I noticed this thing at Square and just sort of in Silicon Valley where coming out of YC and being a founder for a while I had a lot of friends who were startup founders. So not surprisingly what you're saying is obviously get incredible people on the team and then try to get out of the way or get incredible people on the team do an exceptional job of building context and narrative and then get out ofThe way. Can you teach me a little bit about how you approach hiring or what you're looking for or what your process is that you think increases the odds that you kind of build this incredible talent density around you? It's like these founders in transition are in search for
Our second episode is with Ayo Omojola, VP of Product at Carbon Health. Previously, he was the founding product manager on the banking team for Cash App at Square, where he co-created the Cash Card and helped build out Square’s technical banking infrastructure. He’s also a former founder of a Y Combinator-backed startup and an active angel investor, which gives him a unique lens into finding and evaluating startup ideas.
Tapping into Ayo’s experience working in the heavily regulated spaces of healthcare and financial services, we dive into how he untangles regulations to find “the opportunities where it’s easy to stop” and goes “unreasonably deep” when building early products. Ayo thinks a lot about problem selection and makes the case for putting more effort into choosing what to work on. It’s a must-listen for anyone who’s thinking about starting a company someday, or a product leader who hopes to help a new product take shape.
But even if those aren’t goals of yours, there’s still tons to learn. Ayo shares the individuals he learned the most from during his time at Square and the frameworks he picked up from them, such as on how to get better at process, setting context, and “optimizing for the outstanding.” Last but not least, we get into his management and hiring philosophy, including why he loves to hire former founders.
You can follow Ayo on Twitter at @ay_o. For reference, the leaders he gave a shout out to in the episode include Robert Andersen (the founding designer at Square), Dhanji Prasanna (who led engineering for Cash App), Jim Esposito (Operations Lead for Cash App) and Emily Chiu (who led strategic development efforts for Cash App).
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson