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The "No BS" version of how startups are really built, taught by actual startup Founders who have lived through all of it. Hosts Wil Schroter and Ryan Rutan talk candidly about the intense struggles Founders face both personally and professionally as they try to turn their idea into something that will change the world.
Welcome back to their episode of the Startup Therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by Will Schroeder, my friend, the founder and CEO of startups.com. Will, today for the podcast, what I was thinking might make this better is if we invited, like, 30, 40 other people in here to give us opinions and ideas and kinda help us decide what we wanna talk about today. And, like, I know you've got, like, 30 years of experience on committees. And how often do they make things better?
Ryan Rutan:Absolutely never. Ah, damn. Never mind. They're stressed out. Yeah.
Ryan Rutan:Let's just talk. Let's just the 2 of us do this.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. Imagine that. I've been on every kind of board you can imagine. I've been on public company boards. I've been on private company boards.
Wil Schroter:I've been on charitable boards. I've been on my school's board. Everything. Everything. Right?
Wil Schroter:And I have to tell you, they not a single one of them produced a better result, and it pisses me off. And and I feel like in the start up community, you know, early in in our leadership, you know, among founders, we have this idea that if we take something to committee, we've made progress. And I don't know about you, but my feeling is progress it's for committees if they want to die. That is where progress goes to die. It is the committees are the cemetery of progress.
Ryan Rutan:Yeah. I agree completely. I mean, just just the process of getting the committee together is generally a massive waste of time. The fact that it actually doesn't produce a better result in the back end, tragedy.
Wil Schroter:But everybody believes like like, we somehow developed this notion that if we bring more people together, we get a better outcome. And you know what? I think that is bullshit. Like, I get the theory. So I think today, let's talk about what the theory is that everybody seems to to ascribe to, and then let's also talk about what the reality is and why for startups.
Wil Schroter:And we're talking about this as for founders because founders get wrapped into this committee trap all the time. The bigger you get, the more goddamn committees you get you get wrapped into, and the more useless it becomes. And so the I I I wanna talk about pros and cons, mainly cons. But when are we gonna put the pros? Ryan, why are why are why do people look toward committee?
Wil Schroter:Like, what do you think they're trying to accomplish, the,
Ryan Rutan:the founders? Sadly, like, at a deep, deep level, I think that that it comes from a place where, like, we're uncertain about things, and so there's safety in numbers. Right? It's it's a bit of a deferral. It's it's an excuse.
Ryan Rutan:It's it's, you know, putting culpability off onto other people. Like, well, we made this decision together. So clearly, we all couldn't have been wrong. But, hey. At least if we're wrong, we're all wrong together.
Ryan Rutan:Right? I didn't screw this myself, but I because you know? And, look, I get, like, on paper, in theory, the the the ideas that, you know, if we put a lot of smart people together into a room, they can come up with with a lot of good ideas. And and sometimes that is true. Right?
Ryan Rutan:If what you're trying to do is brainstorm, but so often what we see is people involving a lot of other thinkers, and and that's really what we're talking about here. People to come and think about a problem and discuss it and to provide some some feedback because they're there, so they feel like they have to whether it's quality feedback or not. When it's when we're trying to get to a decision point, having a bunch of decision makers does not help a thing. Right? So if if the outcome the desired outcome is a decision, committee is not the way to get there for me.
Wil Schroter:But let's talk about why we justify them. Right? You know, why everyone believes going into it that it's a good idea because there's committees everywhere. Right? There's a 1,000,000 boards out there.
Wil Schroter:You know, I've been on the on on public boards. I've been on private boards. I've been on private boards with 40 people on them. That's insanity. That's insane.
Wil Schroter:So what were were you guys trying to leave the planet?
Ryan Rutan:Like, what did you possibly need 40 opinions on, Nick, unless you were also forming an orchestra? Like, what seriously, like, what go go help me understand this one.
Wil Schroter:You said orchestra because that it it just because I was on one of those, so to speak. So years years years ago, I got invited to be on the board of the Columbus Symphony on on Columbus, Ohio. Right? Columbus Symphony is a amazing symphony.
Ryan Rutan:Were you first chair fiddle or second chair fiddle?
Wil Schroter:No idea what symphonic music was. I had no idea. I still don't. I if I'm being honest, right, I I did not belong in that board. But, someone that I really cared about, someone that's that's really guided me, in some incredible ways, like Yoda style in my career, who's the the chairman of the board, asked me to be on the board.
