20VC: How To Optimise Decision-Making Frameworks, How To Really Get The Most Out Of Your Board and When Your Brother Is Also Your Co-Founder; The Secret To Working with Family with Rob Sadow, Founder & CEO @ Scoop

Rob Sadow is the Founder & CEO @ Scoop, the startup that dramatically improves your commute providing convenient carpools with co-workers and neighbours. To date, Rob has raised over $37m in funding for Scoop from the likes of Danny Rimer @ Index, Brook Porter @ G2VP, Zaw Thet @ Signia Venture Partners and BMW i Ventures just to name a few. Before founding Scoop, Rob was a Manager @ Bain & Company and before that spent time in Israel with Better Place, working to provide electric vehicle networks to help accelerate the global transition to sustainable transportation. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rob made his way from the world of consulting and Bain to founding the future of convenient commutes with Scoop? 2.) How does Rob approach key decisions? What does Brook Porter @ G2VP mean when he says, "from a first principles perspective"? How does Rob determine when to make decisions with the head or the heart? Does Rob agree with Fred Destin, "as a founder, decisions are never perfect, it is about batting average"? Where does Rob see many make mistakes when it comes to decision-making? 3.) How does Rob find the dynamics of working with his brother as his co-founder? What are some of the core challenges? How does one make it scale and how does the relationship need to change over time? What is Rob's biggest advice to others when thinking about the person they partner with? 4.) How does Rob think about board construction? What have been some of Rob's biggest lessons in really using your board to get the most out of them? What works well for this? What does not work? How can founders create this level of relationship with their board members? Should founders direct their ask to specific individuals when soliciting help from their board? 5.) Why does Rob believe that they have next to no attrition of employees at Scoop? What have been some of Rob's biggest lessons when it comes to both culture creation and maintenance? How does Rob think leaders can invest more in their employees? What does this look like? Where do many go wrong or misallocate? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Rob’s Fave Book: The Wheel of Time As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rob on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  You are listening to the 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs on Instagram, where you can see all things behind the scenes from us. I really do so love to see you there. But to our episode today, and what a founder we have joining us in the hot seat today, as I'm very excited to welcome Rob Sadeau, founder and CEO at Scoop, the startup that dramatically improves your commute, providing convenient carpools with coworkers and neighbors. And to date, Rob has raised over $37 million in funding for Scoop, from the likes of Danny Rimer at Index, Brooke Porter at G2 VP, Zora at Signia Venture Partners, and BMW iVentures, just to name a few. Before founding Scoop, Rob was a manager at Bain and Company, and before that spent time in Israel with Better Place,

• 0:40Harry Stebbings?

  working to provide electric vehicle networks to help accelerate the global transition to sustainable transportation. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Danny at Index, Zora at Signia, Victoria at Prelude, and to Brooke at G2 VP for providing such fantastic questions today. I really do so appreciate that. And we mentioned some incredible companies in the intro there, and I want to spend a minute to talk about Brex, the first corporate card for startups. Brex founders Enrique and Pedro built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves rejected for a corporate card when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex with instant online signup, no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Yes, pretty incredible, I know. And you can sign up for Brex today and get card fees waived by entering the code HARRY during signup.

• 1:24Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:08Harry Stebbings?

  all customers and lovers of Terminal. And you can find out more today at terminal.io. And finally, I've always been a big history man, and so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world. With more than 50 years working with VCs, they help VCs form and manage funds, make investments, and handle the myriad of issues that can arise throughout a fund's life cycle. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm, representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also go to Cooleygo.com. But you've heard enough from me, so now I'm delighted to hand over the mic to Rob Sadeau, founder and CEO at Scoop.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:58Harry Stebbings?

  Rob, I am so excited to have you on the show today. As I said, I've stalked you really for the last 48 hours, having spoken to Danny Rimer, Brooke Porter, Zohar Signia. But thank you so much for joining me today, Rob.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to join.

• 3:10Harry Stebbings?

