After the Round Closes: How to Leverage Your Investors

Intro 00:01
Welcome to Startup Success, the podcast for startup founders and investors. Here you’ll find stories of success from others in the trenches as they work to scale some of the fastest growing startups in the world, stories that will help you in your own journey. Startup Success starts now.

Kate 00:17
Today I am joined by Julia Austin, who is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. She’s also a founder, author, executive coach, has built many startups, and she recently wrote a book that I have dug into and highly recommend to all founders listening. It’s called “After the Idea: What it Really Takes to Create and Scale a Startup.” Welcome Julia.

Julia Austin 0:47
Thank you so much, Kate. It’s great to be here.

Kate 00:49
It’s really great to have you because I dug into your book, and I, you know, our CEO has us read a lot of books, and they’re very, you know, strategic, high level. They don’t get into, like, the nuts and bolts of what you really need to do. And I love your book because it goes into that. I mean, you have a lot on strategy and everything, but tactical detail, which you rarely see, right? You really cover it all. It’s awesome. I really enjoyed it. I want to get into your book a little later, but before we do all of that, maybe if you could set the stage for all the founders listening and just kind of give us a brief overview of your background, because it’s pretty fascinating.

Julia Austin 01:34
Thank you. Thank you. I’m happy to do that, and I appreciate all the kind words about the book. So I have a pretty unique background in that I came from an art undergrad degree, which back in the 80s, involved a lot of programming when you’re doing computer graphics. So I have some technical background, and then followed that with a master’s degree, a technical master’s degree. So I started to build my technical chops in the late 80s, early 90s, and never imagined I’d be going into startup land and doing the things I ended up doing. My whole career has been very organic. And what’s really led me in every direction has been working with amazing people, smart people. My favorite people to work with are super high EQ, but brilliant technologists, solving hard problems and bringing some sanity to the hard problems. So I joined startup land in the late 90s for the first real startup. I did some early stage businesses that you could call a startup, but the real one was Akamai Technologies, which I joined in 1999 and that was back in the crazy internet bubble, and companies were going public with $6 million in ARR and growing like bananas. And I joined that business because I was really fascinated with the Internet. They were at the very beginning of the internet, and I just thought it was really cool, and I wanted to be at the beginning of that. Loved the people that came out of MIT, brilliant founders, brilliant idea, amazing team. I came in with one of those classic joiner jobs where they were like, I don’t know, we’ll call you Release Manager and just make us, you know, organized, because they were getting ready to go public, and we were not organized at all when I got there. So it was a very sort of vague, figure it out kind of job, which you really have to be comfortable doing when you’re a joiner at an early stage, fast growing startup. And then we kind of went from there, and I became the VP of engineering, which was a very deer in the headlights moment for me, definitely wasn’t prepared for that role and lots of lessons learned, but it was a really great opportunity to lead a big team for the first time, and a few 100 people working for me, scaling the business, and then the bubble burst. We had a very sad loss of one of our co-founders on 9/11 and so being resilient and riding through that was quite a lesson learned for us, and brought a lot of the ideas around startup operations and how we build businesses to be sustainable through crises. Every startup has something. That one was pretty tragic, but certainly there’s always things that are happening, and how do you really build a great culture and a great team and a great operation to get through that? A lot of that learning started there. And then from there, I went to VMware. I joined the company when they were really rocket ship growth post-acquisition from EMC, they were opening their first non Palo Alto office. So I got a chance to build my own little startup on the East Coast and help the company scale. And we grew. Well, we ended up spinning out and doing an IPO there as well. And we grew while I was there, from a couple 100 people to 15,000 over eight years, which is massive growth. And built a lot of really cool things we can talk about while I was there. And then I was the CTO at DigitalOcean after that, and I joined Digital Ocean around the same time I started teaching at Harvard, and that was an interesting parallel, but helped that business go from they were about four years old when I joined about 150’ish people just closed Series B and had plateaued in terms of getting products out the door and really scaling, because they just weren’t, they grew so fast they didn’t have the processes in place to do that, so that was a lot of time to do that as well. Yeah, so I did that, became an executive coach, started a nonprofit for female founders. I’ve done lots of things since then. So I’ve had a very, as my good friend Christina Wallace would say, a very portfolio life in terms of building lots of things.