Wil Schroter:It was a huge honor that he asked me, and, frankly, I would have done anything for him. So by all means, I said yes. Now that said, which I wanna circle back
Ryan Rutan:to that point in a few minutes when you're done with the story. I wanna circle back to the fact that this is actually one of the major problems with committees. It's an honor to be invited, and so then we feel like we have to participate whether we have any business being there. You knew nothing about symphonic music. Now that's not clearly you guys weren't there to play music, but you should probably have some context or or or subject matter expertise.
Ryan Rutan:Anyways, back to back to the story.
Wil Schroter:I'd always get roped it as being Internet guy. Or it's a so they're like, oh, this guy understands Internet. We need Internet. You know, it's a story of my life. So I get invited to join the board.
Wil Schroter:1st day I show up, and, in most most, like, nonprofit boards like this, like, prestigious boards are, like, all, like, the the heads of every law firm, the heads of every accounting firm, like, for whatever reason. Right? And a bunch of car dealers for some reason. So we're in there, and, there's 40 people all around, and they're handing the the finances around, to to the symphony. Right?
Wil Schroter:And and I get it. It's my first day on the job. Right? I I've been I've been on this board for exactly 5 minutes, but it's such a perfect example. And and I'm looking through I'm combing through the financials.
Wil Schroter:You know, I've been a CFO for 25 years. Like, I kinda get financials. Right? And I looked through it, and I'm like, okay. Well, don't ask the stupid question.
Wil Schroter:You're like a complete asshole. Right? But you know me. I can't help myself. Right?
Wil Schroter:And so I raised my hand, and I said, listen. I, I I know I'm the new guy here, so just just bear with me. I'm just asking this question out of complete naivete. It says here that our operating budget is $10,000,000, but then it says over here that we only earn $6,000,000. I was like, I don't know finance, Wiz, but, like, that's that's like that's a massive delta for what's essentially
Ryan Rutan:a small company. Don't worry, Will. We make it up in volume.
Wil Schroter:So so, anyway, the room goes dead silent. Like, not the response, because I'm thinking everyone just like, this guy's an an idiot. Did he not, like, read the next page where we make, like, $20,000,000 or we have a massive endowment or something that, you know, offsets this? And I'll never forget, I hear this one woman, start, like, laughing on the other end of this giant table. Right?
Wil Schroter:Woman I had never met before in my life. Right? And, she was a fire plug, and she and she just she she she looks over. She looks at me. She goes, Will, you just asked the only question no one in here has the balls to bring up.
Ryan Rutan:You have 39 people that couldn't ask the one question that probably mattered the most at the moment.
Wil Schroter:I was like, like There's But wasn't dude Case and we are heads of accounting firms on this, but Yeah.
Ryan Rutan:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wil Schroter:Right? It's it's like, I'm the least qualified person here, and, like, I've been on the job for 5 minutes. Think of what that means because it it it it comes around everything you just said, Ryan, which is you have all of these people that have no collective accountability. Okay? No collective accountability and and no desire to ruffle feathers and make people feel bad.
Wil Schroter:Right? I was invited here. It's an honor to
Ryan Rutan:be on this board. Why would I insult someone who just honored me?
Wil Schroter:Yep. So where do I wind up, like, within the next 90 days? On the freaking firing committee. I wanted to I wanted nothing to do with that. I'm like, how did I get rope into this?
Wil Schroter:But I was like, like, we have to save this company.
Ryan Rutan:You found it, Will. You found the problem. You gotta chop it out. Right? Yep.
Ryan Rutan:Here's your hatchet. Have fun.
Wil Schroter:Find your steepers. Find your steepers. But let's talk about once again why why people believe it makes sense to go to committee. The idea is now now in a nonprofit, it's different because, really, what you're doing is you're spreading your ability to raise money. Okay?
Wil Schroter:So just let's call call that. It's a little bit different. Right? But in many cases, you know, one of the use cases is, if if we bring lots of voices, we'll get a divorce diverse set of opinions, and we'll get, you know, lots of other ideas. No one stops to say, are they any good?