  Well, I would love, though, to kick off with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the crazy world of startups? And come to found Scoop? What was that aha moment?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Sure. So in many ways, it started with just a deep, underlying passion for the experience of the commute. I grew up in Atlanta. I live in San Francisco now, but I grew up in Atlanta. And my very first experience commuting was high school. And my high school was 25 miles away from where I lived. And so when I was 16, I was driving 250, 300 miles a week. It had a huge impact on my life, my energy, the activities I could and couldn't participate in. It's something that I had forgotten about for a number of years. And I moved out to San Francisco about five years ago now. And my brother had been out here. I'd commuted from San Francisco to Mountain View for a long time. A lot of my friends and coworkers were commuting over long distances. And it kind of jumped back into the forefront of my consciousness.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  I became very passionate about this idea of how do you enable people to have a better way to get back and forth to work, to not make the commute that hour or two hours or three hours the worst part or the toughest part of someone's daily experience, but actually something that could add meaning or value by Experience with a coworker or a friend.

• 4:22Harry Stebbings?

  Now, the fact that I'm about to tell you, I am sure you know very well already, but I love it, so I have to say it anyway. Did you know that the commute time and commute quality is the second biggest contributor to happiness other than salary?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I did know that. I've also seen, there was a study done recently on this, that the commute is actually the third largest reason now why people leave companies. It has increased more and more over time and as commutes have gotten longer across the country, as areas get more congested, it's just getting higher and higher up on the radar screen for commuters and for companies. And that's a huge driver of why we do what we do.

• 4:55Harry Stebbings?

  Well, I think we've had enough of a nerd fact off right there. You one upped me there. I do want to start today on a, on a theme that's a real passion for both of us, decision making. As I said, I spoke to many of your investors and the commonality in the discussion was where you excel in decision making. So Brooke Porter mentioned your unique ability in how you approach key decisions. Let's start out on that. How do you approach key decisions? And what does he mean when he says from a first principles perspective?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  A lot of how I think about decision making actually comes from my time at Bain. So I spent six and a half years doing strategy consulting before I joined Scoop. And I think consulting, it gives you a really good approach to how do you break down complex problems into really simple elements. And to me, when I think about building a business, at the end of the day, building a business is a set of problems that you have to think through and solve. And any problem that you're trying to solve, you can break down into what are the questions we have to answer? What's the work I have to do to actually answer that question, executing that work and then communicating the outcome and doing something about it?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  And so whenever I'm trying to make big decisions or as a company, we think through this, always go back to first principles, digest that problem down, think it through in pieces. We work very closely with our board and others to give feedback and input, but that's served me very well and it comes from prior experiences to Scoop.

• 6:17Harry Stebbings?

  No, I love that kind of segmentation and breakdown there of the core problems that one faces. My big question on decisions is always kind of the foundational, I think it's inherent within a lot of decisions, is when does one trust their heart? Is their head in decision making as a founder. How do you approach that difficult balance?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  I think it depends a lot on the stage of the company, honestly, and the type of topic. Early on, when I think about when we were preparing to raise our seed round, when we were just doing diligence on the concept of Scoop and carpooling broadly, I spent much more time in the head than in the heart, in a sense, like a lot of our understanding. How do people commute today? What does that look like across the United States? What are their alternatives? Why do we think we can build a better alternative? How do we think about building a business against that over time? Once that shifted and we raised capital and really started to build, speed became very important. The ability to accelerate through decisions,

• 7:14Speaker 02

  to do things, even if you only have 50% or 70% conviction or data, actually becomes deeply important. And so there are times, I think, in the life cycle of a company, especially early on, where heart and gut and saying, look, I have a pretty strong feeling this is the right answer. Maybe I can stitch together a little bit of data. I can certainly track the performance of a decision over time. But moving fast can be more important than actually moving exactly right. And being decisive can actually be more important than being 100% in your decision making. And that's been a big focus for us over time to make sure that we stay nimble as we scale.

• 7:49Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, that is super fascinating, both in time element and then the lack of data that one also sometimes has when making decisions. If we take the time element first, time pressure is always a big factor in decisions. How are you able to carve out the time and prioritize focusing on key decisions versus maybe being overwhelmed by running a company?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I think part of it is trying to make sure that I limit the exact number of decisions that I need to make. Part of building a company, and candidly, a huge part of the way we think about building our culture, is companies are a collection of people, right? It's actually getting a team and then larger and larger teams to be able to run in the same direction, to believe the same things, to invest along the same path. And so part of our ability to develop people and actually strengthen our market position, our product, the things that we need to do to be successful, is empowering them to make decisions. I make sure that our leaders feel empowered to own the areas in which they operate. A source of guidance or input or strategic advice, but ultimately not all decisions flow up to me.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  That allows me to really focus and say, look, there's only three or four or five things at a given time for the company that actually I should be spending time on. Everything else, people on my team should own, our leaders or other team members should own. And that creates a lot of space for the right people to make the right decisions.