Kate 05:13
Seriously. I love hearing your story, because I was in Silicon Valley, started around the same time, and you were like, right in the mix of, like, the big players. I mean, your background is pretty exciting. What you all were doing at each of those companies. Massive growth – being at the right place with the internet and being able, I can only imagine. So that’s why I love this book because you include a lot of that. We’re going to get into some advice for founders listening. But I want to talk about what prompted you to write the book. And I want to point out to the listeners, you cover product, people, operations, and then you kind of go into growth, scaling, which I love, which is so important and so challenging that you know this, some of the startups I’ve been involved with, that’s where things fell apart. Was the growth stage – really tough. And you talk about that, you’re pretty realistic. So what motivated you? Because you really cover a lot for one book.

Julia Austin 06:19
I think one of the biggest challenges of writing the book was trying to strike the balance from not too high level, strategic, fluffy, but not too heavy that everyone’s like enough already. I want people to be using this book in their day to day lives in startups. So I want it to be practical. Read it from front to back, but then also pull it off the shelf, or open your Kindle, or whatever you’re doing, because I know Julia wrote about this, and I’m here now and there’s a tool or a framework or advice she has that. So I had that in my mind of like, I really want this book to have utility. I want it to be something that’s not just a one time read. It’s really like your guidebook. Where it started was I created this course at Harvard called Startup Operations, which came about because I had a bunch of students who are alumni who were leaving Harvard starting their businesses while they were in school, and feeling this sort of I get it, I know there’s all these things I have to do, but some of them are really built around scale, and I’m in, like, the early stage right now, and I’m learning how to do basic things like finance and legal and marketing. Things are biting me left and right that I just didn’t even know I was going to have to think about right. They’re so focused on the idea maybe raising capital, maybe building a team, but they really haven’t thought about, as I call it, the gestalt of how it it all comes together. That was sort of the beginning, and then I had a ton of people in my life outside of HBS who were saying, God, I wish I could take your class, like it would be so helpful. So I was in this sort of, Well, maybe we should do that. So I was very fortunate that I had an agent reach out to me, and I’d been blogging a lot, and she said, Hey, I’ve been reading your blog, and why don’t you have a book? And it was one of those moments where I was like, I don’t know. I mean, I’m thinking about it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should do this. So again, like everything in my career, sort of just kind of came upon me, and I said, Let’s try and see what happens. And again, I said, that would be really great. I would love the idea, when I say democratizing my course. Not everybody gets to go to Harvard. Lots of people went there and didn’t get to take my course. So let’s make it available to everybody, and if it’s consumable in a way that doesn’t assume all the things that that I assume in the classroom in terms of other courses or things my students have done, so it’s very digestible, and you don’t have to have all the prerequisites, if you will. Then that was really what I hoped to achieve.

Kate 08:36
And you did. You really did. And so I want to change tracks a little, because you cover so much in the book, but you cover something that we haven’t talked much about on this show, which a lot of founders struggle with, and that is, after they get the check. We have a lot of episodes about getting the check, targeting the right VCs, all of that, the pitch deck. But there’s a lot that can fall down after the check. And I hear a lot of VCs on this show talk about, you know, these founders that go MIA, they don’t communicate well enough. And then founders talk about, Well, I’m trying to present this image, that everything’s perfect, that I’ve got it. And it doesn’t always gel very well. So I wanted to take the time while you’re here today to kind of delve into that, the whole investor communication.

Julia Austin 09:26
Love it. Love it. It’s one of my favorite topics. And it comes as an executive coach, it comes up all the time with my clients, right? They’re either struggling with, how do I set the right expectations, or what am I supposed to ask them or do at a board meeting, like a lot of these things. So I’ll start with before the check, just for a minute.

Kate 09:38
Okay, yes, thank you.

