Evan Reiser, CEO and co-founder of Abnormal Security, walks students through the methodologies needed to lead a company from day one, from picking a co-founder to building the initial sales team. Prior to Abnormal Security, Evan recently led product and machine learning teams at Twitter after co-founding successful companies including Bloomspot, acquired by JPMorgan Chase, and AdStack, acquired by TellApart.
I don't know how to pick a co-founder, I don't know if I have a lot of ex I don't know if I have, it's hard that you only get a couple shots. It's hard to know if it's luck or skill. I felt, I got very lucky, working with Sanjay as a co-founder.
I think that I maybe can talk about some of the things that went really well. I think that a really great co-founder will, will compliment you, right? we'll allow you to divide and conquer. I think at a minimum, you have to have really deep trust with that person because you don't have, you only have time in a startup to really double check each [00:03:00] other's work.
Evan: And so you need to feel like you can really trust that a person to go hand to the left flank while you work on the right flank, And really divide and conquer as a team. and if you don't have implicit trust and they're judgements their work ethic, their, ambitions, their mindsets, I, I think that will just create a lot of distractions there's side, right?
If you find a great person that can, you can really work with as a great business partner, two, two or three great people, Can have a multiplicative effect on each other. I think, one of the reasons I really enjoy working with Sanjay is not just because he's a great technologist or a great team.
But he actually is someone that really improves the quality of my thinking and helps, helps me do a better job in my role, when he's in the room. So I think those are the qualities I would look forward to in a great co-founder.
