The Choice to Co-Manage

Job sharing doesn’t really spring to mind as a winning approach for start-up CEOs. But one could argue that's essentially what the three of you are doing. There's no CEO of this venture. You have different and I think fabulously complimentary backgrounds. But you really are sharing the leadership. So I'd like to throw out to all of you the question of what's that like? What's really hard about it? What's really good about it? I think most people in the Silicon Valley, most venture capitalists, if you said, "We're going to do a start-up and we're all three going to lead it together." They would have a less than positive reaction. So I think it's a really interesting aspect of what you're doing. And I think it would be fun to hear you talk about it a little. Andrew Kassoy: See these scars? Jay Coen Gilbert: Exactly. We had a similar experience at AND 1. Where there was three of us that founded the company and a solid five, six people that are really part of the key leadership team there. So we come out of a decade plus experience of running a real team-based organization. And there are a handful of benefits. Far and away the most important benefit is they're all smarter than I am. And so you start with the recognition that you find people smarter than you. And then you grab onto them and say, "Don't leave." And that's a pretty good strategy. None of us are good enough to do the stuff on our own. And so the most important thing about the job sharing is just because it enables you to do more and do it better. The next most important thing if you're lucky enough to do this with people that you love and that you respect is that you can each other out. When you guys fire away questions and I hope you're incredibly critical and etc. There is no way you can be as critical of us as we are of each other. And that I think comes out of the total trust that we have in each other. And the recognition that we've all got relatively skilled and diverse set of skills....