Julia Austin 09:41
You know, when we get caught up on the hamster wheel of we’re going to raise capital, either because we have no choice, we have to, it’s the kind of business we’re running, or we’re ready to scale, and we really need the capital. And sometimes people just raise because the timing is right and someone’s handing them a check, and it just seems great. Whatever reason you’re raising capital, oftentimes, founders don’t pause for a minute and say, Who am I about to marry? Because it really is a marriage, and it’s not a marriage you can easily divorce from, if at all. Yes, you need the capital. Yes, you might be in a tough market where it might be harder or, you know, for a lot of women founders especially, it is tough to raise capital, but you have to be careful about what you’re trading off, right? So if you get a great check, but you get it from a really toxic investor, then was that check really worth it, right? So I’ll start with when you’re going through the process, because this is a relationship you are going to be in, especially if it’s going to involve board seats or even board observers, but mostly board seats and directors who become your boss, which is also a thing founders don’t realize, is, you know, they say I’m going to start a company because I want to be my own boss. Well, you’re not really going to be if you raise capital. (Good point. Yes.) Sorry, but that isn’t the case. So evaluating Who am I about to get in a relationship with and how are they going to be helpful after I get that money, and how am I going to interact with them? What’s the chemistry going to be like? It might not be perfect, but you should at least have a sense of that. And I always recommend to founders do backdoor references, just like you would for an employee. And ideally talk to a founder, who have been through an entire cycle with an investor – I.E. they’ve exited. And you’ll get a sense very quickly of how the true colors really come out, good, bad or indifferent exit, right? Were they there for you when you really were selling for pennies on the dollar? Were they helpful with introducing you to potential buyers, Were they supportive when you wrote your S1 if you’re going public, whatever it was, right? But have those conversations not just to you know, they don’t want to say anything – they’re not going to give you bad references, but they’re not going to want to say anything bad if they’re in the middle of it. So it’s much better to talk to somebody sort of gotten to the other side. And certainly, if they’ve written another check in their second startup, that’s a big tell, right? Like I went back to them for more money because they were great. I loved working with them, which then leads to the next part, which is loving working with them.

Kate 12:00
Right, right. This is a great call out, because it’s true. Everyone, especially in this market, is so focused on just getting the check. They’re not thinking about they should be asking questions too about who’s investing with them. I like that.

Julia Austin 12:14
I mean, similar to co-founders, right? You don’t just want complimentary skills, but also you’re going to be in a relationship with someone for seven to 10 years. Like, give that some real pause. Think about that. So let’s assume you’ve gotten that far. You’ve got the money, the check has come in, we can go run your company now and do all the things. So then what. So there’s everything from the sort of fiduciary responsibility of what does it mean to have investors who are sitting on your board or maybe they have an option in the next round to be on your board, establishing a nice rapport, and the professional relationship with them is really important, from just board dynamics and minutes and passing motions and all the things that you know happen in a board meeting, but what do your board members want to know about or what do you investors need to hear about from you on a regular basis, or somewhat regular basis? So what I usually say is, in the earlier stages, pre-seed, seed, when you’re just taking early capital, just sending a regular cadence, monthly, quarterly, you don’t have to do weekly and God no, we get too many of those as Angel investors. You have to just kind of let us know how’s the business doing, what’s going well. what are your challenges. Don’t sell me on the business. I’ve heard too many people, you know, say I have to convince them everything’s going fine.They’re members of your family now, if you need help and things aren’t going well, they should be helping you with that, not, you know, hiding any of the uglies. I don’t believe in that. I really believe tell them the truth. Maybe they can be helpful. Maybe they have someone in their network. Maybe they can brainstorm with you. Maybe, you know, whatever it is. But sugar coating everything doesn’t serve anybody, especially if things don’t go well, and then that comes out of nowhere, and you’re saying, you know, we’re not going to hit our number, or we haven’t been able to hire whatever it is you’re going to have investors who are going to say, Why didn’t you tell us about that? We could have helped you with that. I think that’s no matter what stage you’re in, whether it’s pre-seed, all the way to, you know, post series, whatever, C, whatever, being honest and transparent will serve you in the long run. So that’s, that’s the first thing, and whether that’s monthly or quarterly email updates, which I again would recommend, keep them simple. But also for those audience members, I.E. your investors who want to get into the real nitty gritties, you can always have an attachment with additional details or things that you know some people care about and other people don’t. But keep in mind that your investors are getting, if they’re regular investors, institutional or not, they’re getting, I don’t know, 10 of those at least a week, and so they don’t have a lot of time to read like a long. So I think that’s important.

Kate 14:48
Okay, that’s super helpful. And that’s the cadence you recommend in between all the board meetings?

