20VC: Startups Only Fail When Founders Stop Trying, Why the Two Weeks Following Our IPO Were the Worst of my Life & Why Tieing Your Identity to Your Company is the Most Dangerous Thing and How to Avoid It with Sami Inkinen, Co-Founder & CEO @ Virta Health
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2024
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sami Inkinen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Virta Health, the company reversing type 2 diabetes. Before Virta, Sami was the Co-Founder of Trulia, steering the company to a successful IPO and its eventual sale to Zillow Group. Outside of the boardroom, he launched Fat Chance Row, a daring venture to row 2,750 miles across the Pacific, unsupported with his wife, rowing 18 hours straight per day.
In Today's Episode with Sami Inkinen:
1. From Farm in Finland to IPO Founder: Relationship to Money
- How did Sami's humble upbringing on a farm in Finland impact his early mindset and ambition?
- How does Sami analyze his relationship to money today? How has it changed over time?
- Why was the two weeks following Trulia's IPO the worst two weeks of his life?
2. The Secret to Marriage: Rowing 2,750 Miles Together:
- What are some of the biggest lessons on marriage Sami has from spending 45 days rowing the Pacific with only his wife for company?
- What was their single biggest argument over the 45 days? What did Sami learn from it?
- Sami worked with his wife, what are the biggest pros and cons of working with your spouse? Would Sami recommend it?
- What does Sami believe are the core fundamentals that underpin the best marriages?
3. The Secret to Parenting: The Regret of Delegation:
- What is Sami's biggest regret when it comes to parenting?
- How does Sami think about what it means to be a great father today? How has that changed?
- How did Sami's relationship with his wife change when they had kids?
4. Relationship to Identity:
- Why does Sami believe tieing your identity to the company, as a founder, is so dangerous?
- How does Sami advise on creating multiple personas to prevent this?
- Why does Sami believe that all the best founders are addicts to some extent?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Startups and companies only fail when founders stop trying. Startups only fail when founders stop trying. |
| 0:09.2 | If you're CEO, you're a founder, you have to treat yourself like Olympic athlete. So tying your |
| 0:13.8 | identity to your company, it is a natural process. And I think that's very dangerous, very dangerous. |
| 0:20.5 | This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:22.5 | and this show is very different to many of the others which are more startup focus that we do. |
| 0:26.6 | Today's show focuses on relationships to money, identity, marriage. It's an incredible and |
| 0:31.6 | broad-ranging discussion with a man who's taken a company public, rowed across the Pacific, |
| 0:36.7 | unsupported, his wife, rowing |
| 0:39.0 | 18 hours per day, and now changing the world of healthcare with Verta Health. I'm so excited to |
| 0:45.0 | welcome back to the show, Sammy Inkenon, after seven years since his last appearance, this was such a |
| 0:50.5 | special one for me to do. But before we dive into this incredible discussion, |
| 0:58.9 | there's no shortage of helpful AI tools out there, but using them means switching back and forth between yet another digital tool. What was supposed to simplify your workflow |
| 1:03.4 | just made it way more complicated, unless, of course, you're in Notion. In Notion, you can |
| 1:08.6 | automate the tedious tasks, like summarizing meeting notes, or finding next steps, really freeing you up to do the deep work that we all want to do. And that's why Notion is used by over 50%, 50% of Fortune 500 companies and teams that use Notion, send less emails, cancel more meetings and reduce spending on tools. |
| 1:29.4 | Try Notion for free when you go to notion.com slash 20VC. |
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| 1:38.1 | called Digis. They're a full-service AI accounting company, and if you're in need of an accountant |
| 1:43.2 | or looking to switch, |
| 1:44.5 | there's no better solution than Digits. Starting at just $350 a month, which is less than half |
| 1:50.5 | of what you'd pay a traditional firm, Digits is the most accurate, most efficient solution on |
| 1:55.4 | the market. They've developed proprietary AI technology that automates tedious financial tasks |
| 2:00.6 | and delivers reports to the actual |
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