Charlie Songhurst

between sort of VP leaders and functional heads, defining those well and managing through that transition is just so important.

And there's nowhere where someone learns that through the process of entrepreneurship.

One of the things that's, I think, very interesting about people's careers in general is the early stages and the personalities that go into them often have negative correlation with the later stages.

So if you look at a sort of McKinsey or Goldman Sachs analyst, often what they need is attention to detail, strong work ethic, high diligence, high conscientiousness in sort of five factors, all those sort of things.

If you look at middle management of those companies, they need good project management, good ability to abstract and structure problems, good ability to pull a team together and create team morale, and the sort of being across the detail and the technical knowledge matters less.

And then if you look at the sort of partner level in those firms, often all that matters is relationship building and sales and charm and the ability to empathize with the client and connect with them.

And so it's very hard to find people that are stars in all three parts of those careers.

And I think it's the same with entrepreneurship.

The street smart entrepreneur at sort of pre-seed who can raise money with a good narrative and get energy and recruit people and sort of create a sort of sense of momentum and esprit de corps is often very negatively correlated with the sort of personality that wants to put in quarterly HR reviews and QBR reporting and really make sure that the finance team is taking at a later stage.

And then conversely, often the entrepreneurs that do very well later find the early stage capital raising hell on earth because in some ways they're so tightly gripped to reality and they're slightly pessimistic, which makes them very good at sort of avoiding chaos, often makes them very bad at pitching.

I will maybe, for the Socratic sake of it, sort of take the opposite argument and say, I think one of the mistakes that's fallen into is just sort of seeing sort of effervescent genius.

Because you're seeing people at the height of their powers, you're not seeing them on the way up.

There's that famous clip of Bezos, I think in 99, with Amazon sprayed in spray paint in the back of the office.

It would be really interesting if you talk to him, whether he is similar to the Bezos of today.

Because in the intervening 20 years, remember, you've got this incredible training program for the mind.

They're working every hour in the startup.

They're talking with the smartest people.

They're constantly getting new information.

They're hiring, they're firing.

So that pattern recognition of executives gets so much better.