Founders at Work.pdf

James Currier 391
Currier: You might have, but I wasn’t experienced enough at the time, since I
had never done one of these before. I was 30 and I knew a lot about the industry
and the technology, but I was very green on people. And that is a painful way
to start a company.
I also hired a head of HR, and she was pregnant at the time but didn’t tell
us. When I asked her to create the maternity leave policy, she suggested 5 months
with full pay. Since I was so busy, I said, “I want to trust you and empower you
to do everything we need on this side, so if you think that’s right, great.”
So a few weeks later she told me she would be leaving soon for maternity
leave. By that time, several of us were off salary because we were running out of
money, and here she was going home to spend 5 months at full pay, and we
were practically out of money. Never having built a company, I didn’t know
where I wanted the lines drawn. It was like a big, white piece of paper. And I
got taken on that.
Livingston: Was there ever a time when a competitor did something that made
you fearful?
Currier: iVillage started copying us, and I was very worried about it for probably
a year, and then it all just faded away. Probably because it’s hard to get the
engineers, the psychologists, and the writers to talk to one another. You’ve got
to build a culture and communication amongst a small group of people so that
they can get things done.
Livingston: What was different about the way you motivated them?
Currier: My willingness to communicate with people and my understanding of
their need to form their brains and their language around their relationships
with each other and the product we needed to create. I genuinely cared about
my people, and I built a culture where you communicate—you don’t blame—
and you learn what the heck the other person’s talking about. You, psychologist,
you need to learn a little about engineering. You, engineer, you need to learn a
little about what the user actually experiences. You have to understand why
they like the question this way so that the writers can do their job. So it was really
just a matter of empathy that I had for the team, and communication style.
You have to figure out how to hire people who are nice, communicative,
smart, and capable. If you’re missing one of those four things, you can’t stay.
And so you have to churn people out and be willing to let them go. It was
painful, but I knew from the beginning we were going to have to do that.
Livingston: What was most surprising to you about starting a startup?
Currier: How painful it was. I woke up on October 3, 1999, at around 4 a.m.
with my chest burning from fear and pain about not knowing what to do, and
worrying that I had taken my friends’ and mentors’ money. I had realized that
what I was trying to do was not working, and that I didn’t know how to fix it and
I was in way over my head.
Livingston: How did you keep going?