Laura: 0:00

But I found myself in the Fraser, Fraserborough, Tesco in Northern Scotland, handing out samples to people.

Andrew: 0:06

I

Laura: 0:07

And I was like, you would never hand out samples of alcohol to people in the U. S. It was like blowing my mind the whole thing. It was great. Yeah.

Andrew: 0:14

again, filling the bingo card of the UK, like handing out booze in a supermarket in Scotland is, that's just like, it's just breakfast, isn't it?

Mark Ridley: 1:35

Laura, you're the head of portfolio talent at Octopus Ventures, which is one of the biggest VCs in Europe, but you started your career coming over to Scotland and working as an intern at Brewdog in its very early days, which is an iconic brand in the UK. Could you tell us a little bit about that journey?

Laura: 1:52

I, I'll go back to even a little bit before BrewDog because interning, it means I was like, working with BrewDog and I went to work for BrewDog while I was still at university and it was at a time when, startups and tech startups were becoming cool, I guess, um, like the university I was at had this. Center for entrepreneurship that had just gotten started and built. I went to the college of engineering there and the whole idea of the center for entrepreneurship was to connect the students that were building new technology with resources to help them launch companies, much like many tech transfer offices, like exists in universities today. Um, but I, I got a job there so I could like buy lunch and dinner through school, um, and it actually. It set me down this like path in the world of tech and startups that I'm still on today. But during that, we actually created a podcast as students. Now this is like 2009, 2010. So podcasts were still not really a thing. And the whole idea of the podcast was that we would interview entrepreneurs for 15 minutes, because that was the distance from central campus to north campus. Um, and in an effort to find guests, which you guys can appreciate. Is challenging sometimes, but especially for like university students who don't really know or like, have a network at all. Um, I find myself on YouTube, which had just gotten, like, it was growing in popularity and BrewDog had posted. Um, some pretty like funny videos about a couple of the beers that they had made. And so that's how I came across BrewDog and the brand. I emailed them and they were so, so early at the time. And James, the CEO responded, was happy to do the podcast, even though I like they were Northern Scotland, hadn't like opened a pub. We're not selling a grocery stores just yet. And I was like, Very far away in the States. Um, but we did that podcast and I think that in like that energy of building something, I was like bit by it from those 15 minutes. And I basically sent an email and I was like, Hey, can I come like be an intern for the summer? Because all my peers at school were going to intern for, you know, the big manufacturers, like a John Deere, uh, GM or Ford or any of those. I was like, This like cool startup brand in Northern Scotland feels more my bag and luckily he, like James came back and he was like, yes, please, please do make your way. And so I found myself, um, leaving the U S for the first time, flight to London, stayed overnight at a hostel and then took a mega bus from London to Aberdeen to start my summer internship. You're really

Andrew: 5:13

uh, filling up the bingo card of kind of parochial

Laura: 5:16

up

Andrew: 5:16

British things,

Laura: 5:17

the

Andrew: 5:18

Students taking a Megabus, that's a thing,

Laura: 5:21

bingo card

Andrew: 5:22

that's a thing.

Mark Ridley: 5:24

Must have been some culture shock.

Andrew: 5:26

Uh, the, that must have been, you said pre grocery stores, so this was, this was very early. This is, cause I, was it, I can't remember which supermarket it was, was it Tesco or something? They did this, tasting competition and the, and BrewDog got, uh, basically got the, the prize was to get stocked in, in Tesco. Is that right?

Laura: 5:50

I like came in the summer just after that had happened. So there were days as like an intern, I, I ended up doing a lot of random stuff as you do. And as you do as like an employee at a startup. But I found myself in the Fraser, Fraserborough, Tesco in Northern Scotland, handing out samples to people.

Andrew: 6:09

I

Laura: 6:09

And I was like, you would never hand out samples of alcohol to people in the U. S. It was like blowing my mind the whole thing. It was great. Yeah.

Andrew: 6:17

again, filling the bingo card of the UK, like handing out booze in a supermarket in Scotland is, that's just like, it's just breakfast, isn't it?

Laura: 6:26

I also was not of drinking age in the U. S. and so I was like, it was a lot, a lot of new stuff for me.

Andrew: 6:32

And what was the kind of vibe in the BrewDog team at that time? Because actually, for those that don't know the BrewDog story, um, being, being from Scotland, um, doing, I do a bit of research, as you know, in the kind of startup world, it's impossible to avoid the story of BrewDog and the influence that it's had on ecosystem. as Mark said, like an iconic success story, that was a real inflection point for them. They won. I mean, I've been in the company of James Watt a number of times when he's talked about it and, and talked about the, you know, some of the very enterprising approaches they took to things like, um, loan applications and going in for these, uh, these competitions. So getting a line in Tesco was That's a real inflection point for them. So what was the vibe around the startup team at that time? What was the, what was the size of the team?

