26: Building Your Community is What Matters – Dug Song

But when you're floating out at sea, you know, as a founder with, that's kind of what it feels like. You're exposed to the elements. You don't know how to really swim sharks are circling, you know, a community like that is sort of a raft of survivors and other fellow travelers. And truly, you know, in those first three years of building a company, every day is going to be the best day of the worst day of your life. And so having those other founders with you, providing that moral support, learning lessons from each other, even in the most mundane of ways. Like, how do I do these state filings or how do I, where do I find an accountant or a bookkeeper? You know, that's, it's imperative. Welcome to Finding Your Venture episode number 26. Building your community is what matters. When do a security sold to Cisco for $2.35 billion, it was basically like moon landing for the Ann Arbor startup community. Most of us had nothing to do with it, but we remember where we were when we heard about it. Still feel extremely proud and connected to their success. I mean, everybody does. And it's not just the money. I mean, it's how they did it. Every employee had equity. They stayed in Ann Arbor when it must have been really tempting to move to the valley. They always were present, accessible, went to events, would talk to you like a real person when you met him on the street. And that's really what this episode is about. We're talking to Doug Song about community. What does it mean to invest in your community and what's the point? Yeah, if you're a gardener and you're going to go plant some seeds, to grow something, you got to plant in those fertile soil, right? You can. And that's the way I think about this. We exist in an ecosystem. We exist in a symbiotic relationship, right? There's like a takes a village to raise a child that takes a healthy and just city to build a healthy and hopefully just companies. And so if you think about the potential for our success, it's like a Steve Jobs that you're going to really connect the dots looking forward. You know, really connect them looking backward. But if I do look back on to a success, it's come out of the things we have done, right? As part of a community to support it. And so from the very start of the business, right, as founders, we found the moral support. In a community of founders at the tech brewery, you know, the tech brewery is an old 1800 era, 1880s kind of brewery that we repurposed to be a start co-op. In effect, a whole bunch of founders building their teams, companies there, starting at shared desks, growing the small offices, and then eventually kind of graduating. But when you're floating at a sea, you know, as a founder, where that's kind of what it feels like, you're exposed to the elements. You don't know how to really swim, sharks are circling. You know, a community like that is sort of a raft, but you're right, of survivors and other fellow travelers. Like, how do I do these state filings? Where do I find an accountant or a bookkeeper? And so we invested pretty directly ourselves into that community, you know, holding shared events, pooling our resources to buy Diet Coke. As sometimes I feel like, you know, if it weren't for a fridge full of Diet Coke, the basically fuel my technical co-founder, John Oberhyde, who literally would drink like 10, there were days you, we actually kept a running tally on the other fridge where you'd have to write your name and check off how many Diet Coke you drank. And there's some days I'd see, he literally had like 10 Diet Coke, some like, oh my god, you're going to die. So I don't know, maybe it's an ex-blessing there. But anyway, you know, from the very start, you know, that community was something that really kept us afloat in so many ways. And for instance, when we'd have investors come through to visit any company, they do kind of the run through all the companies very often, or hold office hours to meet a bunch. And so again, it was a way to create a gravity well of interest, right, for anybody who has sort of start up minded and focused and all of that with their investor, founder, or potential teammate. My first office when I moved back to Ann Arbor in 2012 was at the Tech Brewery, and I did feel a sense of community that Doug's talking about there. What I didn't fully understand at the time were the dynamics of the security industry and how that community was actually translating into a competitive advantage for duo. Information security, you know, the industry that we're in is not very, it's not very nice sort of community. In a lot of ways, a lot of people, you know, literally it's adversarial, right, like I sort of grew up on both sides of it, both offense and defense. And as they call it white hats and black hats, and for a number of us sort of in the middle, you know, kind of gray. But it means literally sort of adversarial sort of endeavor. And there's a culture there that is sometimes somewhat difficult, right? I'd argue it might even be, you know, related or at least maybe relevant, right? To the current moment where we see this happening with law enforcement, as is law enforcement in the US was militarized. They went from being kind of guardians to warriors, right? Because we give people instruments of war, where they go to war. And you know, that's kind of been information security a little bit, right? And in the turn, it became kind of militarized in a bunch of ways after 9/11, kind of there's a whole cyber industrial complex. It's just like there's a cyber, it's just like a military industrial complex, but it is all virtual, right? And anyway, you know, that kind of culture has