Einsteins & da Vincis
MyBestBox’s founder, Fatima Dicko, shares tactics to building a strong startup team
A couple months ago, I met Kate Gremillion, the founder & CEO of Mavenly + Co. In our initial conversation, we discussed her company’s focus on providing young women with resources to design a career and lifestyle with purpose. I explained to her the work that I have been doing at Backstage Capital and she came up with the idea of having a special podcast series on her Women, Work & Worth podcast. In the series, Kate & I would interview successful female founders that could provide the greater community with insights on how to build a successful startup.
The following is an excerpt from the second episode of this mini-series within the WWW podcast, where Kate and I interview MyBestBox’s founder, Fatima Dicko, to discuss tactics she used to build a strong team. To hear the full episode on Fatima, check out the podcast here. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Kate Gremillion: Just curious, when you were conducting a self-assessment of your experience and attempting to determine if you had a yes for each skill that you felt would best position MyBestBox, were there things that you knew you needed but didn’t have quite yet. When you were at P&G or maybe you just left, what were those skills or concepts that you felt you really needed to brush up on? Did you say to yourself, hey I know I have a certain skill set that speaks to this market’s need and this company’s vision but maybe I’m missing some critical parts — or maybe I do have the full skill set that I need?
Fatima Dicko: Yeah that’s a that’s a great question. It brings me to something one of my favorite mentors told me. He said that everyone is either an Einstein or a da Vinci. Einstein was very depth-oriented. He knew one thing really well — physics. If you ask him some stuff about chemistry you know you might be able to tell you. But he was very skilled in one particular area. He was considered an expert in that field. Da Vinci was very breadth-oriented so he did everything from designing the first helicopter to contributing to the fields of music, arts, and mathematics. So he was breadth-oriented. Academia tends to skew us to thinking that being depth-oriented is what makes you competent. But it’s perfectly ok being a da Vinci as long as you can find Einsteins for the different pillars or the different areas that you’re interested in.
So I quickly I came to understand at P&G that I tended towards being breadth-oriented. If I had to, I could be depth-oriented in one particular area but it wasn’t where I think I was operating as my best self. So it was important for me to figure out what are the things that I like to do. And what are the things that get me passionate and what are the things that inspire me? Which areas require an expert to allow me to take my passion in the area and come up with cool ideas but then bring their expertise to bring some of those ideas into actionable initiatives. As I thought through those areas, I thought of where I was and then where I wanted to be for my company. Then I identified that gap in between and then thought about the experts I would need to solve that gap in the meantime. A lot of what we’re working on involves predictive analytics because I knew I wanted MBB to find the right products, that the right people needed at the right time. So there are a lot of ways to do that. And while my skill set could come up with different ideas to deliver these products to people, I needed somebody who has experience building predictive data analytics models and that’s kind of how I got our CTO on board. That’s just an example of me needing to be self-aware of what I know and what I don’t know — and then going forward from there.
Earnest Sweat: That’s an amazing example of how an entrepreneur should take the time and essentially have a SWOT analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. And determine if they are the right person for this startup. Then if they do have an unfair advantage they should think about how can they fill the other gaps that are necessary to actually execute on this ambitious plan. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who have written in their journal and have spoken to their mentors? They have even identified what they’re good at and what they need. Now, what do they do? What are the next steps? What was your experience in finding those people to actually fill those gaps and what difficulties did you have in finding the right people?
Fatima Dicko: I have always been a fan of focusing on your strengths and making those better. Rather than focusing on your weaknesses and trying to improve them. I think a lot of studies have been done around how to maximize your effectiveness. If I’m really really bad at doing X, Y, and Z, me spending my time marginally improving that weakness will produce fewer benefits for the company than if I really focus on the things that I’m good at. So that’s why I’m making the right hires in the areas that you are weak in are so important.
For me, I’ve had situations where there has been a hire and unfortunately it wasn’t a fit — and so they had to go. But the hires that felt the most right were the ones where I after I brought them on board to fill in either a weakness or a gap that we had, I didn’t even want to touch that space anymore. I knew that they were so good at that area that me hopping in could even sometimes be detrimental to the company. So there’s that gut feeling of do I want to back off when I hire this person or do I still feel like I want to jump in. And those little cues that you have internally, they tell you a lot about not only the decision you made but how that person is probably going to impact the long-term culture of the team.
Fatima Dicko is the Founder and CEO of MyBestBox, a lifestyle brand that helps people jump-start and maintain healthy lives in a way that is convenient, affordable and fun. Fatima is has extensive experience in the consumer products industry and started her career at P&G’s Upstream Innovation team. She has a BS in Engineering from Columbia and is currently pursuing her MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. You can follow her on Twitter @FatimaDicko_.
Kate Gremillion is the founder of Mavenly + Co., “a community of young women having honest conversations about college, career and life and helping them create a lifestyle by their own design.” Mavenly + Co. has a podcasts, blog, interview series, and two-day workshops.
Earnest Sweat is an Entrepreneurial Engineer for Camelback Ventures and an Investor in Residence for Backstage Capital. If you have any questions or requests please connect with Earnest through LinkedIn or Twitter.
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