Laura: 7:34

Yeah, I think the team, when I arrived, it was like maybe 10 people and a dog at a brewery. Like the office area was quite small, but yeah, there was a lot of energy. People worked really hard. And I actually, like the thing about consumer brands, like a brew dog is often like the brand itself is reflective of the. Approach or like attitude internally. So I think, I think, I still think they do kind of brand BrewDog this way, but like the whole kind of revolution against like boring beer and like the belief that consumers deserve something different and better and fighting against convention. Like if you take that idea and apply it to kind of. How you're working and how you approach creative projects and, and what have you, um, internally, like I do, it was very much like that, um, in a very, like, I, like, as a, you know, I was an intern, but it was amazing. It was so cool to, to, um. Just have that kind of exposure, and I don't think I fully appreciated like what I was getting to be a part of, even for a brief period of time,

Andrew: 8:56

So they've characterized that as the sort of punk attitude. They had a punk attitude to everything, advertising, you know, uh, seek forgiveness, not permission, all of these things. Was there a punk version of teamwork?

Laura: 9:13

I don't I think it was just teamwork. I don't know if I think it was more like, you, I think the way that, like, so if you remember that equity for punks, um, approach, which is, you know, You know, it might be like the first real kind of crowd fundraising. Um, like that, I think they did that before Kickstarter Whether.

Andrew: 9:37

it was exactly or not, it was, it was a really innovative approach, right? Selling a certain class of shares to your, to your customer base, basically.

Laura: 9:48

And then like in doing so giving customers the like almost permission, I think, and voice of saying like kind of questioning convention around, even if it's like something as that feels as simple as beer, it's like a part of people's lives, um, And I think that approach in, like, existed internally as well, which is like the, like, come up with the big ideas and, like, don't really question if you can do it or not, like, try to find ways to make it happen, um, take, like, the big swings and some will work and some. Some kind of won't they they didn't really shy away from like the controversy It actually like held it close as part of the brand my first my first project as an intern When I arrived they were launching a beer called end of history Which is 52 percent ABV and, uh,

Andrew: 10:51

is the, this is like the tactical nuclear penguin era where they were trying to create the strongest beers and all that, right?

Laura: 10:59

from tactical nuclear penguin to a beer called Sink the Bismarck and then end of history, they're going back and forth, I think, with the German brewery.

Andrew: 11:08

So you were, um, The End of History was your project.

Laura: 11:11

Yes, and if you go and look up, um, the packaging on that, it is, uh, bottles of beer in taxidermied, uh, squirrels and stoats. Um, and that was my project, like, find the supplier for this.

Andrew: 11:27

Wow.

Laura: 11:28

And like, I think, uh, yeah, I probably spoke to every taxidermist in the UK at the time. I will say no animals were like hurt in this situation. It was all done. Like, this is all very, um, humane, what have you, but like that, like, you're like, that is an outlandish idea. There's like, spend a few days and see if we can make it happen. Actually, my assumption is like, it was a joke and it was like, let's see. What we can get this intern to do um,

Andrew: 11:57

you find yourself embracing that identity? Cause that's, you're coming over from America for the first time. You've obviously, you said you, you were bitten by the bug, but can you remember that a sense of there being a There's a, there's a, uh, uh, a tangible team culture that you're sort of trying to buy into.

Laura: 12:19

like, For a lot of companies and a lot of startups and founders, like, they build, they start businesses because they're unsatisfied with something. And they think they can do, like, make something better or drive improvement somewhere. Um, And that I really, I, I find I like subscribe to and was probably influenced. I probably had a bit of it in me already, but definitely like seeing it come to life at BrewDog in the, like the summers that I was there. Um, it just makes, yeah, I think I was like, actually you work hard enough and like most things are possible. So that was like my big takeaway.

Mark Ridley: 13:02

I'd like to move on to, to Harry's, if that's okay. Um, And is another was a wildly disruptive brand. We've talked about how Brewdog, um, equity for punks were, was, you know, almost the first of its kind, if not the first of its kind. But Harry's also was massively disruptive, sort of very similar. with no knowledge of what the business looked like internally. So outwardly, it'd come from a similar place in that it was seeking to disrupt what was quite, uh, yeah, quite, uh, an ordinary industry. So men's grooming, particularly when it started. And it was, I think, the first subscription Um, direct to consumer, brand, especially in, in healthcare. But you joined Harry's and then saw massive growth. So, I'm quite curious, how big was it when you joined? So, when it went through that 10x growth, Yeah, what, what was it that you experienced? And then I'd really like to dig into what were the changes that you saw in the team as it, as it went through that growth?