kind of bled over. And we worked very hard to be an antidote to a lot of that in our approach. So rather than approaching everything in ways that were really conjured by force, right? You know, we have to enforce security and make people do these things. And we've been a company that has been successful because we really wanted to empower, empower folks to be productive in the ways that they wanted to be with the tools they wanted to use, right? They want to use phones if they want to use cloud application so forth, that's what we would enable for organizations to be able to safely and successfully with their users. And so we leaned in heavily to how we built this team in a way that was reflective of that with the focus on building the most diverse team possible. You know, I wouldn't say we succeeded. I'd say you're never, I don't know any of organizations that can say they're 100% and even even even if you did, it's always still work in progress trying to figure how you cultivate new perspectives, ideas, frameworks, experiences, mental models in your business to be able to solve these problems from multiple angles. But what we did have a clearly focus on that and a lot of it came down to the things we did work to sponsor or help start. You know, we sponsored a number of new conferences, right, that were really positioned very differently than the others that really were sort of the old guard of this industry. Conference of like, Music's Endigma, right, that, you know, worked really, really hard to coach people into presentation, right, for the first time. Folks who had something to share but maybe have not had a lot of experience doing so. We helped folks who, you know, were trying to write books, right, and, you know, representing a whole bunch of different perspectives and security to, because representation matters, right, it matters who you see doing these things to inspire you, to maybe consider them yourself. And so we worked really hard to basically cultivate a community that would become customers and would reshape how buyers would understand this technical problem that we were approaching of security. Because in this modern day, security really existed, the intersection of people and technology, when when attack, when smart attackers go after people versus systems, networks, applications, you know, we have to design security for people. And that requires a very different degree of empathy and design that, you know, we had to go about very intentionally. So this is all I'll say that whether it's getting from founders, you know, kind of starting the company to building teams and trying to seek people out, you know, join that journey with us to the vendors and partners that would support us to the customers, right, that would, we would ultimately serve, you know, each that the degree of engagement we had and going out of a way to help all those stakeholders be successful that led to our success. I know sometimes stuff feels really abstract, like, you know, it's a good thing to do, you know, but how does actually lead to business success? I don't know, you sort of have to trust in the process. Like my dad was a Buddhist and he used to tell me, you know, I believe very deeply in karma, but he used to tell me that if you're a good person and you do well by others, the universal will that you starve. And so we always have taken that to heart and, you know, we've had kind of mantras here of like like our sales team has a motto of help, help, ask, you know, before you ask our customers or anything, we were always there first to help and then help again, right? And, and, you know, as duo and now is Cisco, like we've done that, right? With the coronavirus, Cisco and duo showed up giving our products away for free, to help customers as they had to quickly figure out how to enable safe access for all their employees who are now going remote. Cisco itself is, you know, put billions right into aid for its customers from a financial point of view and, you know, previously, has put hundreds of millions into some of its its community efforts and duo similarly. Like, you know, in this turn, you know, we've worked really hard to in this past week, you know, I'm very proud to say that, you know, do it with both employees and founders with with Cisco match, we've raised $300, $300,000 to give to a lot of the the players and this this this current fight. And it's very important, I think that people understand that, you know, a company is just people and, you know, a technology business that then today really still is about people and people don't exist in a vacuum. They live in the messy and difficult realities of of these communities and this world we live in, And so, as leaders, we have a responsibility to use our platform to lead and argue for those of you that are founders around this journey, you think about that responsibility. One day you will be successful and your responsibility is, you didn't get there by yourself, right? All these folks, that's like we talked about, you know, to that, your job is to reach a hand back and help all those that help you to that point. And that's how an economy comes together. That's how a society comes together, right, for a shared success that really benefits all. Something I always wanted to ask Doug was, what is it about Ann Arbor that made it possible for them to grow a company that big here in Ann Arbor? And then what would cause it to backslide and not be a place where that was possible in the future? Yeah, I could ask the question sometimes, like why Ann Arbor? You know, like when we were raising money early, if investors would come to us, they'd ask, you know, so when do you plan to leave Michigan, right? As