Awesome People - Ep 114
founders: give up your legos and keep it simple stupid
Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
We deliver awesome people to your inbox. These are the people you need to know —the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, and ops wizzes — who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable.
Please meet Ben Welbourn, Your Founder Coach and Consultant 🧑💻
Ben is the co-founder of Verto, a company I invested in and where I currently serve on the board. After leaving Verto, he’s been consulting as a hands-on founder coach.
Verto allows college students to earn freshman-year college credits while traveling abroad. Ben built Verto Education from $0-20MM annual revenue, serving >1,000 students across six countries annually.
He now uses his experience to help other founders bring their ideas to market. Ben is a strong, hands-on generalist who can help with the following:
GTM - think customer definition to direct sales
Operations - think org design to finance systems
People operations - think employee handbooks to hiring/firing
One little-known fact about Ben is that he was one of the youngest thru-hikers of the Appalachian Trail (2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine!) and has assisted with multiple medical evacuations in the mountains of New England. The guy has grit!
Want an intro to Ben? Respond to this email, and I’ll connect you!
Ben was gracious enough to share some pro tips with us here ✨
Squash imposter syndrome and get buy-in from early employees
One of the greatest professional gifts I’ve received was given to me by an early employee at my last venture. At our first employee offsite, about an hour into a “Q&A with the Founders,” I was feeling good — like I’d invented credible answers to everyone’s questions — when one of the wiser employees stopped me in front of everyone and said, “Ben, you don’t need to have answers to everything. We know this is a startup. That’s why we’re all here. We want to build this with you.”
What a gift! The tone immediately shifted to collaboration, and it was tangible proof that the best way to build trust is to be transparent and admit that you and your company are both works in progress. Everyone in that room spent the next year running through brick walls for our company’s mission. Be transparent and include others in your process.
This isn’t new advice, but GIVE UP YOUR LEGOS!
My co-founder and I were feeling nostalgic recently and asked each other what we would’ve done differently while building our company. He was surprised when I answered, “Give up HR sooner.” I think he was expecting something around key hirings/firings, product rollouts, or fundraising strategy, but holding onto the HR unit stands out as one of the things that hurt the company and myself most over six years.
Before our two funding rounds, we were a bootstrapped company, and stinginess was in our DNA. For three years, I shouldered the responsibilities of COO, CRO, and CHRO. If I had one priority, though, it was revenue and growth.
As we grew, HR became more complicated. Our payroll needs became more complex, and I spent countless hours on frustrated phone calls with ADP (maybe tip #2 is “don’t use ADP”). Our distributed team was growing rapidly, and I increasingly had to handle sticky human HR-ish issues, compliance, and tax laws across dozens of states. None of this had to do with marketing or sales, and the team could sense my lack of focus.
When I finally cried uncle and hired a head of People Operations, it felt like I dropped a 100-pound weight and could run much, much faster. The sales team’s morale increased, and so did our growth. But my internal damage was done. I left this company a couple of years later due to burnout, and I can’t help but think that holding onto my legos had something to do with that. Spend the money and take care of yourself.
As my problematic middle school science teacher used to say, “Keep it simple, stupid!” or “KISS”
I’ve worked with many startups so focused on scalability that when presented with resources, they chase the fancy, over-engineered solution. I’ve done that too. We ditched HubSpot, hired an impressive developer (and a team under them), and architected the most ridiculously complex Salesforce instance. We got pickier and pickier and were never satisfied with the functionality. Our CRM became a money pit. It was constantly evolving and a major headache for everyone who used it. When we ultimately scaled back our operational complexity, we saw no productivity loss. So when you’re thinking about building a “scalable system,” I ask you this: how much will you have to grow to break your current system, and how far away is that growth? If it’s way off on the horizon, or you don’t know the answer to that question, then cut it out. KISS.
Want an intro to Ben? Respond to this email, and I’ll connect you!
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or want an intro to Ben!
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures & Talent
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Awesome People Continued 🤩
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David, Your Content Marketing Consultant — he’s ghostwritten op-eds for C-Level executives at Adyen, Amazon, Box, GitHub, Meta, and OpenAI, appearing in Forbes, TechCrunch, Wired, Fast Company, and other tech outlets. You can hire him to develop your executives’ content strategy, build your blog strategy, manage your content, ghostwrite, and meet your podcasting needs.
Caylin, Your Product and Content Marketing Expert — she’s done everything from writing AWS’s SMB Hub to launching Akash System’s new website under a tight timeline. She’s known for her ability to distill complex topics into simple, digestible content. You can hire her for your positioning, messaging, content, website copy, blogs, virtual events, and execution of marketing activations like targeted mail merges.
Antoine, Your Product Leader — he advises companies like Strapi (Series B Saas company backed by Index), Multis (crypto corporate finance company backed by Sequoia), and Ki Insurance ($500M raised in a joint venture with Google). You can hire Antoine as a product advisor or senior product leader. He works best with companies that have early PMF and are post-product, think Series A+.
Want an intro to Ben, David, Caylin, or Antoine? Respond to this email, and I’ll connect you!
PS. Exec Assistant Discount Link 😍
I’m going to leave this here since so many people ask about EAs every week. Athena is one of the most popular EA services across the Awesome People Community. They work with founders of 1,000+ companies, from early-stage YC companies to 30+ unicorns. It’s worth an intro call to learn more. Athena has kindly offered a month free (your second month) when you sign up with this link.