0:00
So everyone built teams, and they have advisors, etc.
when, at this point, as you think about assembling a team, what are the
strengths, what are the components
and I'm sure it, it, maybe, why don't we pick something in the social sector.
0:25
How do you think about assembling, currently, the strengths, what do
you look for, what are you, in terms of building a team?
0:33
>> In the, you know, if you're looking
for a team in the social sector, compassion
is, is the most important thing because if
people don't have compassion, they just can't do it.
So, you need people who have a huge amount of compassion because that's what drives
them to actually get the solution done.
1:07
And so the teams have to get very good
in terms of finding the mentors because if you get
stuck with the wrong mentor, you just, you just keep
spinning your wheels and you don't see eye to eye.
You don't really get the value but at the same time, just because
the other person is so senior, you can't get rid of them and
the, and the entrepreneurs, the teams have to get very good in not
only embracing the right mentor, but fighting
the mentors if they're not getting along.
>> So, switching gears a little.
1:54
>> The, I think the most important thing
about, building a team is, it starts with
being introspective on yourself, and sort of looking
and saying, okay these are the things I'm, I'm
good at, but more importantly these are the
areas where I'm not strong, and having the confidence,
the self confidence, to hire people that are
far better than you in those areas of weakness.
2:20
the skill sets that you look for in your, in your team?
>> Well, if you go back to the very beginning of when
I started the first company, Motricity, the very first thing I did was
recruit my co-founder, Taylor Brockman, who was the technical
genius to be my right hand man, and I think that goes to the, to my weakness.
Which was I wasn't a good coder. I wasn't
all that technical.
And if you look at any point along my
entrepreneurial adventure between the dorm room to the beginnings
of Motricity, to today with Epia, I am always
looking to bring on the absolute best people I
can to build out the team, to, to shore up the area where I'm not as strong, whether
that's finance or my CFO or whether that's with
sales or my Chief Revenue Officer or, you know,
my heads of engineering.
>> So, as a 17 year old in science and math, I mean, where everybody, sort of
the hierarchy was based on, you know, how good a mathematician you were,
how fast you could win the whatever competition.
How did you deal, were you okay with the fact that you were not a very good coder?
3:47
Certainly from a business standpoint, there were a
million things I had no idea about and
I think in a lot of ways that was one of the advantages of being young.
I knew that I didn't know these things and I wasn't scared about that.
And I didn't have this false sense of, I, I don't know
what the word is, pride or something, where I
was opposed to bringing in people to help out.
Professor Buck GoldsteinUniversity Entrepreneur in Residence and Professor of the Practice
Dr. Holden Thorp, PhDProvost and Professor of Chemistry and Medicine
