The best startup teams aren’t held together by perks instead by shared obsession.

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]successful we ever were, from a growth perspective, was when we chose a competitor and we took all the logos off their website. We printed them and put them all over the sales like area of the office and we made a bounty and just said, "Hey, anyone who closes one of these logos, you'll get a thousand dollars."

[00:00:15]>> Yes. And it wasn't even the money. For six months, you're in war together, you're in battle together. That's the most cohesion I I had ever seen.

[00:00:23]>> see the delight in your face as you remember those times. I do as well. You know, we had all kinds of rituals. One of them was at a certain point, Central was our competitor and we said, "We will no longer use that word. It's forbidden in this company. You can only use the word enemy from now on." And to this day, people would say, "We enemy's product does this." And I love the way I had an expression that people thought I was joking, but I said, "Look, I don't want us to just eat these people. I want everyone here has to be animated with the spirit that we we want their children to go hungry. That's how much you have to want this because they want us to go hungry. It's it's a zero-sum game." And um the beauty of it is it activates not only competitive energy, but also kind of a love for each other that comes because you're trying to do something against someone who's trying to hurt you.