Wil Schroter:Just because I have a diverse opinion doesn't make it a good one. Will, what's it called when you add all of the numbers up and then divide it by the total number of number the average? So you're gonna come up
Ryan Rutan:with an average decision. Is that what happens? Yep. Yep. That's what happens.
Ryan Rutan:So Cool.
Wil Schroter:But it's actually worse than that. It's worse than average because what you end up getting in almost every case, people totally overlook the social dynamic, is whoever the squeaky wheel is or the righteous wheel, oh, we shouldn't do this. Like like, in this case, with the the, the symphony, it was, we can't let go of the musicians. They're too important to the community. Right?
Wil Schroter:And agreed. I totally agree.
Ryan Rutan:Well, yeah, if you fired all the musicians, it would be less of a symphony. That is true.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. It's called a band at that point. I
Ryan Rutan:so, funnily funny enough, they're actually more popular than symphonies from what I've heard, at least according to the top top 100 charts. Yeah.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. Yeah. We we'd pull the bigger crowd. We make more money. Again, I have nothing against Symphony.
Wil Schroter:Right? I don't even know anything about the Symphony. So so no axe to grind here. But, you know, there were a couple people that were very strongly, opinionated, right, and righteous, and they were super wonderful people. So I just wanna be clear.
Wil Schroter:Like, I I'm not painting them as, like, the bad guy, you know, vilifying them. I'm saying they're very well meaning in their voice. Their righteousness forced, so to speak, the rest of the committee to just go along with them to the bottom of the ocean. Because the righteousness of it, what should be done, what what's the right thing, totally steamrolled what was actually supposed to be done. Like, numerically, there's no was gonna go out of business.
Wil Schroter:That's not like you're gonna defy the laws of of finance. We have
Ryan Rutan:to maintain every single one of these jobs. That's who we are. Until you run out of money in 3 months, then who are you? Right?
Wil Schroter:But I'm like, how about we do a thing where the symphony sticks around? And, listen, I'm not sitting here railing on the symphony. Right? What I'm trying to say is this is the nature of committees, and I see it happen over and over and over. And every time I try to, I I try to think differently about it, every time I try to think like, well, maybe that's because it was, you know, a a a nonprofit.
Wil Schroter:Maybe that's because it was a small company or whatever. But, dude, I've been on so many at this point. I I don't even say yes to many more. I I I like, dude, I have no interest whatsoever.
Ryan Rutan:I mean, we're and we're just talking about, like, this is this is an example of, like, a board, which is, you know, a more formal committee. But think about all the damn committees that we get involved in as founders. Right? Even if you just involve your team in a decision, which, like, clearly, you want some inputs and all that. Right?
Ryan Rutan:But the minute it actually becomes committee level decision making, it's a disaster. Right? Even if it's 4 or 5 people from the team. Again, like, do they have inputs? Do they have valuable things to contribute?
Ryan Rutan:Hopefully. Right? But at the end of the day, like, I we see this happen all the time. Founders start to to defer the decisions off to and, again, why? Sometimes misguided desire to, like, not be alone in the decision.
Ryan Rutan:Sometimes a misguided desire to involve the team and give them a voice in these things. People do love to have a voice in things. And do you know what else they love to have? Their job. And if you make the wrong decisions at a start up, then they don't have that job anymore.
Ryan Rutan:And when you're like, you know, it's a pity that none of us are getting paid anymore. But, man, wasn't it fun making decisions together? Aren't you glad you had a voice? They're like, less than a paycheck, actually, now that I think about it.
Wil Schroter:I gotta tell you, like, I I think there's 2 sides to this. I I I wanna address both ends of the spectrum because there's some people that are that are gonna be listening to this argument, and they're saying, look. When you start talking about having inclusive voices, there's a lot of people that, you know, typically aren't included, that should be included in that that's not the the message I'm making here, just to be clear. Right? I I get that.
Ryan Rutan:Right? This isn't a lesson on dictatorship. That's not what we're doing here. Yeah.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right? What I'm saying is, yes.
Wil Schroter:And then once you have that voice, what you contribute has to be better than what's already being contributed. Right? So if, for example, I go to a car dealership and a bunch of mechanics are sitting around my car, and they're trying to figure out the best way to fix my transmission. Now I'm the owner of the car. Right?
Wil Schroter:My voice should be heard. But guess what? I don't know how to fix a transmission.