if it's a foregone conclusion. I guess their interpretation of what was going on at the time with Troy and everything was, you know, that everyone was leaving and, you know, we'd be the last ones that turned lights off, which I found super offensive. And that's where quite a number of even very, very famous investors, I've had some pretty sharp words on that topic. But what has kept us here and what has allowed us to grow? But why Ann Arbor, in particular, has been one of the most fertile kind of environments for us to build this company, is because of the history. It's history and some of its culture, frankly. And then I've kind of described before kind of freaks, geeks and jocks. You know, think about like what Ann Arbor is about. It's a, Ann Arbor is a city, right? In the 60s, it was literally, it was the birthplace of the student anti-war movement, leading to sometimes some pretty radical kind of things like the wet underground, but also like the white panthers and Johnson Claire and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, you think about all that, you know, it was that, but also all the culture production, right? It's also the birthplace, really American punk rock, you know, Iggy Pop and, you know, Suge's, you know, MC5, all this. And so there's a countercultural kind of element, right? Which is kind of the instinct toward rebellion, toward positive change, toward, you know, ideal world, right? And this is exactly what kind of, I think the same kind of impetus anyway behind kind of founders, right? We have the impatience with the way, you know, with the status quo and the way things are. The other is obviously, you know, it's, it's cultural learning. So that's what this place is about with university being the largest employer and the cottage industry. And so there's just a lot of geeks, a lot of geeks, you know, a lot of folks who were really about like one thing and they'll do it to the hilt and, you know, you go to any bar night, well, maybe not right now, but, you know, maybe part night in an arbor, you're going to end up meeting like some, or hearing, you know, probably a bunch of geeks geeking out about something, Gigi, you know, what better sort of talent pool to draw from than people who are, you know, seeking to learn, to become masters, right? Of something. And who actually respect that? Respect the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, because that's Steve Jobs says, you know, that's what creativity is. Right? Just smashing ideas from different domains together. And the last is, you know, team to team the team, right? The winning this college football program in history and, you know, I think there's a lot to be said for that more broadly here in Michigan, right? Michigan is more of a kind of blue collar kind of culture, more of a beer state than an online state. And I think, you know, that matters. You know, you win the team, you lose the team. And whether it's companies like Arbor Networks, I built before or Duo, you know, we've had these unparalleled kind of retention rates, because people do invest in their communities. They do invest their lives in these journeys. And it's historical, right? And we go ahead of us in the history of entrepreneurship and industry here in Michigan led to families, entire generations of families or four families or GM families and so forth, right? And, you know, the birthplace of the American labor movement, all this. There's just so much teamwork, right? And all that. And then, so those are the things I think make an arboristic vessel that we can't lose. But what's threatened that? What's threatened that sort of kind of mix, right? A sort of freaks, gikes and jocks, you know, diversity perspectives, you know, they drive to learn together from each other and to work as a team. It's the fact that Washington County is the eighth most economically segregated county in America. It's the fact that from development policy, development affordability and public transit, you know, those three things work hand in hand or they tear a city apart with an uncoordinated and we're sort of at that point now, right? We're seeing that service workers, right, having a difficulty living in the community's and shop rate and, you know, we're not to the point like they got to in San Francisco where they had to put all the police or teachers, right, literally on island or, you know, these outlying communities and to drive in. But we're not very far from it, you know, it's getting worse by the day. And we have to figure out how in our civic lives come together, right? We have to reject the polarization. There's never been a time where it feels like we've been this country been more at war with itself. And I don't think so by this vacuum of political leadership or, or, I mean, a vacuum is sort of a very pointy political leadership that's basically fomenting civil war. We have to reject all that and come together in our local communities to reassert that a community is about people over politics. It is a time for folks to get involved at any level, but particularly at a local level to build justice, right, in our own communities as much as we think about kind of this larger scale. Because again, you know, these kind of injustices, these kind of things, they started at home in our backyards and our communities. And so I would argue strongly that, you know, for folks who are thinking about, you know, it takes for success in their lives, careers, and, you know, in their businesses that you can't divorce things, seems entirely. You have to figure out how to intersect the needs of your business and needs of your community and find those opportunities for shared success. Again, we're a