E134: How I Accidentally Started a Billion Dollar Tech Company w/Carta CEO Henry Ward
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How did Henry Ward start Carta?
When you started Carta over a decade ago, you mentioned you started with cap table management as a wedge. How did you get this idea? Was this inspired from your previous experience? And I thought it was a very novel strategy, but why didn't other people have this idea? You know, it's a great question. I had a different company that failed. One of the investors I worked with on that company, when it failed, he took me to lunch at Typhoon. His name's Manu Kumar. And he says, Henry, you know, K-9. Yeah, K-9. And he said, you know, Henry, this, you know, that company didn't work. It wasn't a good idea, but I think you're pretty good. Yeah. this cap table problem is a crazy problem. Like I just don't understand how we're, you know, the industry is so bad at it. If you'll start the company, I'll invest in it. Like, I think this is an important company to build. And I'm a, maybe a unique entrepreneur.
Most entrepreneurs, the conventional wisdom is you fall in love with a problem and entrepreneurship is a vehicle with which to solve that problem. I'm different. I fell in love with being a founder and I didn't care what I had to do to become a founder. I'm, fell in love with being a founder. And the problem was the vehicle for me to become a founder, which is a strength and a weakness.
What is Henry Ward's approach to entrepreneurship?
The strength, the weakness is I'm not committed to one particular vision. I'm just committed to the founder journey. The strength is that means I'm agnostic of which problem I solve, which is you see it in the DNA of Cardinal. Like we'll do anything. Right. We'll cap tables for nine a fund account. Like the stuff nobody would ever, nobody wakes up and goes, you know what? I wanted to do cap tables for 10 years. Like it just, nobody does that. And so that's the, that's my gift is I'll, I'll do anything to continue the journey. And so he was like, why don't you start this company? And I said, I don't have any better ideas. And that's how we started. But then it just became this incredibly exciting thing because once we got this tiny little wedge with a seed stage startup, we can start doing everything for these companies and funds. And that's what made the ride really special.
I spoke to a lot of people in the industry and they said, Henry has really big ideas, but he's sometimes pursuing multiple different areas. How is that a strength and how is that a weakness? I talk a lot about innovation companies versus execution companies. So, you know, back in the day, you know, we were recruiting, you know, against like Rippling or MongoDB or Zoom, you know, and people would say, you know, why should I come to Carta instead of one of those companies? And I said, well, it depends on the kind of company you want to be a part of. I would call those execution companies. If you're Parker, if you build a better HR system than anybody else in the world, you have line of sight to a billion, 10 billion in revenue, no problem. You build a better database, MongoDB, line of sight to billions in revenue. You build a better Zoom, a video conferencing system, line of sight to billions in revenue.
How does Carta innovate and decide on new projects?
You build a better cap table, line of sight to 50 million, 100 million maybe, right? And so we, I would describe as an innovation company, we never had clear line of sight to any large outcome. We were always, oh, you know, we have to innovate our way out of every market or product that we started. You know, the way I described it is like if you were going to work for one of these companies, do you want to be part of like a super well-defined team, execution, operationally efficient team with clear strategy and line of sight to where they're going?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
How did Henry Ward start Carta?
0:38–1:55
2
What is Henry Ward's approach to entrepreneurship?
1:55–3:43
3
How does Carta innovate and decide on new projects?
3:43–5:31
4
What is Henry Ward's contrarian view on AI?
5:31–7:37
5
How does Henry Ward view the challenges of service industries?
7:37–11:00
6
What is the 'Carta Cartel' and its impact on startups?
11:00–14:59
7
How does investing align with being a CEO?
14:59–34:36
Speakers
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