As a founder, you can choose whatever you want to do. But at the same time, if everything every day was back to first principles, it seems like that's a tough or potentially slow way to build a company. It's much less about trying to find things from first principles, but actually much more about finding things that are successful that isn't done as frequently. The one thing that we've consistently found true for building a business is that almost anything can work.
Today’s episode is with Rick Song, the co-founder and CEO of Persona, a platform that enables companies to create the ideal identity verification experience for their customers. Before founding Persona in 2018, Rick was an engineer at Square for 5 years, and an early team member at Square Capital.
Rick is at an exciting inflection point in his journey of building from zero to one — just last week, Persona shared that they’ve raised a $50 million Series B round. The company plans to double the team this year to keep up with revenue that’s surged more than 10x and a customer base that’s grown to include big logos like Square, Postmates, and Gusto.
In today’s conversation, one theme stands out: Rick is somewhat obsessed with the idea of pre-mortems, or figuring out why things might not work out. From all the ways a candidate might fail, to why a customer won’t want a product, to how a commonly-used framework might not be a good fit, Rick brings this mindset to every aspect of running Persona.
From hiring lessons to go-to-market strategies, Rick offers up some counterintuitive thinking, including why his engineers sell and cold-email prospects, and why he doesn’t try to convince candidates that Persona is a company that will change the world.
Today’s episode holds tons of insights for anyone who’s a founder or thinking about starting a company one day, but there’s also plenty in here for engineering leaders and hiring managers.
You can follow Rick on Twitter at @rickcsong and learn more about Persona at https://withpersona.com/
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson