Founder Story: Lessons From 25+ Years in Silicon Valley
Recently, I had a conversation with Garrett Gafke, a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley.
In that conversation, we talked about his experience building Identity Mind – and the hurdles he faced.
Hurdles like having to educate a market that wasn’t yet ready to adopt what Garrett and his team were building.
Or how when times were toughest, what got him through it was the founding team and their commitment to each other.
It was a conversation so packed full of entrepreneurial wisdom, that I only got through half of the questions I had.
Luckily, Garrett was happy to sit down with me for a second conversation.
That gave me an opportunity to dive deeper with Garrett on arguably the most important aspect of any startup (and the thing that got him through his toughest times):
People.
In this conversation, Garrett draws on his 25 years of experience building startups in Silicon Valley to share his advice on early adopters, leadership, the people behind his startup and how to maintain a positive company culture.
Advice like how in startup culture:
“It all starts with you. The Founder. The company is a full-blown extension of you. You have to bring the same values that you have in your life, in your family, to the startup. Then, you want to bring in people in the early days who have similar values to you. Then when the next round of hires comes along, they will share those values and thought processes and the culture will spread to them that way. If you get culture right, you’ll get to a point where the company’s grown but it’s still like a family. There are 100 or 200 people and everyone is taking care of each other.”
It sounds kind of obvious, right?
Why would any company want to have a culture where people are invested in seeing each other fail?
But if you’ve ever worked in a company, big or small, you know exactly how this is so much easier said than done.
According to Garrett, his secret was:
“To see those who do not fit sooner rather than later and act on it.”
The key was as much about nurturing the positive as it was about not tolerating the negative.