Julia Austin 14:54
Yes. So you’re having your board meeting quarterly, let’s say if you have boards, and then you’re doing maybe a monthly cadence of updates. Or your directors, and it’s very important to distinguish between your directors, board members, fiduciaries versus advisors, angel investors, observers. They are different classes in terms of who’s involved in your business. The fiduciaries, the IE board members, I recommend you do a one-on-one with them on a regular basis as well. So this, again, ensures transparency, taps into their areas of expertise or where they can be helpful. I sit on boards, and I find it’s great to just have that regular check in with the CEO to they’ll ask me advice, whether it’s around product or coaching for organizational things or things that they’re dealing with. But it’s also a good time to just kind of give the heads up, like, Hey, we’re dealing with this challenge, it’s going to come up at the next board meeting. I don’t want that to surprise you. Also, do you have any advice, or do you have any ways that you think I should tackle this when I bring it to the board meeting. If you have an independent director, which is what I usually do on boards, they can also be your voice, if not necessary to agree with you, which some people get wrong, that their independent supposed to be on their side. They’re still fiduciary, so they still do what’s right for the business, but it’s nice if they’re objective, because they’re not representing a partnership and LPs, but they’re just there for you. So hey, I’m going into this conversation. I have a feeling this particular board member is not going to be excited about what we’re going to share around ARR or about something. So if you could help me as a voice of reason, or give them a perspective and what you’re seeing in your business, or what have you, that can really play well for you in a board meeting.

Kate 16:40
I love this, because a lot of founders express they only see their board at the meeting, right? And there’s not that rapport. So you’re suggesting these one-on-ones.

Julia Austin 16:54
Oh, for sure, for sure. I think they’re the most effective way. It keeps the relationship. There’s no surprises. What I often see is those who don’t talk to their board members that often end up with this weird dynamic where they have, all of a sudden, no context, no history, nothing. And they want to be helpful and useful, right? So they’ll go to a board meeting, and they’ll start jumping into some detail that really, the founder doesn’t need any help with or or doesn’t really value that particular feedback, but without anything else, sort of understanding the continuity of what’s been going on in the business and wanting to be a board member, be helpful, they just dive into something. And the founders will get on a call with me and they’ll be like, Oh my god, they were asking all these questions and saying, now I don’t know what to do. Am I supposed to do the thing they told me to do, which I’ll get to that. So I think that just keeps things moving, keeps everybody clear. And then you can also tap in again, if you have a board member who was a former head of sales at some company before they became an investor, and they have a great network that can be like, Hey, you know what I could really ease your help. We’re working on our playbook. Or do you have anyone in your network? We’re hiring our first, you know, I don’t know, SE, you know, sales engineer or something like that. So like, all right, I’m getting on a call with this one. This is their background. Here’s how I’m going to try to tap into where they could be helpful, versus, like, giving each individual one just their status report.

Kate 18:20
Makes perfect sense, and I love that. Then you’re getting what you need as a founder, tapping into, you know, these excellent resources in their areas, where they can provide the most value, and probably your board meetings are probably better, because everyone’s more up to speed.

Julia Austin 18:39
Exactly, exactly. So there’s no context setting and spending a lot of time doing status reporting, which is what I’ll get into next. In terms of the board meetings I’ve been to that I think are the best, and I write about this in the book, are not status reports. Read that before you know, ideally you’re reading the board deck before the meeting. Not everybody does that, but they’re supposed to. So get all your numbers, get all your data, whatever you need from this nice package I’ve sent to you, ideally at least 48 hours before the meeting. But in the meeting, set the tone of what I’d like to focus our time on, other than motions and passing option grant or other things you need to do, is this particular challenge that we’re dealing. We’re thinking of, you know, reorganizing the product team, or we’re thinking about moving up market from, you know, SMB, to mid market. And we have a couple strategies, and we would love to just brainstorm. Board members tend to love that investors love that work, and it keeps the meeting very focused on a topic, versus here’s everything, what do you guys want to talk about? Right? So you drive, you’re the founder. It’s your job to drive it and leverage them. Otherwise they’re just going to get in all in your business, and it’s not going to be a good use of anybody’s time.

Kate 19:45
Absolutely. I can see where this can prevent a lot of tangents, because I feel like so many board meetings go off on these crazy tangents because somebody notices a KPI, and it turns into this whole wonky discussion. And, wow, I love this.

