Founders at Work.pdf

Joe Kraus 67
were smart, but they did what Graham asked them to do and Graham was the
guy who really architected the whole thing. The hard part was, “How do we
value Joe, who’s not technical. He does stuff, but I don’t know whether I could
do his stuff better.” Basically it was, “I don’t know how to measure myself
against Joe, and therefore how do I feel comfortable that he has more?”
But we ended up working through it. I don’t remember the specifics of the
conversation. I remember it being very awkward and I remember it being
quiet. People were unhappy. No screaming or anything like that, but awkward.
I think the fact that Vinod was talking about it helped, as an outside instigator.
But we never would have made it through if we had not been friends. I
think you needed something stronger than greed pulling people together at
that moment when greed alone would have caused huge fractures in redistributing.
In the end, I think it made a lot of sense to do because those conversations
only get harder and harder to have.
Livingston: What about your first version? Did it seem like you were onto
something huge?
Kraus: No, it was never clear that we were on to something huge. You never
know anything. The hardest part in a startup is that you wake up one morning,
and you feel great about the day, and you think, “We’re kicking ass.” And then
you wake up the next morning, and you think “We’re dead.” And literally nothing’s
changed. You haven’t made some big deal, you haven’t sold something
new. Maybe you wrote a few lines of code over the course of that last day.
Maybe you had some conversations with people, but nothing’s really moved.
It’s completely irrational, but it’s exactly what you go through. The thing is,
you never know. I am certainly sort of a paranoid competitor. I was always worried
about who was going to kill us and what they were going to do. I’d feel like
“We’re going out of business any day and anything could upset the applecart.” I
really wanted it to get to a point where I’d say, “OK, I know we’re on to something
huge.”
Even up to the time when Excite was several hundred people and we were
the fourth largest website in the world, it didn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like
you’re really doing something huge. On some level it feels like you’re fooling
people—like, are we really doing this?
It’s the whole sausage and sausage factory problem: when you’re outside
and you only see the sausage coming out you think, “That’s pretty tasty.” When
you’re on the inside and you know how it’s made, it’s terrifying. That’s the feeling.
You just don’t ever feel like the progress is smooth. It’s never, “We set out
this well-orchestrated plan, we’re executing it, it’s going exactly according to
plan. We’re getting bigger by the day and it’s just as I thought.”
It’s never been that, ever, for me. It’s always been, “I know this can be huge,
I believe it in my heart. How on Earth do we make this happen? Why don’t
other people think it’s huge yet?” It’s just this complete, everyday banging your
head against the wall trying to figure out how to convince other people that this
thing is the biggest thing in the world.
Livingston: What did people misunderstand most?