By Amit Shaked, CEO and
co-founder, Laminar
Google, Facebook (now Meta),
Sprout
Social, Showpad, theSkimm, Thrillist and Warby Parker all have one key fact in
common. All were launched by founders who were already friends. In fact, some 22% of founders turn to those
closest to them for help financing their big new idea. They're even more likely
to turn to friends to launch startups; some, like Airbnb, even go so far as to
go into business with their roommates.
Now you can add Laminar to
the mix of startups where friends became founders. My co-founder Oran Avraham and
I met at university at age 14. As the youngest kids in the class, we naturally
became best friends and then vowed to start a security company together. Oran
was the first to show early promise in this field, identifying the first
iPhone 3G baseband vulnerability at the age of 17.
So, why do friends so
often collaborate on startups? Founders turn to friends because they deeply
trust them and are already familiar with their values and work ethics. For this
entity that you will be spending a large amount of your time on, you want to go
into it with someone who is also all-in to eat, sleep and dream the very same
ideas.
With that in mind, I want
to offer five tips for friends seeking to become successful co-founders. Or
founders seeking to find the right friends to tap to help them in their
journey. These tips are born both out of my own experience founding Laminar
with my best friend Oran and research I have done along the way. Running a
business means I learn new things everyday, but here's a list of what I have
gleaned so far:
1. Have
a shared vision:
It's a lot easier to sell a renegade idea, such as carving out a new
market in cloud security, to a friend than a stranger. It's even easier
when two or more friends have the desire to do something
transformative.
So it was with Laminar. Oran had been working in the security space since age
14, participating in hacking communities. And I like solving technical
challenges, ranging from doing math equations and relaxing with puzzles to
solving complex industry problems.
We both saw the challenges
that the public cloud was creating. We both also anticipated that the fast pace
of public cloud data growth would create the biggest issue in security to date
and would need to be solved in a radically new way.
I tried to
find an off-the-shelf solution to protect sensitive public cloud data, but none
existed. Oran was experiencing the same problem at his company. After speaking with more than
100 CISOs
about this issue, we both realized that this was an incredible opportunity. We
knew that a public cloud data security platform had to provide agentless and
asynchronous monitoring to avoid compromising data flow and performance. This
vision was so compelling that we quit our jobs to begin work on the new company
in 2020.
2. Develop or find someone with complementary expertise: When you look at startup
founder biographies, they typically bring different expertise and skill sets to
the mix. This makes sense. When you have a company with less than 10 employees,
every single person should bring something new to the table.
Oran and I both began our careers in the Israeli Intelligence Corps' Unit 8200
where we learned about signal intelligence and code detection. After the
service, we went our separate ways. I joined a late-stage startup Magic Leap,
focusing on developing algorithms and learning how well-funded companies can
scale quickly. Oran joined the newly launched company Medigate, where he was
the head technology architect.
We also have different and complementary skills. I can see the bigger picture,
such as what's happening across industries and core client businesses. Not
surprisingly, I'm called in for many of our sales calls. Oran has a
perfectionist's mindset to building great technology. As a result, he obsesses
over technical roadmaps and code to ensure that our product is always
improving.
With our related, yet different experiences, we have a wider field of vision
and are able to solve more problems. However, we're still able to speak the
same language, from growing and scaling the business to solving technical
challenges.
3. Be able to staff one of three key roles: To begin life and navigate
the pitfalls of early product development, fundraising and staffing, startups
need employees who can grow into executive, often C-level, leaders. Startups
need a CEO, with the second role, for a technology startup in particular, being
filled by at least a CTO. Beyond that, the next hire will depend on the
company's industry, business model and stage. For example, it's not uncommon
for startups to hire a CPO next, to build out products and services, or find a
V&P of R&D to maintain the pace of technical innovation.
At Laminar, I serve as CEO, and Oran is our CTO. Without the need to outsource
early IT development, we were able to quickly prototype and launch our solution
to protect public cloud data.
Having a friend in a fellow executive role speeds up communication and work
processes. You understand how the other one thinks, which reduces the prospect
of misunderstanding the other's motives. In addition, you likely spend personal
time together after work, which is also time you can use to share and
brainstorm new ideas.
4. Take joy in your work and have an incredible work ethic:
For Oran and myself, and all of Laminar, we're driven not just by the desire to
build a thriving business, but by our belief that we are helping companies
protect their customers, businesses and future. That sense of fulfillment
sustains us as we maintain the aggressive pace of work at a rapidly growing
company.
Whether you
believe that you're transforming the world, greening the planet or helping
companies keep their public cloud data safe, your work needs to have meaning
and purpose. That belief will sustain you through months and years of extended
evening and weekend work hours.
5. Be willing to give each other feedback: There are books on how to
hold difficult conversations that are both honest and constructive. Some
leaders recommend using a compliment sandwich, with a compliment, followed by a
request for behavior change and closed out by an affirmation of the person's
importance to you.
All of this sounds well and good but isn't realistic, when it's 3 a.m. and
something important isn't working. Life, and business, can and will throw you
unexpected challenges-both early and late in the startup lifecycle. For
example, when we were preparing the first release of our platform, we had some
challenging discussions and had to make decisions without all the necessary
data in place. The important thing was that our entire executive team was on
the same page and supported our decisions. Oran and I had some real
discussions, some hard discussions, and it was having a relationship based on
open communications, trust, and a deep wellspring of friendship that helped
buoy us through this, and will do so for future difficult moments.
Conclusion
Oran and I have been friends for more than 10 years - and we plan on going the
distance. It's been a joy to work side-by-side with a best friend on innovative
technology, see it come to fruition, and watch investors and customers embrace
our vision. I hope that this article will help the next Oran and Amit decide
that they too can go from friends to founders. Together.
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