The Last Years of Behents

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Aunchmon: I agree, the problem sounds really big, but you know, it's not necessarily linear. Know that you went through your own kind of valley of despair, messy middle building it. Sometimes you feel like you're on to something, and then you're humbled by the fact that the guy selling fruit at the corner has more revenue than you do. And who do you think you are? Being a business? It's very disconcerting at times. But keeping the team together long enough to figure it out, building a culture, merchandising the progress to the team even when there wasn't much to celebrate yet. These were all crucial way of just sticking together

In this Replay Episode, we explore lessons learned as a founder, investor, and bestselling author with Scott Belsky, author and venture capitalist. We cover how the desire to buy an education led to Scott’s interest in investing, seeing an investment grow from Seed to IPO, and startups avoiding the fate of the “one-hit wonder.”

“Great opportunities never have ‘great opportunity’ in the subject line.” – Scott Belsky

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/scott-belsky-outliers-show-notes

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/scott-belsky-outliers-transcript

CHAPTERS

This episode is our guide to lessons learned as a founder, investor, and bestselling author. In it we cover:

(00:00:00) – Introduction
(00:01:42) – Scott’s learnings from his start at Goldman Sachs
(00:07:11) – On co-founding Behance, and attempting to manage the “most disorganized community on the planet”
(00:10:51) – Tactics for entrepreneurs and their teams
(00:15:03) – The transition from startup (Behance) to large company (Adobe)
(00:18:10) – How the desire to buy an education led to Scott’s interest in investing
(00:20:35) – Seeing an investment grow from Seed to IPO
(00:24:23) – How design can move the needle for a business
(00:30:12) – Scott’s foray into venture capital and finding his ideal role melding investing with company-building at Benchmark
(00:35:40) – On writing Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle
(00:40:48) – Startups avoiding the fate of the “one-hit wonder”
(00:45:08) – Investment trends that Scott is focusing on

ABOUT SCOTT BELSKY AND THE MESSY MIDDLE

Scott Belsky is currently the chief product officer at Adobe, as well as a venture partner at the world renowned venture capital firm, Benchmark. He began his career at Goldman Sachs before leaving to found Behance, which he later sold to Adobe for $115 million. Scott is also the best selling author of Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle, two of my all time favorite books. And he's an investor in an incredible roster of companies, including Uber, Pinterest, Airtable, Carta and Sweetgreen.

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ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY

Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy

ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner

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