Julia Austin 20:01
Yeah. And then the last part of that is to bear in mind, and it’s amazing to me, how many founders don’t I think there’s a lot of insecurity, and I understand that, because we’re new at this and we’re not really sure they, just gave us a ton of money, like, what are we supposed to do? Only you run your company. They don’t run your company. And so they could advise you, like, hey, you’d really benefit from a Head of Sales. But that doesn’t mean you have to go hire a Head of Sales, because your board advised you that it might be a good idea. What they’re really saying, and what I always encourage founders say, dig into that something’s telling them you need a head of sales. Ask for more. What are you seeing that’s concerning you? What are we maybe not doing that you would advise we might start to think about as a business. Take it all in. But it’s not a directive to go run your company in a certain way. My coach, Jerry Colonna, who I adore, who was my coach when I was at Digital Ocean, has a great line where he says, I’ve never seen boards and investors grow and build beautiful businesses, but I’ve seen plenty of boards and investors kill businesses. Right? Because they get overly involved, they micromanage. And you know, it’s not all the board’s fault. And the founders aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do, and they say, Well, my board told me, I hear that all the time. The board doesn’t tell you to do anything. They certainly are in charge of you and whether or not you have a job here, but when it comes to operating your business, that’s your job.

Kate 21:26
Wow, because I have had so many founders say to me, well, the board told us so we have to do this. So you’re saying that’s not a mandate.

Julia Austin 21:35
Absolutely not. Funny, I was just meeting with some founders last night who were saying someone said they had talked to someone said, I don’t take any bit of advice from my board ever. I think that’s a bit extreme, because I think if you have a good board, their advice will be really helpful. But at the end of the day, you decide it’s your job to decide what you do. If they want to set goals with you, then align on those goals. So if you have OKRs or any kind of objectives that you’re trying to hit or numbers by the end of the quarter or the year or the half, get alignment on that. They’re going to hold you accountable to that for sure, but how, there’s the what and where we’re going and how we’ll measure it, and then there’s a how we’re going to do it. And the how we’re going to do it is your job. They’re not in it every day. They don’t know your team. Maybe they know your team a little bit, but they don’t know it in the day-to-day way. They don’t talk to your customers probably. You think about all the ways that you’re involved with your business, and they see this much of it, for them to direct you or overly direct you could really harm the business.

Kate 22:36
So then, as a founder, if I’ve dug into something that the board’s recommended, how do you suggest you go back to the board when you decide you’re not going to do that? Do you put that in one of your monthly updates with the reasoning? What are your suggestions there?

Julia Austin 22:53
I think again, the important thing is to go back to why was the advice given. Unpacking that, okay, you’ve recommended that I get ahead of sales. I actually do this case in my class. The very prescriptive: hire this person because I worked with them before, and they’re great. And so now board – and a founder says, I have to go hire this person like that’s not like they’re not good for my culture, or I don’t think that’s what I want in my business. Do I have to? And so you can flip that by saying great archetype profile that you’re looking for, happy to interview them or talk with them, but we really want to do a full search and find somebody who’s going to really compliment the team. It’s taking it in and saying, I understand and or it’s going even deeper and like peeling the layers back and saying, Tell me a little bit more about what you think we’re missing as a business. And if they say, like, your pipeline seems really light, we’re really concerned about that, or you seem to have a great pipeline, but you’re not closing, right. Or you have a retention issue or churn problem, or whatever. Okay, so instead of just applying a bandaid and saying, hire a head of sales, and then you’ll be fine. What problem do you think it is that we need to solve? And maybe it’s with a head of sales, or it could be something completely different. Let me go figure that out. And then when you’re going back to the reporting or the one on ones, you can say, hey, we really dug into that churn issue. Here’s actually what we think is going on. We have a product marketing issue, and we’re going to focus on that instead. And yes, granted, at some point we’ll need a head of sales when we have more sales reps or whatever, but right now, we actually think that’s a bigger problem, and that’s what’s causing churn.

Kate 24:35
I like this because you’re getting to the bottom of their advice, but it’s probably good to do that even if you agree with the advice. Even if they say you need a head of sales and you agree with that, to dig into why they’re saying that is good, regardless of how you feel about it.

Julia Austin 24:54
And then the other side of it, and to be fair, having sat on the other side of this, I’ll continue with the sales thread is, you know, I sat on a board once where there was a head of sales that just wasn’t hitting the mark, right? Good person. Very reputable, credible, all the things. But we went through like, three quarters we were like, not seeing it. And it was tough for the founder, because it also means, like, I know I see, he saw it too. And it was one of those moments where it was like, I don’t want to do this. I really don’t, but we just held the mirror up, basically, and come on. So we went in executive session when the leadership team’s not there and it’s just the founder, you really need to make this change. And in those cases, I would say that’s when it gets to be a little bit prescriptive, where we’re not going to make the change for you. And if you can do something on the performance end to improve things, but we can’t come to another board meeting and see these numbers, right?