Ryan Rutan:Mine probably should not be. Right? Like, I would, like, I would contribute absolutely nothing to that. I'd be like, is that the front of the
Wil Schroter:car or the back of the car? Play this out. I'm in there. I'm the loudest voice. I'm the guy paying for this thing.
Wil Schroter:It's my goddamn car. Right? Think of how much I can unduly influence a shitty decision. And and let me tell you, like, a version of someone who gets steamrolled all the time. Right?
Wil Schroter:Tech folks. Usually because they don't always have, like, the most outgoing personalities. Right? Now, and, they usually wind up in 1 of 2 categories. Either 1, they know they know something technical that no one else knows, and they kinda use that to steamroll everybody.
Wil Schroter:Well, we should be using this technology because it's better. You're illegal. You don't know, so I know better, and I steamroll it. Right? Not good.
Wil Schroter:The other is marketing just strong arms them into doing whatever they want them to do because the marketing guy We try. Yeah. Exactly. And so, my point is the personalities that you inject into a committee also weigh the committee, not necessarily in the way you want it to be weighed.
Ryan Rutan:Yeah. Look. I I found you know, I and I do I like to get collective inputs, but I get collective inputs. Right? It's still my job to make a decision.
Ryan Rutan:Right? And so I think that when when you there has to be a cutoff point there. I think that people should be able to contribute their value. But, like, we don't need to vote on an outcome. That's not what this is about.
Ryan Rutan:Right? It's not what this is about. It's about providing your inputs. And, honestly, I have found that when I do this and when I make it clear that what I need are inputs so I can make a decision, Not those people stop trying to influence decision because in a lot of cases, that's just gonna end up being an ego thing. Right?
Ryan Rutan:Because now it's a room full of people. So I want my voice to be the one that gets heard and I wanna do the thing that I wanted to do. You completely change the game. And that's where then it comes back to, like, well, who has the most forceful personality? Who's the most persuasive?
Ryan Rutan:Who has the most, you know, behind the scenes leverage on how this decision actually gets made? It's a shit show of epic proportions or tiny proportions, but those add up into shit shows of epic proportions. Right? Enough small bad decisions made by committee will end up be doing the same damn thing.
Wil Schroter:You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a 1000 times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it, but that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long at groups.startups.com.
Wil Schroter:So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do. Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. Let's talk about the dilution part. Okay? Because, you can bring smart people into the room and still dilute, the the decision making.
Wil Schroter:It looks something like this. You get 3 people who
Ryan Rutan:have ever seen a government. Yeah. Well, I you said smart people. Hang on. Yeah.
Ryan Rutan:Sorry.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. Yeah. But let's say you take 3 equally weighted people. Right? Those same IQs, same experiences, etcetera.
Wil Schroter:When you put 3 of them in the same room trying to make the same decision, the probability that they'll all agree on the best decision is almost 0 by default. Right? And there's this concept that there's the best decision. No. That's not true.
Wil Schroter:There are many decisions, and one of them might be the best decision. If you knew it was the best decision, you wouldn't be forming committee. You'd have already made the decision.
Ryan Rutan:Correct. You would have made that one.
Wil Schroter:So typically typically what's happening, isn't a race toward the best decision. It's a race toward consensus, which starts to take off who's who's necessarily the most gifted or capable of making the decision and terfs it off to someone else. I'll give you an example. We're designing a mobile app. Right?
Wil Schroter:And, we're trying to figure out exactly how we want the UX to work, etcetera. Now we have a 24 year old UX designer. Right? And we have their boss. Their boss hasn't designed a lot of UXs but is an overall product person.
Wil Schroter:Right? That 24 year old isn't gonna raise their hand and, like, no. This isn't like this. This is how the a modern UX is built. Right?
Wil Schroter:No. They're gonna defer to their boss. Right? And the boss is gonna be like, well, this is how I think it should be done. And when I'm saying this, right, I am the boss in that case, and and you know you know who on our team is the other person, and and I'm making fun of myself when I say this.
Wil Schroter:Like, this is me saying, hey. This is how design should be done. He's like, no, idiot. Like, this is literally what I do for a living. Right?
Wil Schroter:And so this is me just showing some self awareness. But, but my point is, that is not gonna be the outcome you're looking for.
Ryan Rutan:It's not. And look. There's a shadow consequence there too, which is that over time, if you make people think that they're involved in the decision right? This is why I was saying before. Like, I I try to be very careful about this.
