Persevere or Pivot, Netflix Lessons & Sports Team Culture - E632
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
11 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 19 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the founder’s dilemma between persevering and pivoting?
One of the tricky parts that I like about what Netflix has done is that they define that the corporate culture is not a family. They look at their corporate culture as a sports team. If you are my brother or my sister, if you are my family, I can't fire you. We are by but by blood, we are gonna stick through ticket thin as much as possible. But if you're a sports team, then we need a striker, you're injured, we need a new striker. We're competing as another type, we need to do a transfer. And so I think the crux of it is that we just accept the mindset that companies are closer to sports teams r rather than families. At the same point of time, it means that you still treat your employees Well. Welcome
to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy Al, Venture Capitalist, Sarah Founder, Harvard MBA, Science Fiction Nerd, and Dad of Two Daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. So when you are a startup, some of you have already asked this question, which is if you're building a company, should you persevere or should you pivot? Because when you're learning something, are you learning that you're on the right track or are you learning that you're on the wrong track?
And what's really important is that your ability to change your mind and your ability to persevere are both super key. So what I mean by that is when you are building something as a company, the people don't like And we talk about how Machiavelli and The Prince identifies that people are incredulous about a new order of things and people are scared about the introduction of a new order of things because they are benefiting from the old order of the world. And so you need to be have the ability to persevere in order to be able to drive, change, and keep going and being an inspiring beacon to rally the troops. At the same time, you have To be able to be flexible. You have to be able to change your mind.
You had to be able to listen. Because if you're inflexible and you're going the wrong direction, then the company will fail. And so you have to be able to pivot, which is a nice way of saying changing your mind with the influx of new data, new experiments, and new conclusions. And so the ability to persevere versus pivot is important for all of you to be thoughtful about over time.
How do you decide to change the solution versus the target customer using a Lean Canvas?
And so what does it mean to persevere versus pivot? When we talk about a lean canvas, and then obviously you decide to say, okay, you might have Change your mind. Maybe the solution is not very good. So the solution needs to be changed. We want to go after the same problem, but we want to approach the problem from a different way. And some of you will say the solution is good, but we need to change the customer because the customer doesn't understand what we are trying to build for the world. So there are different ways for us to do that. So let's give us examples of people who have used the lean canvas. Right, and kept the problem the same but changed the solution, or they kept the solution the same and changed the problem and customer segments.
So, for example, if you look on this, is these are three companies that kept the customer but changed the product. So Instagram, Netflix, and Rippling. So Instagram used to be something that was called bourbon, which was the equivalent of Foursquare. Most of you don't remember what Foursquare is, but it'll be the equivalent of saying, I checked in at this place and I'm now the mayor of this place, right? So it's basically like a geo map to say that I can see where my friends are and see how often they go to these places, whether it's a coffee shop or not. So Instagram used to be called Bourbon. And then what they realized was that people really like attaching photos to the places they visited, which was the coffee shop, the matcha art latte, you know, the Durance, whatever.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the founder’s dilemma between persevering and pivoting?
0:00–2:32
2
How do you decide to change the solution versus the target customer using a Lean Canvas?
2:32–4:20
3
Why did Instagram pivot from a check‑in app to a photo‑sharing platform?
4:20–6:10
4
How did Netflix evolve from DVD rentals to streaming and original content production?
6:10–7:38
5
What lessons can be learned from YouTube’s shift from a dating site to a universal video platform?
7:38–9:31
6
How did Play‑Doh transform from a wall cleaner into a children’s toy?
9:31–11:22
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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