• 9:06Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely, and I'm sure it also builds a culture of accountability and responsibility that people love. On the element of data, though, my partner Fred Destin is also a huge nerd when it comes to the decision making. And he said before that decisions are never perfect. As a founder, what you're playing for is batting average. How do you think about that and would you agree with him?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  I would fully agree with that. It's a funny thing that I talk about with my team is, look, you shouldn't assume that every decision I make is going to be right. But for Scoop to be successful, I have to be right a whole lot more often than I'm wrong over time for us to do what we need to do. And so I think it's implicit in that if you don't have a hundred percent information, you're not always going to make the right decision. And even if you did have a hundred percent information, realities change on the ground. People react in different ways than you intended. That's part of why experimentation is actually deeply important. I think the goal is to make decisions quickly and try and maximize, for lack of a better description, the product of how fast am I making decisions? Times how often am I right? That's really what you're trying to solve for.

• 10:05Harry Stebbings?

  You said about that, the decisions and once they're made and then kind of maybe the flexibility to change them. When I chatted to Danny Rimer, he said to me about the strategic elements of the company. And he asked, how does strategy influence what you're doing? And how often do you think about the strategy reevaluation?

• 10:20Speaker 02

  I would say I do probably a major evaluation of where we're at, where we're going, probably every six months. I try not to reevaluate strategy too often. I think if you're changing strategy every week or two weeks or a month, it actually creates whiplash for the team. People feel like there's not a consistent point of view. We're not clear on where we're going. Part of the work that we did early on to really establish how to think about strategy was thinking through what is our vision and our mission as an organization? And getting that to a place. Where when we talk about mission and every single quarter when we do a review in front of the company, we always start by repeating the mission to everybody. We can make sure that that's real guardrails for how we think about strategy.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  That if we're creating the right priorities, if we're thinking about the right decisions, they should drive us toward accomplishing our mission. If our strategy or our investments are not aligned with that, then we know we're not headed the right direction. And so some of it is creating the right guardrails so you don't have to revisit all the time. But still, realities change often, as we discussed earlier. And I think you do have to make time to revisit on a regular basis. We do it probably about every six months.

• 11:26Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking about the people that do need to revisit those strategies, taking kind of that little step back and focusing on the founders that make those decisions now. Your co-founding relationship is unique with your co-founder also being your brother. Tell me, what are the dynamics of working with your brother day to day?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Well, eighty or ninety percent of the time, I would tell you it's great. I would say ten or twenty percent of the time, we'll have an argument. I'm not sure if we're arguing about something that happened twenty five years ago in our childhood that we just never actually got over, or if it's actually about something that's going on at work. But in all seriousness, I think the thing that is most important as a founder, finding another founder as a co-founder, is you have to deeply implicitly trust that that person is on your team. Because building companies is hard and you have great days and you have tough days and you go through really good cycles and bad cycles. You have to believe that the person you're working with, at the end of the day, is going to act in your mutual best interest, that they're really on your side. For me, that's the greatest privilege in working with my brother. I know that we're aligned in where we're going.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  I know that we have each other's best interests in mind and at heart. And that creates a tremendous amount of strength and comfort as we think about building a company.

• 12:34Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, I love that. And I couldn't agree more with that kind of inherent trust that just has to be there. I spoke to Danny, again, a board member of Scoop and a man who knows a lot about families and business. In terms of kind of making it work, what are some of the challenges that make the day to day interesting, so to speak? And how does that change with scale?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  The thing that probably made life hardest for us early on was focusing our energy at the same topics.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  At the same time. And what made it really challenging is that we just think differently. We have different backgrounds. John was a product manager at Google. It takes a lot of those principles and the way he thinks about building business and product. I was at Bain, as we talked about, as doing strategy consulting. And so we can quite often come up with two totally different perspectives on how to solve a problem. Neither is inherently right or wrong. Early on, that was challenging, right? How do you actually hammer that together to come up with a clear point of view? Over time, that actually gets easier because as the company scales, the number of things that we both spend time on actually decreases quite a bit. So we can kind of carve out our own spheres of ownership and focus in a way that ends up being much more complementary. The way that we ended up solving it, or at least working through big pieces of it, was trying to wear really clear hats.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  When are we talking to each other as co-founders and making decisions that are important for us to agree on unanimously? When am I acting as CEO and John acting as our chief product officer? When are we actually acting as brothers? That actually it's a conversation that's actually separate from work and we should recognize that in the way we engage with each other. By starting to call attention to the hats we were wearing and how we make decisions differently depending on what those roles were, that actually made life a lot easier and helps make the company more efficient over time.