Ryan Rutan:Like, I need some inputs because I'm going to make a decision. Right? I wanna be very clear about that. I need your input so I can make a decision. That's important to me because there's important to me because there's the shadow consequence.
Ryan Rutan:You don't do that where people think they're involved in decision. And then they put their idea forth, and it's continuously, for whatever reason, not the one that's picked, this breeds a lot of animosity. It breeds resentment or just apathy. Right? People burn out to, like, I keep I keep coming and I keep showing up and
Wil Schroter:I keep offering these ideas, and they never listen to my ideas. It's not that
Ryan Rutan:we don't listen to your ideas, we just weigh them against all the other things that we know and what we need to do because that's the other problem is that so many times there is there is an optimal path. And sometimes at at the top, we're able to see that as the founder because we have the collection of all those other pieces of input. It is so much energy. And how many times have you had to do this? Well, where you over involve people in decision, and now you have to explain and over explain over explain.
Ryan Rutan:Literally, every night at dinner with my family as I'm explaining to my kids why I made, you know, spaghetti bolognese instead of fettuccine Alfredo, which Jack prefers, but already got to pick the last time. Right? Oh, it they both sound good. I haven't eaten yet today. That was just science fair instead.
Ryan Rutan:It was fun. Didn't fill me up that way. So it's, like, there's all these additional costs to this. And again, there isn't really a benefit. Right?
Ryan Rutan:We don't cope with a better decision, and it creates all of these other secondary consequences that I think are far less obvious, but really do add up.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. And what I tell people I was like, let you know, they're saying, hey. You're not listening to me. No. I'm I'm a 100% listening to you.
Wil Schroter:Here's exactly what you said. I just don't agree with you.
Ryan Rutan:I'm not blindly following you. Yeah. Right. A difference. People have
Wil Schroter:a really hard time grasping. You're not doing what I say, so you're not listening. And it's like, no. There's I I'm used to listening to lots of people, you know, have opinions that I don't agree with all the time. I'm okay with that.
Wil Schroter:Right? Like, that's it it's important. You know, it's important to be able to have those those inputs.
Ryan Rutan:That mean I'm gonna follow them all. Correct. That's it. It's an input. It is a data point.
Ryan Rutan:Right? It is not a line. It is not a vector. It is a data point. I have to take those, put those together with all the other data points I have, and decide what we should do with it.
Ryan Rutan:Right? That is the decision maker's job.
Wil Schroter:Now let's spill on top of that. We create a committee, and now we're entrusting a bunch of people. Right? This theoretical committee. We're we're we're entrusting a bunch of people who aren't necessarily used to processing lots of data points the points the way a CEO or CMO or, you know, a c level person is, and they're easily pushed around.
Wil Schroter:You know what they also have a bias toward? I wish someone would do what I said, so I'm just gonna listen to what everybody else says. Right? When you've been doing this job long enough, let me tell you something. I can know why you've been doing it long enough.
Wil Schroter:Right? It's not that, what other people say doesn't matter. It absolutely matters. You just you just can't, like, blindly say, oh, this person told me something else. I guess that's what I do now.
Wil Schroter:Right? Like, you gotta think for yourself. That's kind
Ryan Rutan:of, like, the core of this job. Also, if involving more smart people made it better, why are we limiting it? Why is it 4 people? Why is it 40? Why wasn't the symphony 2,000 smart people?
Ryan Rutan:That would make the decision that much better. Right? Yeah. It's it's there's clearly some, like, logical reasons why on paper. At least it sounds good.
Ryan Rutan:But fundamentally, like, it just doesn't improve decision making for for so many reasons. Right? How about the fact that we're, like, stripping away individual accountability? Because I'm sure you've seen this one, Will. How about this one?
Ryan Rutan:Somebody stands up and is like, they want aggressively to but we gotta go this direction. This is it. Like, everybody follow along. Listen to me. Listen to me.
Ryan Rutan:Listen to me. They do that and then it goes poorly. Does that person stand up and go you know, by the way, I could tell none of you really want to agree with me, but because I'm a hammer and all I see is nails and I hit the nail, I made the mistake. Like, that it never comes back. Right?
Ryan Rutan:It's always, like, you know, well, we decided. Right? You know, yeah, I was leading that charge. But, you know, collectively, we we decided. So there's no individual accountability, which if we're making really important decisions, pretty dangerous.
