Gokul Rajaram | Lessons from Zuck, Jack Dorsey, Sergey Brin + Defining your ICP, Evolution of Seed Investing
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 17 October 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gokul Rajaram is an early stage technology investor. As a product leader, operator and board member, he’s helped build seven generational technology companies, including Alphabet, Block, Coinbase, DoorDash, Meta, Pinterest, and The Trade Desk.
We talk about lessons learned from Zuck, Sergey Brin, and Jack Dorsey, when big acquisitions can go well, how to define your ICP, why you should always size markets bottoms-up, having a fast response time, how seed investing has changed since 2007, and Gokul’s hot takes on titles at a startup.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:14) Common thread of success between the founders of Google, DoorDash, Facebook, and Square
(05:50) Gokul’s first job in Silicon Valley
(07:46) How Serendipity led to PMing Adsense, one of Google’s biggest products
(12:20) Lesson from Sergey Brin on reducing friction before a products magic moment
(18:50) How Zuck used founder mode to beat Google Plus in 2011
(22:51) When big acquisitions can go well
(24:47) How Gokul switches from startup helper to public company board member
(28:09) The evolution of Seed investing since 2007
(33:27) How to have a fast response time
(37:40) Lessons from Jack Dorsey always selling
(39:54) How to define your ICP
(42:40) Using bottoms-up to size a market
(44:05) Why Director and VP titles are bad for startups
Referenced:
Who’s Got the Monkey? https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
How to Size a Market in 30 Minutes https://blog.blingcap.com/2023/02/13/How-to-Size-a-Market/
Follow Gokul:
Twitter: https://x.com/gokulr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokulrajaram1
Follow Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The great thing about Zuck is he knows how to switch between founder board and manager mode. |
| 0:04.6 | He would delegate, but when a crisis hit, he would be extremely hands-on until he felt the crisis was passed. |
| 0:11.0 | So as soon as Google Plus hit, he called what is called lockdown. |
| 0:14.2 | Back then, there was a sign outside his office that said lockdown. |
| 0:18.1 | That's awesome. |
| 0:19.6 | Lockdown was on. |
| 0:20.8 | And so you knew that lockdown was on. |
| 0:22.9 | And that means he called in all hands of every single engineer at the company. |
| 0:26.5 | And he said that you've got to drop what you're doing. |
| 0:29.1 | And he would basically personally run the roadmap for the company. |
| 0:32.6 | I want teams built. |
| 0:33.9 | And I want these eight or nine things shipped. |
| 0:36.1 | That was a forcing function, and it was |
| 0:38.5 | really energizing. I do think when the company is in an existential crisis, that's when the founder |
| 0:45.0 | needs to just step down. You can't delegate at the point. You've got to be very, very close to the |
| 0:50.2 | work and almost dictate micromanage what happens. Welcome to the Peel. |
| 0:56.0 | I'm your host, Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. |
| 0:59.0 | Today's guest is Gokul Rajaram, who has helped build seven generational companies, including |
| 1:04.0 | Google, Facebook, DoorDash, and Square. |
| 1:06.0 | And we'll start by dissecting the one common theme across them all. |
| 1:10.0 | The culture of the company and the things the company focuses on were unique to them and |
| 1:15.1 | the right thing for the market they played in or the product. |
... |
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