Upstart just went public — CEO Dave Girouard shares why it isn’t a typical success story

Today’s episode is with Dave Girouard, the CEO and co-founder of Upstart, an AI-powered lending platform that recently went public. Before founding Upstart, Dave was President of Google Enterprise, and spent 8 years building Google's billion dollar cloud apps business.

Here at First Round, we first came to know Dave when we invested in Upstart’s seed round back in 2012, and we’ve found him to be one of the most tenacious and focused founders we’ve ever backed. In today’s conversation, Dave gives us an inside look at how the business was built and what other startups can learn from its early days.

In addition to unpacking the initial idea and subsequent business model pivot, Dave gets into what it felt like flying under the radar of Silicon Valley, why he “sucked at fundraising,” and how he and his co-founders have stuck together for almost a decade. 

From his “Are you Airbnb or Paypal?” test and why you should look at your career in landscape mode, to the three mental models he leans on to manage his psychology as a founder, Dave shares helpful frameworks that any startup leader can learn from. We also dive into his “management by exception” philosophy, what he learned from Google, how he runs his leadership team, and why he leans on references, not interviews, when hiring execs.

You can follow Dave on Twitter at @davegirouard and you can read his First Round Review articles that we mentioned in the episode here: 

https://firstround.com/review/speed-as-a-habit/ 

https://firstround.com/review/how-does-your-leadership-team-rate/ 

https://firstround.com/review/a-founders-guide-to-writing-well/ 

You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @twitter.com/firstround and @twitter.com/brettberson