• 14:15Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, I've got an angel investment now and the two founders are struggling over the hat-wearing element and how segmented it should be. One does product, the other does business strategy. One does fundraising, the other does hiring. How important do you think segmentation of different functions is between founders?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I think it's incredibly important. I think that there are founders who believe when it's really early stage that that feels overly bureaucratic. But it actually festers over time if you don't fix it. Role clarity is not just important for the two of you or three of you, or however many people it might be as founders. It's critically important for the team because what ends up happening is people don't know who to go to. If I've got a question, who actually answers that question? Do we have to make decisions by consensus? Or can one of you actually weigh in on that topic? The organizational pain and slowness that comes from that over time is actually the biggest barrier. That's the real challenge that comes up. And so my advice would be be uncover. Uncomfortably direct, it's also one of our values, being open, honest and direct. Be uncomfortably direct early on with each other. Who's going to get involved in what?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Who owns what decision? What things are we going to work on together? Like forming the culture and values and hiring. What are the things that we're going to work on separately? Like product versus business strategy. I think actually having that conversation, even if it feels forced and bureaucratic early on, actually pays huge dividends over the lifecycle of the company.

• 15:36Harry Stebbings?

  No, I couldn't agree with you more there in terms of being uncomfortable. We say kind of about radically transparent to the extreme, which leads to some interesting conversations there, as you can imagine. Speaking of the decision makers though, kind of the board obviously also play a role in shaping some decisions. I spoke to Victoria Prelude before the show and she asked, how should founders best partner with their board to drive key goals? And what's really worked for you?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  I think the best way to partner with the board is to treat them as if they are on your side of the table. The biggest challenge that I hear quite often for founders and working with board members is when they start to set up board meetings and their engagement with the board as if it's a dog and pony show. You don't want to talk about what's wrong with the company. You don't want to actually clue the board into challenges. The board members, if they're good board members, have seen lots of different companies over time. They know from their own companies or funds or wherever else they've been involved in that not everything goes right 100% of the time. And so the more you try and pull the wool over the eyes of your board members, not let them like into what's actually happening. That's actually what breeds distrust and pain and creates really difficult board conversations.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  The way that we've approached it over time is we think about board meetings as an opportunity to say, look, there are a lot of things that are going well with the company. You know, we're growing fast, the company's doing well, headcount is scaling really aggressively. We have really great marketing customers. Here are two or three things that are broken. We need to go focus on A, on B, on C. Let's spend the vast majority of our time working through that. I'll share my point of view on what our plan is. You tell me what makes sense and what doesn't make sense and how we might want to approach it. And that creates really high trust, high effectiveness conversations with board members.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  So to me, bringing them inside, I talk to them all the time on different topics. When I have questions, I'll pick up the phone or text them. I build relationships with them that are outside of work. To me, that's critical to actually get to really productive or board level conversations and relationships.

• 17:34Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. Can I ask, when you have those two to three issues that you're facing at that one time, do you direct them at certain people or do you throw them out, say, hey, we're really struggling with a CTO hire, but I know Brooke, you're amazing at this, or Danny, you're amazing at this. I need your help on this. Or do you leave it open to the board for more general advice and guidance?

