Startup Advice | Nick Beim

Being Wrong Quickly and Clearly

September 11

This is a great piece of advice that Dylan Parker, co-founder and CEO of Moment, gave to other entrepreneurs in our recent podcast discussion:

Make very clear, very focused, very all-in bets. The most important thing is that you can be wrong, as long as you are wrong quickly and clearly.

Moment is a fixed income infrastructure provider that is off to a very fast start. They made a decision to swing big and try to land whale customers early in the company’s development given how much more advanced their product was than existing fixed income infrastructure. This is something that often doesn’t make sense for startups, as large customers take up immense amounts of time, and it’s often better to hone your product on smaller customers where the stakes are smaller. But given the strategic significance of these customers for Moment and the high demand for new fixed income infrastructure that resulted from the jump in interest rates in 2022, they made a very clear, intentional bet as to whether they could land one of these customers early in their development. It turns out they could, they did, and they now have done so several times. That early bet made a huge difference in the company’s growth trajectory.

Be Humble About What You Know (And Don’t Know)

December 14

I’ve learned a ton from Bill McNabb, the former Chairman and CEO of Vanguard, in our work together at Altruist, Vanilla and two stealth-mode startups. Bill helped build today’s asset management and wealth management industries and saw the incredible power technology could have in shaping the future of both.

I recently had the chance to interview Bill on our Venrock podcast. You can find our discussion here. In it, Bill shares important leadership lessons including the importance of being humble, having a clear definition of success, and knowing what makes a high-performing team. He reveals significant decisions he made during his time at Vanguard, such as having “no layoffs” during a crisis, and highlights the importance of thinking long-term while still being agile.

A Discussion With Some of New York’s Most Successful Repeat Entrepreneurs

May 10

Some of the most helpful advice in building startups comes from entrepreneurs who have been there and done it successfully multiple times. To try to find and highlight the best advice of this kind, we recently hosted a panel discussion with a group of New York’s top repeat entrepreneurs, including:

-Kevin Ryan: cofounder and Chairman of the Gilt Groupe, MongoDB, Business Insider, Zola
-Brian O’Kelley: founder and CEO of AppNexus, CTO of Right Media
-Fabrice Grinda: founder/cofounder of OLX, Zingy and Aucland

Together these entrepreneurs founded or cofounded 14 companies that are worth over $6.3 billion and currently employ over 3,000 people, which is a pretty astonishing statistic. They have also made over 150 angel investments in 10 continents across almost every technology sector.

It was a great discussion with a lot of wisdom on the subject of what matters most in building a successful company and key mistakes to avoid. We also had a chance to share some thoughts on the future of the New York technology scene.