Laura: 14:08

Yeah. Um, yeah, this is interesting because Harry's is an amazing brand and a disruptor in the men's grooming space where there was like one big incumbent being Gillette, who's still like, like are pretty big, but have less of the market share now. And I think that the brand of Harry's. Is one of kind of openness and inclusivity where as like Gillette's very like manly and kind of projects one or had at the time at least like one way. Of being, um, so again, like in that disrupter space and Harry's is interesting because like the brand is a disruptor. I think the, actually they, the view is like, how can we make the customer experience better both from, like, how you experience the brand, but also pass on the cost savings by owning the entire supply chain.. But yeah, I joined, I think there were like, maybe 12 people on the team. Um, and I, yeah, it was very, very early. I want to say they just had just raised a seed round and we're about to raise, um. Like a hundred million dollars to buy a factory in Germany that makes razors so that they could own the entire supply chain. So I joined kind of like, I think like a couple months ahead of that going through, and that I think unlocked a lot of the growth for the team and the business. it's a great, it was a great place to be. It was a culture of, um, really smart, thoughtful, humble people who work closely together to try to, you know, kind of solve some problems. Challenges or puzzles consistently and actively. And the thing I was put in charge of recruiting, I don't know why, because I honestly was so, um, I was so new to it and I was kind of figuring out what I was doing, but we early on, so like 12 people, you have somebody responsible for bringing in new people, which I don't think a lot of companies do still to this day. But it meant that we had, like, 1 consistent process and could build out an approach for building the team that we then were able to use and scale as we went from, you know, 12 people to 50 people to 100 to 200 plus. Um, and that meant that, like, parts of the culture that we thought were important, um. Were embedded in that process so that then as a team scaled, like, that those parts of the culture, I think, continued. Continued to exist

Andrew: 16:56

What were, what were you trying to hold onto then? Cause that, that's a, that's a very pivotal moment in when you've got a startup. And that moment you're describing is where the team is the organization moving into. an organization becoming a system of probably multiple teams across, as you say, you're going, you're, you're trying to, you're trying to capture a vertical. So you're going from a sort of a fundraising organism that's, that's trying to get to your, get to your, Your target market to being a manufacturer. So what, what sort of things were you consciously trying to hold onto internally as you scale the team into, into a bigger organization?

Laura: 17:47

Curiosity was a big 1 say, like, any, like, the ability just to kind of ask questions, be curious, want to know and understand better and more. So that you could get to the right answers. Um, low ego and humility felt really important. I think, and actually right now with like AI coming in. It reminds me of that time of building companies where there were like a lot of new roles and new jobs and like new ways of, of building brands and teams. So you couldn't really have people that were going to say, actually, I'm going to like work in my little box here. You stay in your little box. Like there had to be a lot of. Collaboration in between the functions, it's like a pretty pragmatic team. So like, you know, that's not, you know, balancing the curiosity with, not overthinking, uh, and not trying to like reinvent the wheel for, for the sake of it, it was like, actually, how do we move with pace and then execution felt like a big one, you know, there, uh, still something I think about today where it's like. In startups, ideas are great, but you ultimately win on execution and like pace of it. So we definitely hired against, against that.

Andrew: 19:20

what interests me about the couple of parts of your answer is You're describing what was going on in a 10 person team. curiosity, humility. These are sort of foundational features of developing psychological safety in a team. You, you create, uh, an inclusive and, uh, and, and, uh, safe space for people to belong to, which leads to an interest in learning, which is through curiosity, and you maintain that climate through, um, modeling humility and vulnerability. Um, so it's interesting that those are the things that came to the surface, first of all, and they're probably the hardest things to keep hold of when you scale.

Laura: 20:04

Yeah. Yeah,

Andrew: 20:07

on. But, um, I wonder if you experienced difficulties when you, when you started to. increase your, uh, you know, the size of your personnel.

Laura: 20:20

I think like, in the same way that any, Company would face difficulties, right? You like communication is always a challenge, like no matter what. Um, and like, yeah, still to this day, like when I talked to, to founders, like how do we communicate, especially as like teams get bigger, um, scaling up management capabilities. Is a challenge and then of course, you like, sometimes you don't get it right. Like, you make the wrong hire and you have to learn from that. But overall, I don't know. I think we, we managed to keep a lot of the great parts of the culture as we. We scale when I 1st started in this recruitment job, and I was like, actually, I have to figure out what I'm doing because. You know, I need to deliver, I call, I was fortunate, fortunate enough to talk to one of like the professors that went to university or that taught at the university I was at. And he had scaled a number of startups and organizations. And he gave me great advice that I still kind of think about and repeat, but he was like the first like 20, 30 people of the company are going to join because they believe in the founders and the mission of the business. Like, that's what you need to focus on. Maybe it's like the next group, like the 30 to 70 or 80. They're going to join because they want to work with that original team. Like that is what they're excited about. They want to be a part of what you're building. Like the 80 plus, like they're going to be interested in the job that you're hiring for. And like the career opportunity that presents. And I had always had that in the back of my mind. I thought it was really helpful, actually, um, both in terms of, like, in that early stage of thinking about who do you need to bring into the team? Because if you, if you're hiring people at that early stage, who are just interested in the job. Then that's probably not going to be like the right stage of growth for them. And then like when you're kind of recruiting, people are trying to hire how you pitch it or how you sell the opportunity does shift over time. Um, and so I thought that was really helpful. I like to think that I like apply that pretty directly, but I do think it was more something that was kind of spinning and worrying in the back of my head, but over the years now that I've been working with companies, I find like that actually to be a fairly. Like, astute description of how kind of movements are made around companies and brands.