• 17:55Speaker 02

  It depends on the setting. When it's a board meeting, I generally won't overly direct toward a certain person for feedback. In fact, I think that all of our board members are generally like pretty thoughtful people on a whole bunch of different topics. And just because someone doesn't have direct expertise in an area doesn't mean that they can't weigh in. So our board meetings are more free flowing conversations and people weigh in when they have a point of view. But there's no grandstanding. We don't have board members that will speak just to be heard. It's not the type of environment that we've built. When it's outside of the board meeting, I'll call particular people with particular questions. Danny, for example, has a lot of depth in marketplaces, has seen a whole bunch of companies scale from very young to much larger,

• 18:37Speaker 02

  has seen the company's scale, he invested in our seed round, has been with us the entire time. And so Danny has a lot of history and context that allows me to have really valuable conversations with him about where we're at, where we're going. Brooke, for example, a G2 VP is more of a growth stage investor. And so as I think about how the company needs to mature, based on where he sits and what he's seeing in his portfolio, that creates really valuable conversations on a different dimension. And so I try to recognize the respective strengths and roles of different board members outside of the boardroom setting. And I'll reach out to different people on different topics. But in board conversations, when we have an actual board meeting, I let it be more free flow discussion.

• 19:14Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask you a question on the board chemistry between the founder and it's now for me as a VC, what can VCs do to change that pony show that happens with board meetings often to a real relationship of trust and radical transparency? What can we do to create that environment for you? You the founder?

• 19:30Speaker 02

  I think there's a couple of things. One, I think trust starts with alignment around vision for the company. That is something that I think gets started, or at least that pathway begins in the actual diligence process when you're first meeting investors or investors are first meeting founders. Making sure that there's common vision on exactly where the company should go. And for us, that's been super clear over time in terms of the mission of what we are trying to do and our board members buy in that that is the right thing to accomplish. That's the foundation. If you don't see the world the same way, you don't see the future of the company the same way. There's no real way to build trust between the board and the founders. And that's a conversation that has to happen before any other, in my opinion.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Beyond that, as board members, I think it's really important to show founders that they can bring sensitive topics and something that's wrong with the company and not get hammered for it. To actually say, look, I'm glad you brought this to us. Like, this is something that a lot of our founders have struggled with over time. Let's work on how we do that together, how we think through this. That creates a repeatable behavior or comfort with the idea that, oh, I actually can be honest with the board. That they're not going to say, oh, I'm a terrible CEO. I should be thrown out if I've got a problem and there's something wrong with the company. And so starting that cadence in the very first board meetings, making sure that there is like dedicated time for what's wrong, that you put it in as simple terms as possible

• 20:54Speaker 02

  and how you're going to fix it, and that it's a supportive conversation at the outset, not something that feels adversarial, to me is the right way to kind of build that relationship.

• 21:02Harry Stebbings?

  No, I do love that and that's super helpful to hear. So thank you for sharing that one with me. We spoke about decisions first as kind of the central thesis. Then we moved down to the kind of founders and the board that make them. Speaking about the employees and team now that kind of execute on those decisions. When we chatted before, you said you have to maintain a culture of betting on yourself and the team as the company grows. Can I ask, how do you do this?

• 21:25Speaker 02

  So betting on ourselves and the team is one of our values. And for us, what betting on ourselves and the team means is we do not historically try and hire folks that have done something four times or five times or six times before and are interested in doing. We've been much more interested in building team with folks that actually are really high performers, probably weren't actively looking for another opportunity and are asking themselves, what could I really accomplish if I'm given this space, if I really put my mind to it? And then I think about how do I bring those people on board and invest as aggressively in them as possible to say, what could you actually do? Like, what's your potential? How do we make it possible for you to scale as fast as you possibly can? So it's ingrained into our values and our culture that way.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  To do that correctly, I think you have to be very feedbacked. And to your point earlier, uncomfortably honest. And so two of our other values are, one being open, honest and direct, as I mentioned. And two, something we call give a good push, which is the thing that we say at Scoop, to push each other to think differently, to stretch your point of view, to encompass other people's perspective. And that allows us to have the space to be able to have the conversation that's required to actually bet on people and have them scale quickly. And so that's a little bit of the way that we've done it. It comes through in professional development and the way that we work and the way that we hire. And frankly, that's how I think all good values actually take hold in a company is they actually take hold in every piece of what you do and every key process.