rising tide can't float all boats. And that's how you achieve scale. Right? Otherwise, you're doing it the hard way. You can't, you know, no business that stands up in a community trying to be extractive, right? So what we're going to do is we're going to do a big deal of that. And so what we're going to do is we're going to do a big deal of that. success that comes of it. And again, the Community Foundation provides a really nice way for that philanthropy to happen along the way. And at the end, for the trajectories of those companies and those founders, who otherwise would like to figure out the stuff on their own. And so that's been really been the goal in trying to build a community of philanthropy amongst tech founders around our community here in Arbor. Let me tell you the reason that I personally joined the Entrepreneurs Fund. And it's related to point number two that Doug said about creating service opportunities for tech founders. Believe it or not, as exciting as your startup is, if it's all you think about and do, you become an incredibly boring person. And so in that moment, the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation is providing incredible service to you by giving you really easy options for getting involved with things that are bigger than yourself. It's not just that volunteering and service projects are nice things to do and morally correct. It's that they make you better at your job and in your personal relationships. It's this virtuous cycle that there's no on ramp for unless you go to church or work really hard to seek it out. So Doug, I really appreciate you guys providing an on ramp for our community to engage with the community in that way. And just in case you're interested in joining, check out the show notes. And I want you to hear from Trista, who's the executive director of the A2EF. Hi, I'm Trista Vantijn. I'm the director of the Ann Arbor Entrepreneurs Fund. We want all company builders to join A2EF and come help us build the Ann Arbor Entrepreneurs Fund into a network of founders and aspiring founders who create stronger connections to one another and to our city. To become a member of A2EF, you can go to A2 Entrepreneurs Fund.org and start the process of making a pledge directly online and then a member of our team will reach out to you to discuss that pledge further. Okay, last question for Doug, what's one habit that anyone can cultivate to become a better leader? Being an active listener and actively helping connect people, opportunity, dollars, this is what it means to be a productive member of this society, a fellow travelers in entrepreneurship because that's how that helped find this way back to you. And you do have to pay it forward and you do have to give first and you have to trust that it will come back. But that is actually a behavior and a skill that you do have to cultivate. You only get good at what you practice. And so if you're not good at that, if you're not a great networker, it's not because you don't learn how to hand out your business cards, not because you haven't learned how to pitch yourself. Over 10 years later, I still don't have a solid elevator pitch for duo. It's ridiculous. And my PR folks would attest to that. Every time I have to talk to journalists or whatever, I change it up. But what I do feel like I do a decent job of, but it's taken a lot of time is to try to be a thoughtful listener to try to really empathize. Empathy is not caring about other people. It's about trying to see things from their point of view. And it takes time and practice to try to be able to do that well. And then you'd be able to try to connect folks. But that's something I would encourage people to try to do. That's what pays dividends. Right? Because, you know, like my dad just told me, you got nothing in your life, but your good name of reputation, be thoughtful. Be thoughtful about what life and legacy you're building, you know, for yourself, for your family, for your kids, for your loved ones, for your friends, for your co-workers, for your community. At the day that's just all we got, right? All our stories and what help we've been able to provide in this world and hopefully leaving it better place we found it. So that's how you do that, right? By being proactive. And as we say it duo, being kinder than necessary, going out of your way to help each other be successful. Doug, thanks for being such a great leader in all the communities that you're a part of. This is the last episode of finding your venture for 2020. This podcast is funded by the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation for two more years. And so we'll definitely be back next spring with more lessons and stories. The podcast is designed like a Wikipedia page. You can scan the episode titles and get the gist of the message. But if you see something interesting, you can click, go deeper and listen. This year we made an effort to feature more diverse set of storytellers and we're going to continue to try to do better in that in years ahead. I learned so much from the students and the course and the people that I meet and do in this podcast. And building those relationships is far in a way the number one reason why we teach and teaching and creating has been the antidote for me to the gusher of bad news and fear that you get when you read the news. I'd say I just want to close this season by saying people are good. You're never going to regret investing time and resources into relationships with the people around you. Thanks for spending this time listening to the stories that I think are important. And if there's anything I can do to help you on your journey, I hope you won't hesitate to reach out.