Myfirstminute: in conversation with Kevin Ryan, Co-founder of MongoDB & AlleyCorp
Last week, we caught up with Kevin Ryan: Co-founder of MongoDB ($9.2bn market cap), Business Insider ($450m acquisition to Axel Springer in 2015), Zola ($140m in venture funding to-date), Nomad Health ($50m in venture funding to-date), Gilt Group ($250m acquisition by Hudson’s Bay Company in 2016), Alleycorp (NYC-based incubator and investment fund) & former President & CEO of DoubleClick ($3.1bn acquisition by Google).
Video recording available here
Here are our key takeaways.
- Before starting a business, find the missing gap in the market
Having founded six very successful businesses, Kevin knows a thing or two about building a new company. Before starting a new business, it’s crucial to assess the market, look at the suppliers and ask yourself whether you like the product and price being offered. If you like both, there is no opportunity. But if you think you can improve one of the two and build a better product, that’s where the opportunity is.
2. Choosing the right co-founder depends a lot on the business you want to build
A strong co-founder will depend a lot on the sector and company you’re building. For instance, at MongoDB, Kevin needed deeply technical co-founders, so he chose Dwight Merriman, who had been CTO and co-founder of DoubleClick, and Eliott Horowitz, who, out of 700 engineers at DoubleClick, was the most brilliant young engineer. Today Elliot is still MongoDB’s CTO. Conversely, at Business Insider, which was an editorial product, Kevin needed someone who understood where the media landscape was going. And at Zola, which is a consumer Internet company, it was crucial to find someone who was product-first and knew who to sell product, so Kevin picked the Head of Product and Head of UI at Guilt.
3. CEO vs Chairman: the trade-off between focus and spread
Being curious and interested in many things can sometimes run the risk of spreading yourself too thin. As CEO, you can’t be CEO of multiple companies at the same time. You have to be focused, detailed-oriented, and more competitive about your company. As Chairman, as long as you have a team around you who you trust and who you are able to delegate to, you can spread yourself across multiple companies because you’re not running the show anymore.
4. Layoffs: don’t do repeat cuts and go early
Try and cut a little deeper than you think you might need to, because multiple cuts are extremely painful. Kevin suggests that a lot of people are underestimating how bad the current crisis will be and how badly companies will need to be saved. So when you layoff employees, do it as compassionately, as quickly and honestly as you can.
5. On US politics: Biden does have a chance of getting elected as President
Given how poorly Trump has handled the Corona crisis compared to some of his counterparts in Europe, such as Merkel in Germany and Macro in France, Kevin thinks Biden stands a chance. With 20% unemployment today vs the inherited 6% when Trump became President in 2016, compounded to what Kevin thinks will be a worsening economy by November 2020, it will make it much easier for the Democrats to win the election. And given the inevitable economic crisis, Kevin suggests that the US will inevitably move further to the “European left” with more focus on health care, income inequality, and tax increases.
