Builders Talk | Leadership Lessons from 3x Founder | Snow Lee | Runbear

Name: Builders Talk | Leadership Lessons from 3x Founder | Snow Lee | Runbear
Uploaded: 2024-03-08T02:28:41.000Z
Duration: 1 h 7 min 5 s
Channel: EO

EOMarch 8, 20241h 7m

Topics4

EO Studio Introduction3:30 Snow Lee's Keynote: Founders vs Leaders7:03 Q&A: Runbear and Plugbear Journey23:07 Co-Founders and Team Building Principles37:06

AI-Generated Notes

These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

Hannah Lee from The EO team welcomes everyone to the first live streaming session of EO studio, featuring an hour-long in-depth conversation with Snow Lee, founder featured on EO. EO stands for Entrepreneurship and Opportunities, making content about startup entrepreneurs and investors worldwide. Mission: empower entrepreneurship in every individual who watches. Recently launched EO Builders Club, a private membership for founders and entrepreneurs aligned with the mission, featuring EO-featured founders in in-depth conversations. Exclusive content includes webinars with live Q&A and cohort-based learning programs with education videos from top-tier VCs and entrepreneurs, sharing insights usually accessible only in areas like Silicon Valley. Receiving many great applicants. Snow Lee has joined as a founder member. Topic: how he sold his first two startups to Kakao and Buzzville, major Korean tech companies. Second startup acquired by Buzzville (valued at $200 million); worked there 4 years as CPO. Now founding third startup with same co-founders, currently a 3-person team. Snow will give a 30-minute keynote followed by live Q&A; submit questions in live chat.

Many equate founders with leaders, but not all founders are good leaders and vice versa. Founders and leaders share similarities and complementary concepts but differ as much as they converge. Snow is CEO of Runbear (note: later clarified as Rumar). Before Runbear, co-founded two startups: one acquired by Kakao (top Korean company), another by Buzzville. At Buzzville, led teams as Chief Architect and CPO for over 4 years. Founded Runbear with third-time co-founder Liam. In less than a year, experienced many struggles. Last December, launched Plugbear, growing fast. Plugbear is like Zapier for LLM apps: while creating LLM apps or custom GPTs is easier, integrating into work tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Notion remains challenging. Plugbear enables easy connection of custom LLM apps to everyday tools, improving work performance with AI. Within 3 months, over 1,200 companies signed up; paying customers rapidly increasing.

Roles of leaders and founders overlap but have crucial differences. First startup in 2011 had 7 co-founders (including Snow) with equal shares and responsibilities, propelling them forward initially. Everyone was CEO, working day and night. As team grew and Snow became formal CEO, he preserved culture by saying CEO role was nominal, all equal. Believed this motivated team. However, lack of clear role definitions hindered growth, causing prolonged discussions and indecision, especially during pivots (days/weeks of arguments). Had many good founders but no good leaders.

Leadership can be learned and improved. Leadership defined as activities that can be learned. Snow favors coaching leadership style. At Buzzville (adtech with cohorts: advertisers, publishers, end users), a team leader struggled with priorities. Snow was reading Ping for Performance; applied coaching techniques instead of direct advice. She defined clearer target customer and gained insights via interviews—better than Snow's ideas. Took more time initially but long-term output superior. Enabled leading 7 product teams simultaneously, contributing to 3-fold annual revenue increase. Entrepreneurship also an activity that can be learned/improved, not just creative ideas, courage, experience, or funding. Runbear is mission-driven (unlike previous opportunity-driven startups). First startup: joy of creating services. Second: growing Indian market. Focusing solely on opportunities leads to losing direction in tough times like pivots. Lessons from books like Zero to One, Traction, Escaping the Build Trap. Runbear pivoted several times in first year, launched 7+ products including landing MVPs; pivots less painful, driven by mission of progress through learning.

Snow has a 2-year-old boy; ultimate parenting goal is independence. Similarly, ultimate goal for leaders and founders is independence of those they lead. Leaders nurture team members to grow, get promoted, act independently. Founders nurture businesses, prepare exit plans despite love for them. This distinction leads to different decisions at critical moments.

Sign in to read the full notes

Get access to AI-generated notes, topic timestamps, and more.

Builders Talk | Leadership Lessons from 3x Founder | Snow Lee | Runbear

EO Studio Introduction03:30

Snow Lee's Keynote: Founders vs Leaders07:03

Sign in to read the full notes