to even whoever they were in the relationship, they had to even open the door. And even maybe lastly, as you know, I'm an executive fellow at HBS. I didn't go to Harvard. It's wild that I'm there as a somewhat quasi-assistant professor. It's pretty amazing. But it's tied back to this professor who taught me economics of entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto 24 years ago.

1:24:02and while I was now going to invest in banking job, told me like only do that for like as short as possible. I think you can do and make an imprint in the world in a much different way. And like, you're like, how do you see that? And this long arc of 24 years where he then calls me and says, guess what I'm teaching now at HBS and disrupting entrepreneurship there. I get four people to choose to help augment the course to the students. There's 200 of them that compete to want to take my course out of the 900. And it's Michelle Zatlin, Kevin O 'Leary, the guy who built KKR Europe, and I want you.

1:24:48I was like, these guys have Wikipedia pages and they're billionaires. Wow, this is wild. I have a global podcast, baby. And so I don't know if I ranked the highest in his class. In fact, I think he would say I didn't. But he said that I think he counted on three people. He said, stayed in touch with me over a 20-year arc. And that puts you in a very small group of people. And the ability to do that where I actually give a shit about you is kind of crazy. having he sold multi-billion dollar like it's just nuts how I feel about you and and um yeah hopefully this is helpful to Maple and all the deal flow you'll get from it and um and uh I yeah I I want to say that like he's probably someone that has seen me in a light that other people do not and frankly might not be able to because he has a 24-year arc.

1:25:56And so back to people who see me that other people might not be able to quickly assess has made the difference, and I'm grateful for them. And that's what I want to do to the world, and that's what I want Mabel to represent in the world. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Andre. Thanks for having me. This is great.

1:26:23Hey, this is Ben Kaznoka, co-founder of Village Global. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Village Global podcast, where we go deep on all of the biggest topics in tech. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can check us out on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love to see you for the next one.