Excellent video of our live session with Eoghan McCabe during ODF22. Thanks again to Intercom for hosting us! ODF23 kicks off in SF November 8th.
New Deep End conversation with Eoghan McCabe (it's too long to post full video on LI — link in comments :)) We covered moving to America/SF to build Intercom (>$1B) and the benefits of naivety, hard work, and rejection much more. 10 important ideas (and quotes) from this conversation: 1/ Innocence and Naivety Can Be a Superpower “There was a phenomenal amount of naivety that allowed people to do things that were kind of like conventionally the wrong thing to do.” 2/ Be Contrarian, but Not Recklessly So “If you talk to 100 funds right now and you can’t raise money, change the damn idea.” 3/ In-Person Work is Better “In person is better. And I think that the people who promote remote working are lazy and antisocial.” 4/ Find Your True Passion—or You'll Fail “Please follow your passion. Please do the thing that you love.” 5/ Great Companies Ride Multiple Waves “Great companies are built on successive waves… secular movements. They either create them themselves or they jump on ones that have started already.” 6/ Hard Work is Under Attack—But It's Essential “Most likely you’re going to want to need to work seven days a week and 12 hours a day to get your thing off the ground.” 7/ Extreme Homogeneity Early On Beats Diversity “In early-stage startups, you want extreme homogeneity. You want people who believe what you believe.” 8/ Customer Intimacy Over Everything “Obsess about talking to customers… getting inside not just their heads but their hearts.” 9/ Early Failure and Rejection Strengthens You “The things that bruise our egos the most tend to eviscerate the parts of our ego that were making us so fragile in the first place.” 10/ Hiring Brilliant People is More Important than the Idea “The people who put that team together had an eye for that X factor.” This was an incredible talk recorded live during On Deck's ODF22 cohort. If you're thinking of starting a startup apply for ODF23 which kicks off in early November. Thanks again to Eoghan and Intercom (and especially Alan Mc Glinchey) for hosting us.