Mark Ridley: 22:56

I have a follow up to that which might lead you more. to the octopus portfolio. I think it's it's an experiential question But it might be something you've experienced sort of by proxy through through the portfolio octopus I mentioned to you before and um that there's a book The book that I read when I was first getting into, uh, sort of the venture world, just to try and understand what was going on and this, this wild difference to what I had experienced. So I read a book by Scott Kupor, who was a partner and actually the first employee, Andreason Horowitz, or A16Z, which is a big US VC firm for our listeners that might not be familiar with it. And that book did a really good job of explaining to me. The sort of the wild differences in the startup space, the VC backed startup space to a normal business because it's all about growth. And there's, there's a couple of things in there that I wanted to ask you about. And I'll come back to one of them later. But the first, the first one, and it's actually you, is directly related to what you mentioned that Andrew said it sounded like you were creating this environment of really high psychological safety. But one of the things that I think Scott Kupor said that they put on the, it was on the, the deck that they were using for to secure funding for the fund for, for A16Z was that they were looking for egomaniacal founders and I'm, I'm reminded when I was running a CTO forum for another early stage startup group in London, I remember sitting there with the CTOs, and we were talking about people challenges and exactly as you said, you know, this, this thing in my experience in startups don't. they are literally just almost trying to get the numbers and often trying to pull people in into the organization. I see this particularly in engineering challenges. We just need engineers. We need someone with these to get them in, but sitting around this table with with the CTO founders, one of them said, the How do you all make your engineers work harder, I don't understand it I because, you I'm working until 10 or 11 o'clock at night and I get up early and I'm working at the weekends and at the time he had three or four engineers working, working with him. So he was the founder, had had his first intake and these people quite rightly wanted to their own life. They were probably not getting paid very much because they'd taken some equity in the business and There is this real challenge in the VC world, I think of, there's, there's fantastic research, and we can link out to it as well, around the level of narcissism in founders. So Andrew asked that question around psychological safety, but it appears that VC backed startup tend to be filled with people with these slightly antisocial personality traits like narcissism and ego, egomania. Um, and that the second one is directly to quote Scott Kapoor. So when you're, when you're seeing this, either what you experienced at Harry's, which sounds like a wildly different environment, um, or what you see with, with the octopus portfolio, how do you, how do you balance that? The fact that it is. Going to be this environment with quite challenging personalities and psychological safety may not be high up the list of it's not a mature team that has that kind of thing. How do you, how do you encourage founders to take that kind of thing seriously?

Laura: 26:27

Yeah, so your, your question is, like, how do you actually, if you're not naturally building a culture or team where psychological safety is present, how do you get to that place?

Mark Ridley: 26:40

yeah, and I think particularly for someone that just doesn't understand why safety might be important, because to them, the mission, the disruption, the challenge, you know, we, we've seen those people, it's a very different, the founders are very

Laura: 26:53

yeah, it's interesting. So like psychological safety was not a phrase back when I was at Harry's, like, that's a relatively new thing and I think actually you can break it down into like, you do break it down into the behaviors that create that type of environment, which I actually think is just like good management. And that is where I think there's like such a gap today across. Um, the, like, the startup and tech industry of just solid managers, because the way that companies. Have grown and scaled, you get, like, there's not the formal training that you would get in a big organization and things happen so quickly that, um. You don't really have time to, like, like, do the training or get that support yourself. Um, so often it's, like, advice is more like coaching on good, like, best management practices, meaning, like, not in, like, the lame way, but it's like giving people clear direction and expectations. Like, knowing that they might not get it 100 percent right, but how do you coach them and, like, support rather than kind of punish or create a culture of fear? I think for a number of new, like, new people who are new to leadership or management, Like, that challenge of letting go of your kind of, you know, that, like, phrase, like, letting go of your Legos or sharing your Legos, so, like, if we see that that is a thing that's happening, then happily, we share share that. Um, and I probably attribute it less to narcissism, narcissistic egos, and more just like lack of experience. And like, when you are a founder, it happens so quickly, right? You go from like building, like bringing in this idea to life a bit, and then you get funding. And all of a sudden you have to go from like developing a product to now building a team. And that's like, those are two distinct disciplines and skill sets. And that's a pretty hard right turn to take. And then you hire people and all of a sudden you have to like lead and manage them. And if you've never done that before. And you're figuring it out as you go, I think you're bound to, to kind of come against those like challenges and opportunities for learning as you, as you grow. Um, so yeah, so that's, I think what we kind of fall back to in terms of advice, which is just like the simple stuff around good management and teamwork