• 22:52Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking about the way you hire that, I'm a massive nerd on kind of interview questions. Probably one of the many reasons I'm still single, Rob. But I do, I do have to ask, when adding to the team, do you have a favorite question? It's really unfair, I did warn you. Do you have a favorite question that you find most revealing of an individual's character, ability, culture fit? And if so, what is that question?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  I do have a favorite question. My favorite interview question is, let's imagine the next chapter of your career is the next five years. If that chapter goes perfectly, what happens or where do you see yourself at the end of that chapter? To me, there's no substitute for understanding how much clarity someone has and where they want to go and what they hope actually happens to them or they can accomplish over that period. Because my job as a founder and I think my job as a CEO over time is to make sure that for as close to 100% of the team as possible, their career goals, their professional development objectives over the next six months. Twelve months, twenty four months, five years are actually aligned with things that I believe we can deliver, or opportunities that we can create at Scoop.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  And so I love asking that question because the clearer sense that I can get for a candidate of where they want to go. And as I think about this role or the opportunity, do I actually think I can deliver that for them? And is there overlap is just incredibly important.

• 24:10Harry Stebbings?

  Taking this kind of one step logically further, attrition is one of the biggest problems for anyone on the West Coast today. You've got next to zero attrition, according to Zora Signia. What do you think is the key to this? And I'd love to hear, how do you see the employment market today?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Well, the employment market is incredibly tight and I expect it will continue to be that way. It's a huge driver actually of our business overall, not just in technology, but across the country. That it is so difficult to recruit and retain top talent. And there is a scarcity of skilled labor in a whole bunch of different categories. And so that's something I think is true, not just for our world and in technology, but really across the board. When I think about what it means to build a team that actually can last and that people want to stay at a company long term. I think it starts with authenticity and really deep caring about your people. You know, as I mentioned before, we start in the very interview process, making sure that what people want to do, what they want to accomplish over the next few years is aligned with what we can deliver.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Once someone starts at Scoop, we have that conversation constantly. It takes place in one on ones with their manager. It takes place in skip level one on ones with the person above them. It takes place in professional development and we do a review cycle every six months to talk about where are you at? Where do you want to go? What are the skills you have to build to get there? And constantly evaluating not just how people are doing professionally, but also personally. How ingrained do they feel in the culture? What is their sense of belonging? Do they feel like they're building relationships? We by nature, just my brother and I, invest really aggressively in this topic. And have built a team of people that actually care really deeply about this also. Because we've been unwilling to hire anybody that doesn't have that same people orientation.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  And so I think that served us really well over time in terms of how we invest in our people and make sure that there's still opportunity for them as the company continues to grow. So I think we try to be authentic, as I mentioned, in front of the whole company. We're very candid about where we're at, what's going well, what's not going well. We tell people at the company that there are no questions they cannot ask when we do our company all hands and show and tells, what they call them. So that allows people to say, look, I believe in our leadership. I know that they're being honest with us. They will tell us what's going well and not going well. I know that my team members and my managers personally invested in me and that my career goals are something that actually can be achieved over the life cycle of Scoop, at least what I'm trying to do in this chapter.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  And when I think you pull all of those things into alignment, that's when you can deliver really great people experiences.

• 26:39Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of the people experiences, again, it was a commonality that I heard from the board in terms of your ability to not only manage, but inspire the team. So that was incredible to hear. I do want to finish though, Rob, on a quick fire round. It's my favorite element of any episode, I have to admit. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. Are you strapped in?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  I am ready for it. Let's do it.

• 26:59Harry Stebbings?

  So favorite book and why? What must I read?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  My favorite book is actually The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, which is probably not what you would have expected or maybe not even something you've heard of before. I actually don't read a lot of like nonfiction type work. I love reading science fiction fantasy. I'm a huge nerd that way. And this is just one of my favorites of all time. It just gives me this opportunity to escape from daily life and stretch my thinking and just explore other concepts. So that is my absolute favorite, Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.

• 27:26Harry Stebbings?

  What would you most like to change about Silicon Valley and tech ecosystem today?

• 27:30Speaker 02

  I think the way that we reflect or the way that we are viewed across the rest of the country. I think in the last few years, there's been a number of issues that have popped up that have made technology leaders look like they're out of touch, that they don't understand the ramifications of the work that we do, that issues that data and privacy concerns actually are real big concerns and that the everyday person actually really does care about that. And that we do believe in making the world a better place, not just building things that are interesting to make money. That in my mind is the most important thing to change. And that's one of the reasons I love building Scoop is because it's so aligned with that concept.

