Lessons from a 3X Founder on Starting, Scaling, and Selling: A Conversation with Russ Heddleston (co-founder @ Distill, sold companies to Meta and Dropbox).
“We might wrong, but we’re not confused on what we’re working on.”
Earlier today, Enrich members and select guests were lucky enough to go deep with Russ on his experience and lessons about founding startups. Russ detailed his time as a PM at Meta after selling them his company, building and selling another company to Dropbox, and now getting his current startup - Distill - started with a new co-founder.
If you’d been there, here’s what you’d still be thinking about today:
Good team culture starts with clarity from the founder. This means transparency and clarity around what the company is doing and why we are doing it. “We might be wrong, but we're not confused on what we’re working on.” At many companies, the goals might be clear to the CEO, but to the people on the ground, it's not clear. You have to start a culture of clarity early and be very open to being wrong.
Russ hires people who are excited by what he can offer them today (not in the future). “If I have to convince them to be excited, it's not going to last.” Early hires who want to learn from him and the company’s process are ideal. As is a drive to build for the end user.
Optimize for founder market fit. Russ noticed that there was a competitor to Docsend with an enterprise motion, but he didn’t have any experience in that. He did have experience with PLG; which became the most effective GTM for Docsend.
We also took some great notes on how to decentralize decision-making, the role of vulnerability and leadership, and the biggest lessons Mark Zuckerberg taught Russ about running a company. To get access to the complete notes and attend future Enrich events with incredible experts like Russ Heddelston...join Enrich!