Wil Schroter:You know who I could only tell you a handful of times where I've been in a room, where I've been like, damn. Like, this is truly, like, a dream team of, like, handoffs and stuff like that. You know, you, me, and our team have been doing this for a long time, so we've already got that rhythm. But the the last time, you know, short of our team, the last time I can remember being in a room like that was in Santa Monica in it's this is, like, 211. Damn.
Wil Schroter:That's a long time.
Ryan Rutan:I was I I know the I know the rough vintage on this just based on the the geography. Damn. Yeah. That's a long time ago.
Wil Schroter:I just wanna share this this one quip. I remember being in in a whiteboard, in a room in a whiteboard, where me and Jamie Siminoff, who I mentioned was the the founder of Ring, and and Josh Roth, who ended up becoming his CTO, the 3 of us were were doing the the brainstorming for unsubscribe.com. And at some I remember some point, Jamie looked at me, and he said something to the effect of, well, you've clearly got this mapped out. Just, like, tell us and let's move on. Right?
Wil Schroter:And I thought that was such a cool thing to say. Right? Part of it was frustration, right, which I respected. But there was another cool thing that he was doing, which was why why get me in the way? Dude, if you have the way forward, dude, let's go.
Wil Schroter:Right? And I felt the same way. Like, Jamie ended up being the CEO and and leading the company. I felt the same way with him. I'm like, dude, you clearly know what you're doing.
Wil Schroter:Like, Like, all I'm gonna do is get in the way. Go. Let me get out of the way. Right?
Ryan Rutan:Yeah. Go. That's it. That's it. Most people don't have that much self awareness.
Ryan Rutan:And, again, like, depending on like, this was these were 3 these were 3 people, like, these were 3 cofounders in a room trying to decide something that they all have more or less an equal outcome from. So whether there's, like, an imply like, there's real response there is an implied responsibility there. Right? You are you're you have an interest. You have a vested interest in the decision.
Ryan Rutan:The minute this is, like, an a a board of people who are assembled just to be there, maybe there's a little bit of comp, maybe there's not, maybe, you know, it's a nonprofit, maybe it's the Symphony, maybe it's whatever.
Wil Schroter:At that point, like, they don't even have a
Ryan Rutan:vested interest in making those decision.
Wil Schroter:Let's talk about that, consequence. They don't have the consequence in which if you remove consequence from the decision making process of freaking anything, you that is a recipe of disaster. That is the last thing you want.
Ryan Rutan:Yeah. It's literally, yeah, a great way of making bad decisions.
Wil Schroter:Or anybody making key decisions without the consequence of those decisions. And, you know, Ryan, I think I've mentioned this before. Have you ever seen a committee go to jail for a crime? Right? Like, a committee is the most invincible, untouchable thing.
Wil Schroter:They get to wield enormous power without any of the consequence of their decisions. Right? See the Supreme Court. Right? Oh my god.
Wil Schroter:And so when you form a committee, what you do without realizing it is you take accountability off the table, and someone's gonna say, oh, no. But the the committee is accountable. You sure? Who specifically? Who specifically is gonna lose their job because they joined x y z committee and the committee made a bad decision?
Wil Schroter:No one. Right? No one's gonna lose their job, which makes it really easy for everybody to step up there and have their righteous opinions. That's what I loved about, not being on, boards, which is people would have these strong opinions. And every now and again, rarely, because I just don't feel comfortable playing this card, I'm like, okay.
Wil Schroter:But if you're wrong, what happens to you? And because I mean, it's it's it's such a kick of the nuts. Right? Because everyone knows. Right?
Wil Schroter:And they're like, well well, nothing. I'm like, well, I'm not are you really the best person to make that decision? Because if the CEO makes it, they're gonna lose their job, if they're wrong. Right? Anytime we anytime we remove accountability.
Ryan Rutan:Right? At the group level, at the individual level, or at both, which is really the case in in the case of committee. Again, you get this insular effect where you feel safe to make a decision within the committee, and yet there is absolutely no responsibility at that group level. Right? And it just it empowers bad decision making.
Ryan Rutan:How many times have you been sitting on a board? How many times have you been sitting on a board or a committee where somebody was really emphatic about something, and then you talk to them about it afterwards, and it turns out they don't really care. They don't really know. They just wanna be right. They were just like, yeah.
