Power of 3

Chris Larsen

08.12.21

As the founder of three companies, Chris has a lot of entrepreneurship under his belt. In this clip, he dives into the similarities and differences in his approach to each company.

Summary:

As the founder of three companies, Chris has a lot of entrepreneurship under his belt. In this clip, he dives into the similarities and differences in his approach to each company.

Thuy

You have founded three companies, that means creating three missions, creating three teams, building and leading three organizations. Did you use a similar approach each time? Is there a Chris Larsen playbook for companies and what would those key elements be?
Chris_Larsen

Chris Larsen

I mean, they did all feel very similar, and again, kind of in that moment of Jim Collins' Built to Last or Good to Great, those were models in all three, starting with the core value, knowing that there's a mission even before you have product market fit. I think that I didn't really think about that until lately but you can have a mission and in our case, it's kind of building this Internet of value. We always kind of thought that but that was even before we had product market fit, and this is where I'm talking about Ripple now, product market fit was kind of being a replacement for Swift, right? They are related but a mission doesn't have to be your product. So, you can kind of have an idea kind of really early on, even if it's vague, even if it's just a feeling, and I think that all three of them is started out that way, right? And that's perfectly okay, it's perfectly okay to be telling people early on, "I don't know how we're going to make money," or "I actually don't know where this is going." You can build teams without exactly having that. You can kind of do that on just the intuitive feeling of this is going to be big, something fundamentally has changed here, it's going to be good for the world. I think lots of teams come together on something that simple and all three of them, that's how it started, and then we got into product market fit, in some cases, years later, keeping is like can you raise enough money? Again, have enough water to get through that desert before we get to the mountain of product market fit.

Thuy

Yeah, but it goes back to your point about when you're first hiring for a startup, you want those missionaries first. You really want people to buy into the mission.
Chris_Larsen

Chris Larsen

That's right, yeah. I mean, it's almost like a religion. I mean, it really is. You can't really explain it but you know that it's going to work.