• 28:05Harry Stebbings?

  The future of car ownership?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I think it will be shared. The most important thing, if I think about this over the next five or 10 or 15 year time horizon, I don't think you're going to see much difference in the near term. I think it's going to take a little bit of time for autonomous vehicle technology and regulation and policy to get to a place where people can actually use autonomous vehicles versus own their own car. I think the ideal outcome is that you end up with shared fleets over time, where people can actually access cars and share those trips together versus individual car ownership. But my instinct is that's probably a question of decades, more than years, in terms of how long until you actually start to see that flow through the actions and behaviors of everyday people.

• 28:46Harry Stebbings?

  What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  I believe that great technology companies and kind of like great engineers and great talent can be found anywhere. That I think a lot of people historically have felt like, oh, if you're going to build a company, then you need to come to Silicon Valley to actually do that, that the access to capital and knowledge and expertise is local to here in a way that gives unfair advantages. I do believe that it is advantageous in some ways to be out here, but I think increasingly over time, you're going to see that democratize and that the communities that are building all across the United States and the world and what it means to be able to work in different places is actually starting to reduce those barriers and it will make more and more sense over time for companies to not be located here, have the majority of their operations not necessarily in Silicon Valley and still be very successful in tech.

• 29:34Harry Stebbings?

  And then final one, Rob, what's the next five years for you and for Scoop? Paint that vision for me.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Sure. So when we talk about the next five years, it comes down to how we think about our mission. Our mission is bring commuters together and carpools they'll love by partnering with their employers across the country. And so our focus in the near term is how do we deliver better and better carpool experiences? Make sure that when you want to take a trip, you always can, that you love the people that you share that trip with and the experience of doing it. And that we continue to work with more and more employers, companies like LinkedIn, T-Mobile, Workday, expanding our relationships and then new employers across the country to have more and more impact. In a longer time horizon, I think to five years, we want to solve more and more of the challenges that enterprises struggle with when it comes to the commute. How do they have better insights?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Into how their people are getting to work, how that impacts recruitment, retention and engagement. What are the areas where we've actually solved commute problems? If I think about particular origins around an employer? And what are the areas that actually are still trouble spots for us? So that we can be a trusted partner and real advisor to companies. They think about how do we turn the commute from a challenge or a source of cost or pain for us? Into something that actually is strategic advantage and we can differentiate our employee experience because of it.

• 30:49Harry Stebbings?

  Rob, as I said, I spoke to pretty much everyone on the board. You know, utterly, it was agreed that you are unique, both in decision making and kind of inspiring a team. It really has been such a pleasure to have you on today, so thank you so much for joining me.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

• 31:04Harry Stebbings?

  So much fun having Rob on the show there, and my word, I love that discussion on decision making. And if you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, you can on Instagram at H Stebbings1996 with two Bs. I really do love to see you there. But before we leave you today, and we mentioned some incredible companies in the intro there. And I want to spend a minute to talk about Brex, the first corporate card for startups. Brex founders Henrique and Pedro built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves rejected for a corporate card when they are in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex with instant online signup, no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Yes, pretty incredible, I know. And you can sign up for Brex today and get card fees waived by entering the code Harry during signup. Honestly, it really is such a special service.

• 31:48Harry Stebbings?

  And speaking of special, did you know that there are five job openings for every one developer in the US? No wonder hiring great engineers is impossible, and that's where my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal is your dedicated partner in quickly building skilled remote engineering teams. How do they deliver both speed and quality? Well, Terminal does this by focusing on everything necessary to successfully source, set up and support these teams. From little things like managing office logistics to big things like benefits, legal and community. And they've developed this proprietary and comprehensive remote team solution, based on decades of experience building remote teams across multiple continents. So they really know what works, but don't take my word for it. Take the words of Eventbrite, former 20 VC guest Hymns, Dialpad and more.

• 32:30Harry Stebbings?

  Customers and lovers of Terminal and you can find out more today at Terminal.io. And finally, I've always been a big history man and so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capsule. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world. With more than 50 years working with VCs, they help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad of issues that can arise throughout a fund's life cycle. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also go to Cooleygo.com. As always, I cannot thank you enough for your support and I can't wait to bring you a really, really special episode with Jeff Richards, general partner at GGV, live on Monday.