Builders Talk | Leadership Lessons from 3x Founder | Snow Lee | Runbear
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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. Leaders evaluated by team success. Silicon Valley leadership styles emphasize mentoring/coaching for independent growth. Leaders create environments for team success as players, not taking direct actions (takes time but achieves more). As CPO at Buzzville, couldn't meet all customers (advertisers, publishers, consumers+subdivisions). Team insights from interviews more beneficial than his. Led to 1-on-1s, OKRs, etc. Founders evaluated by business success, must be players on the field, especially for product-market fit in rapid markets. At Runbear (now 5 people), initially considered dividing customer engagement; abandoned it—every customer story crucial. Unlearned leader behaviors; can't sit on bench as founder (at least now).
Delegation categorized into 5-7 levels:
- Level 1: Do as I say
- Level 2: Research and report
- Level 3: Investigate and recommend
- Level 4: Decide and inform
- Level 5: Act independently Use differently per situation. Can't expect baby to run without walking. Leaders: strive for levels 3-5; start lower for new members, move quickly to 3. Founders: adjust by task, not person. Startups need generalists for unfamiliar tasks. If founder understands task clearly: level 1. Knows direction but not details: level 3. Quick action then learning: level 4.
Both seek fast learners. Leaders want quick role performers and beyond. Founders want problem-solvers. As CPO, sought quick PM skill learners. As founder, seeks those who learn to solve any problem. Hiring complete juniors challenging early-stage due to patience lack. Most founders prefer business success over good leadership of failed one. As leader, be patient for long-term growth. Had underperformer at Buzzville; reading No Rules Rules (Netflix), considered firing. Upper leader suggested team switch: current team needed undefined problem-solving (caused anxiety). Switched; became top performer and opinion leader. Don't rush judgments based on other philosophies.
Resilience key for founders: fall down many times daily but get up. Opening AI Dev Day (called Red Wedding, killed thousands of startups including theirs). Didn't give up; opened new opportunities.
Differences between leaders and founders influenced by founder's endless responsibility/anxiety. Anxiety-driven motivation accelerates short-term but risks misdirection, unsustainable. Founders need patience, trust members, lead for more. Good leader: focuses on long-term goals, fosters team growth environment, takes final responsibility—not silent supporter or dictator. Short-term decisions differ by situation/objectives, but ultimate goals align. Becoming good leader not mandatory for successful founder, but successful founders must become good leaders.
Hannah thanks Snow. Starts with Runbear post-OpenAI Dev Day. Previous product (Runbear) still alive, helping with technical support (DevOps, vertical AI co-pilot). OpenAI launched Open GPTs and Open Assistant. Runbear provides unique value but worried customers wouldn't understand as AI building eases. Needed to compete with customers' internal engineering teams. Realized spent more time on integrations than AI core. Researched solutions; none fit. Spent 1-2 weeks to launch Plugbear; got traction, now in growth.
Had to unlearn OKRs (Objectives and Key Results: teams set objectives, define key results to track progress quarterly; involves input/output/lagging/leading metrics. Great framework but early-stage founders change objectives weekly. Agile for unexpected situations; needed to listen to customers, redefine objectives biweekly. Unlearned frameworks.
Faces delegation failures now: assumes level 4, result in wrong direction, restart process. Team discusses delegation levels; alignment key—members understand levels by task not person, no hurt feelings.
Hardest: people issues (misfit not fault of person/team). Need decisions. Sometimes faster decisions (letting go) help everyone. Limited experience but faster helped.
Same co-founders from first to third startups. Not all joined third due to life changes (marriage, kids, careers). 1-2 years ago, discussed futures as close friends. Goals diverged: Snow wants global B2B SaaS. Liam shares life/business goals, so started together. Young: directions/philosophies/lifestyles didn't matter, had fun. For long-running companies, individual/team/customer goals must align. Deep discussions confirmed alignment.
Snow Lee and his co-founder share similar life and business goals, leading them to start Runbear together. Runbear follows two core principles: customer-centric and lean approach. They hire only when needed, seek funding when necessary, and determine funding amounts based on goals and plans, not just opportunities.
They contrast this with blitz scaling, which pursues fast growth while bearing inefficiencies, often requiring significant capital. Snow prefers the lean approach as it strengthens the team and maintains high hiring standards, though it makes hiring more difficult.
Runbear's current team of five (including co-founders) consists of people Snow has worked with before, so no formal screening interviews were needed. Trust was essential due to limited time for validation. Key evaluation focused on resilience: ability to self-motivate, engineering skills, strong will, and capacity to recover from failure.
Being a 3x founder provides industry experience, network, and clarity on desired team members.
Question from UDA: In an early startup with one founder and fresh graduates, should the founder take more bold actions?
Snow advises it depends on leadership, philosophy, and culture. Novice founders and younger teams act without fear and recover from failure more easily than repeat founders. In his first startup, there was no clear leader; they were open, discussed extensively, and built lifelong friendships, though he regrets not improving decision-making beyond bold solo actions or consensus.
Question from swavo: In ideation phase with a clear product idea, focus on funding or building a team to attract A-players?
"The idea is the cheapest one; execution is everything."
Validate the idea first (using any method) to gain power for building teams and fundraising. Investors ask similar validation questions. Recommends the book The Right It for idea validation.
Question from Argin: Tips for teens wanting to enter entrepreneurship, restricted by school and society?
Snow admires their drive. Encourages trying many things despite obstacles. Notes university students dropping out due to AI era urgency, believing opportunities won't return. Teens dropping out to start ventures shows strong conviction. Doesn't recommend dropping out but praises bold moves. Wishes them well without specific tools.
Young entrepreneurs lack authority when building teams or convincing others. Snow built credibility from prior startups, making recent funding (June/July, despite poor market) relatively easy. People he met and work done helped.
Two things money can't buy: time and social credit/trust. No easy way to build deep trust. Instead of focusing on authority, act and validate ideas. Recommends The Right It again.
Snow is a technical founder; all Runbear founders are technical. On whether founders need technical/building skills:
Technical skills provide confidence to ask engineers about feasibility (avoiding vague "everything is possible with time/money" answers), expand ideas, and think solutions. Understanding how things work helps, even if not everyone needs to be technical. Problem is most important, but technical knowledge aids progress.
Ironically, Snow felt loneliest with seven co-founders in his first startup due to prolonged arguments over directions/features. All had equal ownership/decision-making (all CEOs), leading to stalemates despite his CEO role. He couldn't act decisively; once smoked from frustration (not a smoker).
Now, co-founder Liam (steady) helps him recover from deep lows after failures/negative feedback. Snow has resilience but gets deeply hurt.
Initially helpful, but led to struggles. Choices: change culture/decision processes or keep it. Chose to keep, slowing them down—a regret. Should have shared thoughts honestly; they were young and unaware honesty among co-founders is essential. Recommends Traction (mentioned earlier).
Question from Argin: Most important mindset for success? Does greatest success come after biggest failure?
No single mindset; Snow's is act on it. Despite worries, anxiety, lack of plans/customers, or negative feedback, launching and bringing products to market teaches invaluable lessons.
Runbear is an early-stage startup facing struggles; invites support. For AI adoption in workspaces/processes, reach out to discuss. Snow is an active EO Builders club member. Promotion: 20% off EO Builders membership via chat code.
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