Lessons from a Serial Startup Insider

What the future of work will look like.

I went to a Startup Grind event recently at Yale’s SOM and the speaker was serial entrepreneur Steven Kokinos Co-founder of Fuze. Fuze is an all-encompassing communication software.

Three things, in particular, stuck out to me regarding what work will look like in the future.

1. He reinforced previous discussions about startup funding. He has repeatedly found that the investors based their decision on their gut reaction to the people presenting and how they got along. It’s about the people not so much the idea. I’ve heard this from other VC folks — they want to know what you have built before, lessons learned, and who’s the boss when the shit hits the fan. The answer is not all of us.
2. His company grew very quickly. One of the biggest challenges was top-down communication. He realized that he needed to deliver the message for it to be meaningful and accurate. The human connection from the visionary is wanted and needed. There were lots of misinterpretations when he spoke to senior leaders and they passed the message on via the org chart flow. Everyone adds in their take on it and suddenly the real message is crazy convoluted.
3. Finally — they outsourced, to more economically friendly locations, work that fell outside of executive roles or serious skills development work.

That last one I was curious about. He mentioned that they had big hubs in Boston, NYC, and San Francisco all very expensive areas. When he mentioned getting the other folks from different areas I assumed he meant maybe some of the growing tech hubs in the southern part of the US.

I wasn’t expecting to hear Ottawa and Portugal.

It made me wonder about the emphasis that we are placing on learning to code when so much of this is going to be changing — AI will certainly be taking over more in addition to less expensive labor. A solid grounding is important and might be of value if that truly is the final career choice.

The thing is — so many of the people that I have met in key positions in tech never went to school for it. They studied dance, art, music, liberal arts.

They adamantly believe that the kind of thinking in these areas contributed to a tremendously more creative approach.

I’m still mulling this over — I’d be curious to hear how this might apply to your industry.

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Lisa Guida coaches, speaks and provides workshops for innovative growing companies that get that the best way to scale is when everyone is encouraged to speak up.

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