Andrew: 29:38

it's it's almost as though the characteristics of the environment in startups especially you know the harrys example and I'm sure loads of the well naturally the businesses you work with now when they're at a stage of taking venture capital, they are at a threshold where there's change, and it does seem like the environment is throwing a lot of things that make it difficult to do good teamwork, which you, you are now needing to do by necessity. You've got stakes, high pressure, compressed timelines, running out of money, IP issues. I just, there's so many things that come to mind that are sort of Competing with the energy required to build good teams, um, and a kind of fragility of the of the system, right? And and also when you go back to that founding group. Although the very early members in teamwork, we talk about common ground, really establishing really effective common ground, which leads to inclusion, which is, you know, the, key aspect of something like psychological safety. It feels as though as well. Probably one of the difficulties that teams encounter, uh, since especially a scale up point is you've got really implicit common ground. If you're in that founding team, which means everyone's doing 15 jobs and everyone's just trying to Get things going and bootstrapping and all those things, things like challenging each other, questioning, like you were talking about with BrewDog, having wild ideas, taking big swings. There is lot of taken for granted common ground that sort of permits that behavior. then as soon as you start doing the, you know, um, the, the, the doubling and the doubling and the doubling of the team, you know, you go from five to 10 to 20 to 50 to a hundred and so on. Um, I, I imagine it's easy to lose sight of the fact that those things that you took for granted at 10 people have to actually be deliberately maintained and managed at 40, 80, 150.

Laura: 32:04

and in fact, like the way that you work as that early team might not be the optimal way to work as you get bigger and later stage. Um, I think being kind of honest about about that with, like, a group of people and for people in companies, like with yourself. Is really important because you don't, I think if you're lucky enough to be in a company that's scaling quickly, that's great news. And that means like, you do have to change and like, you know, as cliche as it is, change is a constant, right? Um, and like, if you're like holding on to all the stuff that made you work really well as a very early stage company, then that's probably going to hold you back from scaling into the future. And I think, like, emotionally for people, that's a hard, sometimes a hard, uh, hill to take it over and to accept because when things are like, I don't know, like, all the stresses of building a business, like, time scale, the. The pressure, um, the ambition, the expectations, I think for people who love working in early stage companies, that's energizing, like that is the exciting stuff and you like, get to be a part, like you feel really a part of something special. And as like the stakes or like the risks decrease a bit, I think you might feel a little of that, um, energizing push fade. You could, I think there's ways to keep it. so like if, if you are like someone who loves the early, early, Doors like the highs and the lows of a company that maybe actually later stage companies aren't for you. Actually, I think we see a lot of people move to startups who are like in big corporates and they, they actually want to be in that challenge of the build and, you know, the expectations. The ownership, the responsibility. So they like, we'll go and seek that out.

Mark Ridley: 34:17

I said that there were two things about that, um, Scott Kupor book that I wanted to mention. The second one is directly related to that. The thing that I found really interesting, and don't feel that you have to divulge any octopus secrets, but thing that I found really interesting about. that book, is that generally investors are looking for two things. The first is the size of the market. Because if it's vc backed you need these crazy. mechanics thats unlike any normal business. And again if you haven't worked in. a VC backed business, it's all about growth. That's where. that's, what the team is being driven by. by the investors. And then he, he goes on to say that the team is the second thing that we look. at. So when the team is pitching, make sure that in your pitch deck, you've got market size and then team and you credentialize the team. that I found really interesting, going back to, to pick up that, that quote again was absolutely picks out the team is really important, but it's almost a tick box exercise in the capabilities of the people, and he doesn't at any point in that look at or, um, or give any, any hint that when, when A16Z is looking at teams, they're looking at how well that team might work

Laura: 35:35

mm.

Mark Ridley: 35:36

It's do, do you have the tick box capable, do your jigsaw pieces fit together? Not can they actually work together? I'm curious, As much as you can, whether you feel that that is true in the way that Octopus looks at, um, looks at the teams, do you look at teams as being important first, and then do you look at whether they have the right skills? and whether they will work together. And I'm interested in that final part. You know, do you look at some team craft capability of the people in the team? And if you don't, is that a big part of what Octopus offers in trying to help those teams work together in the portfolio support?

Laura: 36:14

Yeah, it's, um, I, uh, it's really interesting because I actually, I totally agree with the idea that we should be looking more teams collectively and how, how they work together, like, how aligned they are, how much trust and respect there is across that group. Um, and I think it's probably. Like, all these things probably could be doing better a better job of of that today. And what we at Octopus, my team, myself, my team focused on is like the support post investment. So, once we like, kind of validate. You know, this business and the vision are exciting and like viable. And we think we got like solid people who we believe can go and build that. Then we'll go and work with the founders on understanding like, okay, what's the shape of the team today? Where do you see like the strengths and gaps? Um, if we get the opportunity, and sometimes there's not enough people to do it, but going around and understanding from everyone. Okay. What do you believe the goal is here? Like, what do you think you're working towards? And it's interesting if you just do that with a group of people, and everyone gives you a different answer, and you're kind of like, like, maybe we need to sort that out above all else, because otherwise you're not swimming in the same direction. And, um, you know, it's probably sign of. Of either inefficiency or potential conflict to come, and I think that what's interesting about this is I don't even think it's just like a point of investment that we should be doing these things. I think the best. Organizations that are trying to either perform better as a company, because they've hit like a plateau or aren't gaining traction or are growing. And like, you're actively thinking about, okay, who do we need for the next phase of growth should be going through this exercise of reviewing the team pretty consistently. Like, I think, you know, ideally, this might be ambitious, but, like, every 6 months doing a simple mapping of, like, okay, who do I think? Like the future employees and future leaders in my team are like, who do I think has the potential and how can I get them there and where are the pretty clear and obvious gaps that that I'll have, um, if I kind of keep things. As they are that I need to hire against, and actually, like, kind of do being really aware of that all the time means you're then able to build a team that will build a company. And in my head, I'm like, the ideal state is like, you're building the team that will bring the company along. Rather than like scaling company and then like building the team to catch up. Um, but I think, yeah, when, when, like we look at it, it's like that team capability alignment and like, I think the, um, culture within that team and that leadership group are super important.