Ryan Rutan:You know, I just, like, get caught up in the moment or whatever. I'm like, well, now a company is caught up in that decision. That's that's kind of a big deal. I've been guilty of it too. It's, like, all of a sudden, you're just, like, you start arguing a point and you just you're, like, you you you don't have the self awareness in that moment to go, like, whose interest am I actually thinking about right now?
Ryan Rutan:Right? Because it's not even really my own interest. Right? That was the thing that was so shocking about it to me when I discovered and I've become a lot more aware of it now was that I realized my interest was to be right in that moment which bought me nothing other than being right in that moment, and bought me nothing into the future, and and could potentially cost, you know, the people that were advising, something well off into the future. So gotta gotta be very careful here to make sure that the conditions aren't set up just to create bad decision making.
Ryan Rutan:I would argue, and I think you might as well, that most committees, the way they're set up, the way they're structured, just inherently are designed to make subpar decisions. Worse than you would just make, like, almost flip of the coin to be better than what we end up with at at this level.
Wil Schroter:I mean, again, even if best case, every single person were on or an equal footing, someone has to make it a damn decision. Right? It it and if what you do is make decision by compromise, that especially for start ups, that is rarely the best decision. Right? The truth is we have to make a lot of very hard, very risky decisions.
Wil Schroter:And and when we get in a room and we try to derisk decisions, that's the polar opposite of how startups work. And we're not even really, truly derisking them. Where what we do, we derisk the decision making process. Right? What's socially acceptable
Ryan Rutan:in this case? What's politically acceptable in this case? Where how does this work within the power dynamic that we have here? How do I keep from stepping on somebody else's toes? How do I feel heard?
Ryan Rutan:All of this stuff. Right? So so we we derisk the decision making process, exponentially increasing the risk of the actual decision. We cannot like, any anytime where the the decision is an outcome of a series of conciliatory cuts to what we actually should have done, how could that possibly be better? How could that possibly produce a better outcome?
Ryan Rutan:Right. Everyone wants
Wil Schroter:the voice without the consequence. Here's an example. I'm gonna form a committee on something everybody's really passionate about in the company right now. K? But here's the deal.
Wil Schroter:If you guys get this wrong, every one of you are fired. Guess what? Nobody wants to be nobody wants to be on the on the committee. Right? All of a sudden, that issue isn't very important anymore.
Wil Schroter:Oh, what you're saying is you wanna be able to have a shot on goal but have no score to keep unless you win. Right? If it goes well, you're gonna tell everybody. If it goes poorly, I wasn't really that involved.
Ryan Rutan:Yeah. I wanna I wanna go I wanna go to bat, but I don't want my swings and misses to counter strikes. Right? I just want it.
Wil Schroter:Let's take this in a different context, Ryan. Right? Person that works for you comes in and says, hey, Ryan. I really wanna push this initiative forward. It's super important to me.
Wil Schroter:I think I'm the best person to lead it. Now, of course, if I'm wrong, I don't want any consequence. I don't want this attached to me whatsoever. Who in their right mind would be like, you're the person?
Ryan Rutan:Right. Whatever say that. Yeah. Or or choose that. Yeah.
Wil Schroter:Yeah. Let's get you in on this deal. That's exactly what a committee is saying.
Ryan Rutan:But we say yes to this all the time. That's exactly that. It's saying it without saying it, or it's saying it, and we're not hearing it. It is. It's so dangerous.
Wil Schroter:It's implicit and real. Here's what I say. If you wanna make decisions in leadership, make the damn decision. Right? Have the balls to make your own decisions.
Wil Schroter:Listen to everybody. If you wanna hold counsel day after day and get everybody's opinion, write it up on a a white board, record it for posterity, whatever, so that you can always think about what those righteous people were. Right? By all means, do it. But at the end of the day, if important decisions need to be made, our jobs as leadership are to actually make those decisions.
Wil Schroter:Don't shy from decisions. Don't lean on committees. Again, that's where progress goes to die. If important decisions need to be made, your job is to make them, period.
Ryan Rutan:Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone? You don't have to. And honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes. Connect with Bootstrap founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups.com community. Check out the startups.
Ryan Rutan:Comcommunityatwww.startups.com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.