Andrew Marks

I mean, I think you want to understand why you want to hire someone.

And then I think you can test against those things in real ways.

Yeah, well, I think what's interesting also is that there are so many ways to succeed by being amazingly good at the conventional thing, by being the best at going through the map or following the map or whatever, and sort of hacking whatever the process is that everyone's done before you.

But with startups, there's not much of a map.

I mean, there might be some general principles, but in any given area, you're doing what you're doing for the first time.

Or if someone else is doing it, you're trying to do it differently and better and whatever.

So you have to be able to think for yourself and you have to have real conviction in yourself.

And so I think to your point, the people who are more unconventional are people who are willing to do things based on what they think is right for them and their own views versus just being the best at what's conventional.

One way that I sort of intuit for myself about this point about why founders are everything, sort of the question I guess your dad asked is, think of the best startup idea you could possibly imagine.

I don't know.

Someone gave you Google's pay drink algorithm.

And then imagine someone from your life that's mediocre or maybe better than mediocre or an A minus or a B plus.

Yeah.

What are the odds that that person would have built Google?

Zero.

Zero, right?

And that's because number one, it's hard to build a company, even if you have a great idea and execute on all the things you have to execute.

But number two, if you're doing something well, other smart people are going to be like, hey, there's a lot of value to capture here.

I'm going to go compete.

So not only are you going to have to build your company, but you're going to have to out-compete everyone else.