Founding Story: Brian
Well…..I’m starting a new company!
The last time I did this was a while ago starting Yext which worked out pretty well. It was a ton of fun, I got to work with incredible people and fulfill my lifelong dream of taking a company public.
That said, it had its challenges - the biggest of which was talent density. How do we make sure we’ve got the right people on the team, in the right roles, working on the right stuff through all our stages of growth? I tried everything in the book and all I could see was how we were falling short.
I’d travel to offices around the world, be in a few hours of meetings and make quick decisions about people. We’d hire new managers who would come in, do their own assessment of a team and invariably get it wrong. We’d fire someone who would go to a competitor and turn out to be a superstar, we’d promote someone who would fail in their new job, we’d give a raise to someone who was great at managing up, but miss someone who was great at driving results in their job. The list goes on and on.
As we added executives and board members from highly respected companies like Salesforce, Google, Twitter and Slack they thought our talent density was best in class. So how is it possible that we were both best in class, but also getting it wrong quite often?
The answer is unfortunately pretty simple. People are terrible managers. Think about it. We carry around so much bias in our decision making and it’s so hard to get a comprehensive data set, how could we possibly be good at it? There’s an opportunity to rethink how to get the right people on the team, in the right roles, working on the right stuff from a first principles approach using the latest advancements in AI. A key insight into this future is that the best managers are not, in fact, best at management. The best managers are the best at their craft. Companies should be focused on giving AI superpowers to their managers so they can spend their time leading their craft, not on the classic professional management chores.
That’s what we’re building at Windmill, AI superpowers for managers so they can focus on being world class at their craft. This is the best way to maximize talent density for an org because you are ensuring leadership is the best at what they do unencumbered by management chores. I couldn’t be more excited to embark on this new journey along with two amazing co-founders, Max Shaw and Mark Tanner alongside our small but mighty team in NYC.
If you care about maximizing talent density across your company. About augmenting your managers with AI Superpowers. If you believe people are your company's most important asset - Windmill is for you!
We have a waitlist open https://gowindmill.com/ or follow us on Windmill to stay updated.