Mark Ridley: 39:24

And there's a massive, The investors have to play in this, especially with first time founders when they don't have the support of working in a corporate. and that's to a large part, the role that you play in it specifically within Octopus. What do you think, from your experience, what are the most powerful, elements of support that you can give to the startup teams. I know it will vary, but what are the things that you see the greatest success in when you're providing support to portfolio companies?

Laura: 39:55

Yeah, it's, um, we do so much. So we, like the team that we have at octopus are all former operators. So like my journey in startups. Everyone on the team has a similar 1, so we're coming in with, like, the, the scars and the well known kind of common mistakes that we can help other folks make. I think, like, I'd like to think that all the support we provide, like, the impact varies, depending on the situation, like, sometimes. Coaching a founder or a leader who is really struggling with somebody on their team, just even saying like, Hey, it's okay for you to like part ways of this really isn't working, like giving that permission for the, like somebody who struggles making that decision because you know, high pressure, a lot going on, I'm worried about how that will look to the board, how that will like, how, what the team will think, like impact all of that. Just being able to have that coaching kind of discussion and talk that out can be. Super impactful, um, creating the space for designing the team, hiring plans, et cetera. I actually think like leadership teams are the most impactful lever you can pull, because if you can build a great leadership team and that will kind of trickle down into the, into the organization. So that that's where we spend a lot of our time today. Um, but then when it comes to scaling, I'm a big believer that like being able to recruit really well is of the utmost importance and getting an entire organization kind of aligned around a process, um, assessment, decision making, um, and kind of always having that muscle, um, strong. Is both like the platform from which you build a great team and can scale. But it also means like, you know, if you're going to hire someone new, you don't have to like spin up this thing all the time or like every single time, which is complex and like, I think actually like when people, when somebody is not performing in a business, one of the. Blockers to making a decision on that is like the worry about having to spend a lot of time on recruiting. And so if you can trust that you have a great process that you can get good people in, then actually, you're better able to manage your. Your, um, organization and capabilities that way.

Andrew: 42:27

It sounds familiar to selecting astronauts for the Mars mission. You're very, uh, careful about, um, the attributes that you're trying to select for and getting the decision, getting the right stuff.

Laura: 42:46

I just think it's so, um, it matters so much. Like if, like the difference between a high performing, highly aligned team and one that's like good is massive. And I think it makes a difference. In terms of whether you build a, like a good company or a great company, and it's something that we have control over. Like we can, um, be really thoughtful about those decisions. And like my rule of thumb for founders is like, you should be spending 20 to 30 percent of your time hiring. And that is, um, it feels like a lot. Truly, but like, if you're building a business, then you, you know, and you plan to scale, like you will never stop hiring. It's, it's like, get like, you've got to get used to it. Um, but I think it's something that matters that much that it deserves that kind of time. And I think like one of the biggest mistakes that's made is like outsourcing that hiring process. And just focusing on butts and seats, um, because, yeah, it, uh, it means you don't actually, like, get to build the kind of team and culture that you're really hoping to.

Andrew: 44:07

Because there's a thing in there, right? About, because I'm thinking here of a imaginary case study your portfolio, because you mentioned the difference that a great team makes compared to one that's just sort of performing reasonably well is, is significant. And they're hiring If you're doing, if you've got a team that's that's focused on getting bums on seats, as you say, um, they're probably mostly preoccupied with role description, like skills gaps, instrumental, uh, problems to solve and bringing in expertise that, uh, on paper solve it. And the other side is the thing that you, the desirable approach that you're saying is all about the soft stuff there, the, the, the relationships and the culture, like you say. When you get handed over, here's my imaginary case study, when you get handed over a startup that's just given investment by Octopus, And you go, hmm, they're in the okay category. What do you do? What are the conversations you have? Are there any, are there any magic tricks you play? Or are there any, are there, are there the sort of, right, the first thing we need to do with this team then is probably something like this. Is there a kind of playbook you have for that when you recognize, you sort of diagnose a, um, a suboptimally performing founding team in a, in a company just taken on?

