Advice on Using Relationships as a Competitive Advantage From 5 Impressive Founders

What we hear vs. what we think:

• Steve Jobs ➡ iPhone and Mac

• Lionel Messi ➡ Greatest soccer player of all time

• Eminem ➡ One of the greatest rappers of all time

1. Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano
Entrepreneur, Tech Investor, Founder of "The Pomp Podcast"

"It's great to try and get close to your heroes, but it's the peers that you spend the most time with that have the largest impact on your success. Choose them wisely."

Takeaway: This almost sounds like the opposite advice from last week's edition on Bill Gurley's Runnin' Down a Dream, so let me clarify. Getting close to your heroes is important. But, if your hero is someone that will be out of your reach right now, you need to focus on getting closer to them. That means studying them and surrounding yourself with people who have similar aspirations to your hero. Getting close to other ambitious people with similarly lofty goals is the best way to continuously get better and achieve that success.

For example, if your hero is Sara Blakely and she’s not answering your cold emails…try hitting up Kim Kardashian.

2. Howard Lerman
Current Founder at Roam, Former Co-founder at Yext

"Roam has 18 co-founders. It's a huge wealth creation opportunity to give early employees founder shares. The 'Founder' title is able to change the conviction level of employees…Beyond these co-founders, I have 55 founder/CEOs on the cap table. I put them to work for Roam"

Takeaway: If you want the boat to go fast, make sure everyone in it is paddling in the same direction. If you want to move faster, tether it to some speedboats.

It's important to make sure everyone is bought into the same mission—it can be anything from a group project to building a company. If you treat people the right way and align incentives, you'll find everyone is celebrating the wins in unison. How can you make it a bigger win? Create mutually beneficial connections who are invested in your success.

3. Kat Cole
President & COO at Athletic Greens

Kat told us about a defining experience earlier in her career while acting as the President of Cinnabon.

The experience emphasized the importance of establishing trust when entering a new role. She described the hard work that went into her first 6 months at Cinnabon—the face time, the listening, the extra care. All of this built the trust needed to convince franchise owners of Cinnabon locations that allowing Costco to sell Cinnabon would be a good move, despite that on its surface, it represented expanding to a "competitor" that could offer the same product as franchisors at lower prices. However, the plan was to offer a differentiated bite sized Cinnabon product.

When miscommunication from team members led to Costco offering the same exact large Cinnabon product at lower prices, the franchisors were furious. Kat quickly responded by figuring out the root of the problem and took responsibility for the mistake to the CEO, Board of Directors, and important shareholders. Kat kept her role as the president, corrected the issue, and soon after, closed a deal to offer a differentiated Cinnabon product in numerous Burger Kings, leading to huge profits.

Takeaway: It's easy to make empty promises. It's much harder to follow through on what you say. Building trust is all about putting in the extra effort and keeping to your word. Even when mistakes happen that aren't directly your fault or intention, be clear about your objectives and quickly take responsibility for any mistakes made. Your peers will respect you much more for it.

4. Keith Rabois
General Partner at Founders Fund

With a rich history of founding, investing, and mentoring startups, Keith has distilled a simple way to determine your unique superpower and use it as the focal point for your success. It turns out that finding your superpower requires the feedback of those closest to you and the studying of those you look up to. Once you figure out your superpower, Keith suggests you optimize for it.

How to find your unique superpower:

1. Personally write down what you believe is your uniquely strong skill set

2. Write down the 5 people you want to be like and what you believe their best traits are

3. Write down the 5 people you like most (and keep in touch with). Have them give you honest feedback on what strengths they think make you unique

4. Find the patterns in all the answers. That's your superpower, make sure to utilize it

5. Nikita Bier
Founder at Gas

After scaling and selling the viral social media app TBH to Facebook for $30 million, Nikita set out on an even more ambitious goal. Could he make $10 million in 90 days? Nikita surpassed this by making $7 million in app sales and then another $10+ million on Gas’ sale to Discord.

His biggest learning? Target major life moments of change to capture your target market. Kids in high school getting ready to go off to college felt a stronger connection to one another. So, an app that allows users to give anonymous compliments to each other was a great market fit.

Takeaway: Target major life moments of change. Sure, if you are intentional about putting yourself out there to meet the right people, the opportunity to expand your network is always there. But major life changes are when you are exposed to a high density of potentially meaningful connections. Be it entering or exiting college or any educational program, switching jobs or industries, or getting married and having a family. At those times, you're exposed to vastly different groups that may align with your changing life goals.

It doesn't take too much to build relationships, here's what I'm committing to this week:

• 💒 Spending time with loved ones at a family wedding

• ⚽ Playing a soccer game with high school and college buddies

• ☕ Grabbing coffee with another Carnegie Mellon Alum

What are you committing to this week? Reply to this email!