Over the years I have had six cofounders between three businesses. Three have been great fits and three didn’t work out. In the ones that didn’t work, the problem boiled down to two things: commitment and values. Surprisingly, skill set and experience were not the main reasons for failure.
Commitment
It’s not easy recruiting a high-paid executive or successful entrepreneur to come work for a new startup. Nobody goes into entrepreneurship without making a giant leap of faith. The right person has to be willing to walk away from a 9-5 job or successful venture and start working insane hours for something brand new and uncertain. That’s not an attractive proposition to all people. But the point is that you have to commit. It’s like doing a backflip, you have very little chance of success and certain failure if you don’t commit. I’ve had cofounders who didn’t have the right level of commitment and when that’s the case, it just won’t work out. No matter how you rationalize it, if one person carries the majority of the workload it leads to an inevitable breakdown of the team. Having co-founders with the same level of commitment is paramount to your success and happiness as a team. My current founding team is totally bought in and no one ever has to think about every person carrying their own weight. It creates a high level a mutual respect, trust, and execution.
Values
My goal is to build a world-class product and experience. At one point I had a cofounder who was really talented and successful in his prior projects. But his philosophy was about building low cost leaders. Our business values were too different for us to be successful together. There are many ways to make money and build companies. But if co-founders have different values, it’s hard to be in sync and ultimately the differences will be too much to form a strong dynamic partnership.
At the end of the day, successful teams don’t just have great chemistry or the smartest or hardest-working people. The team has to be greater than the sum of its parts and those parts have to match up on multiple complex levels. I’ve made some mistakes by choosing business partners based on their prior success or history without really understanding their values and motivations. The best business partner I have had is one whom I worked with for years before we became cofounders. They say that you should date around before you get married. This is true of co-founders, investors, and board members too. You’ll save yourself the headaches, heartache, and gray hairs.
I’m totally addicted to sushi. But sushi is not what it used to be. Actually, I’ll say that sushi is not what it’s supposed to be. Traditionally, sushi is a very simple and pure food. The rolls that are commonplace in the US don’t even exist in Japan. A Japanese guy told me once that they wouldn’t even consider that type of food to be sushi.
By contrast, real sushi is unadulterated and it’s very simple: a slice of high quality fish on a small, slightly warm ball of rice with just the right amount of vinegar and a touch of wasabi. In many cuisines, experimentation and fusion of styles is encouraged but that is not the case with sushi. There isn’t a whole lot to it and there shouldn’t be distractions when consuming sushi. Sushi is a true purist’s food and there’s absolutely nothing else like it!
But the simplicity of sushi belies the difficulty of making it. If you’ve seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi, you know that something like preparing a baked egg cake can take years to master if it’s made the right way. That sort of unrelenting focus and effort is what I aspire to as an entrepreneur. In the same way that sushi gives me so much joy, I want to build a product that delivers a simple and pure value proposition because I think customers will appreciate that. Just as I don’t like crazy rolls with lots of ingredients, I don’t want to deceive the customer with too many bells and whistles. I think that having too many ingredients in sushi (or too many features in a product) makes it easy to conceal basic flaws. By contrast, creating a simple yet delicious piece of sushi is really difficult. It’s even harder to innovate while keeping things simple.
To master the art of sushi, a chef has to make a lifelong commitment to sushi as a craft. The chef has to stick to strong basic values and resist following the latest trends. DailyLook’s central ideal is about providing the best styling and fashion inspiration. Everything we do has to fall in line with that goal and we have to be disciplined in order to stick with our philosophy.
I don’t love sushi just because it’s delicious or healthy. It represents what I strive for: quality, simplicity and purity. This is why sushi is my vice.