Laura: 45:42

Yeah, I think, like, there's no magic trick and, like, the other bit of it is you need a team that are open and, like, have the desire to change. And so we. I think in terms of like pattern recognition, we can kind of call out where we see opportunities for improvement and then provide the guidance on it. I think the first thing is understanding like what appropriate expectations are of the team and like speaking to the leaders about how they see it and then how we. Might see it differently and like kind of align. And like, I think the approach that we try to take, or I try to take with our team at octopus is like, you know, we have experience and we have perspectives, but ultimately as like a founding team, it's your company and you get to build. You like get the, you have the right to build a culture and the team that you want, what we try to do is share what we've seen work in terms of performance and success, but one of the great things about founders and leaders is they, they have ideas and they, they again, challenge a lot of things. And so a lot. Like very often there'll be kind of pushback or questions on, you know, like convention or best practices, which are very, very welcome. Like those are some of the most fun kind of puzzles and challenges to have, but once I think like, it's, it's something I've been thinking about, like, if you have like a team that, you know, where there's like a pocket or a few people that are considered like high performing. And you don't see that across the culture, like, what do you do? And Mark, this might be like, what you're, you were referring to when you were talking about the CTO round table and the engineering leaders coming in and being like, I work hard, but I don't see that from other folks. And it's really, um, it's hard, especially when you're a startup, because. On one hand, you do need people in those seats to do, to be working. Uh, and on the other, you like know that actually. Output could be greater intensity could be higher. Um, and that kind of built on itself. So like one of the things that I've been trying to, and I had a, I was going to act like I was curious to hear what you guys think, but I think like you can shift by like starting to hire people into the team that come with that. High performance attitude, like the desire to build like the self started, um, kind of approach. The. Creativity and curiosity is my question for you. I would love to know if you have a view is of a population in a company. How many people do you need that have that high performance mentality in order for the entire culture to start to shift? Is it like a third of the employee population? Half 75%. Um,

Mark Ridley: 49:02

it's,

Andrew: 49:02

I've got loads of

Mark Ridley: 49:03

I,

Andrew: 49:03

let

Laura: 49:04

I can't wait.

Mark Ridley: 49:07

um, I was actually, as soon as you started talking about that, I started thinking about the, the experiments that Jack Welch did with GE and, and the stack ranking. When I go into businesses and I'm generally asked to make them go faster, the thing that invariably I find is that it's a prioritization problem over everything else. Sometimes it's a cultural problem. But often and you and I have spoken about this before, um, that I find that quite often there is a lack of good strategy, but even more, damningly for the performance of the business, the strategy isn't being communicated down to the people that need to do the work. And so it's actually not that people don't want to work is that they don't know what to work on or that they are not. Clearly prioritizing one enough or being given an instruction as to clearly prioritize enough and so, you know, I think it's often describe it this trying to get a fleet or to head in one direction. If you think that's how the teams or departments depending on the size of the business that you can have individually high performance. But if you see that as a, as a flotilla of ships all headed in different directions, the overall velocity of that entire

Laura: 50:16

Yeah.

Mark Ridley: 50:16

can be really low. Whereas what you really need is quite good performance from people that are actually all headed in the same direction. So for me its primarily, even with just good performers and you're lucky to be honest if you have just good performers, if everybody there is just good and not exceptional. An entire an group of just good performers that are strongly aligned towards a clear outcome can execute far better than a group of really, really high performers that don't have that, that clarity in objective. So I think, you know, you can, you could actually have, you know, 60, 70 percent of just good, and obviously you don't want the 10 percent of really poor performers because they have I think that that's the other thing of in answer to your question think just good people aren't actually particularly detrimental to the overall capability of an organization to execute Poor performers and that and by poor performers, that's like poor team workers So that could even be exceptionally high individual, um, individual contributors that are a net negative. You know, they're just that really, really disruptive, disruptive personality where people look at them and feel like they don't want to work with them. That can actually be much worse overall performance of an organization. We've talked before about, uh, social loafing and the, the, the impact of the one sort of bad apple on the overall, um, the overall group. So I don't know. certainly don't have a statistical answer. I think it was interesting But Andrew, just handing back to you briefly because you, you've got some percentages.

Andrew: 51:55

don't know if I have percentages and I don't know if I can do it briefly, but,

Laura: 52:00

Yeah.

Andrew: 52:01

I, yeah, I actually, Mark kind of gave the headlines on some of the things that I would probably say in response to your question, Laura. So you're talking about how do you make the rest of an organization or a startup adopt a kind of high performance mindset that you might see from a small minority of

Laura: 52:21

Or, or if you need to drive some cultural change,

Andrew: 52:26

Yeah. Okay.

Laura: 52:28

you know, it could go the other way too, right? Like, you need to tamp it down a bit. Um, so people don't burn out. It's like, is there the right mix of of different people that then starts to tip the culture or move the culture into a slightly different direction?