Kate 25:47
Yeah.

Julia Austin 25:48
That founder, in that case, could have definitely come back and said, it’s not the head of sales, it’s this other thing. That’s fine. But as the board, it was important for us to say, like, three quarters in a row, like this, no, like, you’ve got to change something.

Kate 26:00
That’s a powerful example of a board and founder that are working well together I think. Anything else we need to touch on around this investor communications? I mean, you’ve shared so much. This is so great.

Julia Austin 26:14
Don’t lose sight of the fact that investors have great networks and can be incredibly helpful on things you’re trying to solve, if they’ve been operators or founders themselves. So I’ll give you one more example. When I was at DigitalOcean, we were rethinking our go to market strategy. One of our board members had a lot of experience in that area, and we said, Hey, before the next board meeting, could you come into town a day early, and can we just pick your brain for a half a day and just have fun with it, right? Get to know them a little bit better. They’ll get to know our team a little bit better, which is also good hygiene is to don’t hide your whole team from your board. I think it’s here’s who I’ve hired, and it says a little bit about who you are when you’ve got a great team. Just to bounce ideas, we’re not asking for you to tell us what to do, but we would love for you to see where we’re thinking and where we’re going, and if you did this before in your last job, so you might have some good ideas. They usually love that stuff because they don’t get to do it anymore, because they’re just doing investing all the time and going to board meetings, but it also, like opens up the curtain a little bit to share a little bit more about what’s happening inside the business, and it makes those harder conversations later much easier.

Kate 27:23
I can see that, and I can see where that would be fun, to be quite honest, and helpful for both parties, right? I mean, talk about some great conversations you can have when you utilize your advisors, that way, your board members. This is great. I can’t believe we’re coming up to time, but yet I can, because you shared so much. Your book, you know, you give so much advice, we always wrap up the show, though, with just any last parting words for those early stage founders out there listening.

Julia Austin 27:56
Yeah, so I’m a big fan of moving slow to go fast, right? And I infer that a lot in the book, although I don’t know if I say it overtly. There’s this urgency, especially if you’re doing something in AI, where you just wanna, like, go, go, go, go, go, right? And all these tools are available to you, where you can do all these things really, really fast. And my experience and observation has been that when we go too fast, we miss a few things, including Where are we going, and getting real clarity around the vision and direction, true north, right? We’re going to take a zig zaggy path probably to get there, but are we clear and aligned, especially if you have co-founders, about directionally, where are we going. But also not skipping the things that I think lay the foundation for success. So going all the way back to people stuff, which is, I cover this a lot in the book that is foundational. You can have a great idea. You can have great technology, or if you’re building a CPG, or anything else, but if you don’t figure out your culture and your team and how the organization itself is going to work, well, it really doesn’t matter. I’ve seen so many businesses just completely implode because of co-founder, dynamic issues, because toxic cultures, whatever it is, right? Just figure out the people stuff and lay the foundation for a well operating business. Not overweight with all sorts of processes or anything like that. But just take a beat and not just say, well, we can just code anything and throw it out there, we’re a company. Like you’re not. Take the time. It’s worth it. And those are the businesses that, although it may feel painful because you just want to get going, those are the ones that are going to be in it for the long haul, not the ones that are just churning like this.

Kate 29:33
Super powerful. I will tell you that the founders we’ve had on the show that are very successful, they all talk about culture. I noticed it right away when I started the show, and it’s something that I used to, I’ll be honest, roll my eyes at. And now, no, it’s, it’s the secret sauce, for sure.

Julia Austin 29:53
It really is. Even if you’re a two person business, doing everything with AI, humans are complicated. I don’t care. Like their history, their chemistry, all those things will just make or break a business, no matter what you’re building.

Kate 30:06
Absolutely. Julia, I could talk to you all day. I would love to take your class. For everybody listening, it’s Julia Austin, “After the Idea: What it Really Takes to Create and Scale a Startup.” And I will tell everybody listening too, I haven’t told Julia this, our CEO went to HBS. I’m going to recommend to him that we give this book to our early stage startup clients. It’s such a great read, It’s just also so interesting. It’s very readable. So many of these books are so boring and so hard to get through. This is not one of those. Really enjoyed it. Thank you for making the time for us today. It was so great to talk to you about a topic that we have yet to cover. Super interesting.

Julia Austin 30:50
Thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Intro 30:53
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