Andrew: 52:46

So, yeah, that's so two, two interesting and different questions there. I think first things that come to my mind, actually, Mark mentioned it to do with social loafing is if you're in a scenario where you have high performers that are identified individually, you mentioned when you get a team and It's just had investment and you're taking the temperature of their expectations and their perceptions. I think there is in that fast moving startup kind of culture. There is an idea of people are evaluating each other on the basis of, well, just how much of a shift are you putting in? How much, how much of an extra mile are you going to deliver this vision? Because this vision is going to change the world and you know, it might well do. one of the things we know from social loafing, from the research done back in the 60s and afterwards, is statistically proven that we all perceive our own inputs to be disproportionately greater than those of the people around us. And one of the things that happens in that social loafing phenomenon, where people perceive others not to be pulling their weight, is that Number one in a group scenario? Individual inputs are lower than uh. if people are working on their own um, proportionately lower that is and we are we don't have the sensitivity to perceive accurately the inputs of others compared to our own? Which means they're proportionately less and and we perceive our own to be greater. Um, that's quite a useful thing to know in the context of thinking about any kind of performance change is that if people don't understand that, if a team doesn't understand that, then there's a bit that you can end up in a bit of a Mexican standoff where everyone's sort of pointing going, well, I'm working harder than you. And, and that's a problem for me. And that's bringing, that's bringing the, the overall output of the team down. Um, your measurement of how hard you are working is. innately inaccurate. So you have to basically discount your own perception of your effort relative to those around you. Um, so that, you know, that, um, also leads me to think when you identify high performers and you think, well, it would be great if everyone else was doing this. Is it possible that those high performers are in fact disempowering some of the people around them through the way that they approach their work? Um, and sitting behind all of this is considering individual inputs and outputs. Uh, so there is also a question to, to be put. well, are you really assessing the team? So you're trying to think about overall team level output. So you're, you're, you're framing the question to yourself as a team level view, but you're trying to articulate the answer through individual inputs and outputs. And those two things although they all relate to the same overall picture, um, they are, they are slightly um, independent of each other.

Laura: 56:23

If nobody's open to a coworking space slash bakery called social loafing yet. I think it's a great idea.

Mark Ridley: 56:31

would be amazing.

Andrew: 56:32

missed an opportunity. I told you, I told you it wouldn't be brief, Mark.

Laura: 56:38

I, it's so fascinating that it really is.

Mark Ridley: 56:42

So we, we will, we will have to get to Andrew's quickfire round, round in a second. Um, so Laura, and I, I think to Andrew said, it's going to be different case on a case by case basis. One of the things that I can definitely say going in and sort of troubleshooting organizations is there are two things that materially make a massive impact to the performance of any team. Um, operationally, one is performance management. And by that, what I mean is direct feedback and the second is objective setting. It's a really, really clear organizational objective setting that flows down to the individual. If you get those two things right, I think I would, I would love an organization that just had good people that didn't, it doesn't have to have amazingly high performers. If it just had good people and you could say, well, okay, these are just good people. I mean, how amazing would that be? that are clear on what they need to deliver. And if they don't get something quite right, they're getting direct feedback about it. So for a startup, that's almost always the advice that I give.

Andrew: 57:43

Quick fires. What, what is your best team memory? Love

Laura: 57:52

Best team memory, uh, Harry's, we did an annual chili cook off, um, where we would send teams to make like chilies the night before, and there were always like themes and then everyone brought it in the next day, it was a great, like silly team building exercise where you have food, but we always had a lot of fun with it.

Andrew: 58:17

that. And also, I don't know if you're aware, I'm entirely supported by excellent research that teams that cook together are higher performing teams.

Laura: 58:26

I had no idea. That's lovely.

Andrew: 58:29

yeah, send you the paper.

Laura: 58:32

Please.

Andrew: 58:32

what about your team, Red Flags?

Laura: 58:35

Uh, complaining and gossip. That's my quickfire answer. I just think it's like the most, um, toxic thing. And, uh, not productive.

Andrew: 58:47

Great answer. we ask all of our guests to share with us a resource that they would pass on that has helped them with, uh, understanding and, uh, and, uh, being successful in teamwork. So what's the resource that you would pass on?

Laura: 59:02

So I, um, it's a book I've read this year that I find myself thinking about referring to often, but it's called when they, when you win, and this is for managers written by Russ Larraway, who I believe worked with Kim Scott, the author of radical candor, they like did the consulting business together. I think the book just like breaks down good, like what good management looks like in a very simple. Way and actually calls back to a lot of the stuff that we discussed, and especially around objective setting, performance management, and just being like really clear, um, I think the other thing in there that in the book that he goes into depth on is around like career development and coaching and really caring about your people and as a manager, like feeling. Knowing that you have an influence and an impact and by showing that care, um, and taking the time you actually drive engagement from people on your team. So, anyway, I think it's really great. Good read. That's 1. I would recommend I do another 1 for fun.

Andrew: 1:00:16

Of

Laura: 1:00:17

I think for leaders and for managers, there's a book called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. Nope. Like a pretty relatively like short read, but I think that's like a mental model for like emotional management, how to show up. It has like these kind of 15 commitments that you go through starting with like a very basic like visual concept of being above or below the line where like above the line, it's like you're kind of open, curious. Non reactive below the line is kind of the opposite where you're gossiping and how do you personally stay above the line? And how do you keep a team kind of in that space as well? So both really good reads for the reads readers out there.

Andrew: 1:01:03

Well, we'll, we'll leave that in the show notes then. Thank Thank you so much for, for joining us today.

Laura: 1:01:08

Thank you both. Good to see you. Bye.

Andrew: 1:01:11

Take care.