Christian Lanng: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me" | E1065

1. 0:00 – 0:41

   Intro

   1. CLChristian Lanng0:00

      ... I almost died of anemia (laughs) actually, because I just didn't have time to go to the doctor. I went off to Las Vegas. And when I stepped down from stage, there's a text message from my doctor that says, "Go immediately to the nearest ER and tell them your hemoglobin is 5.4." And arriving in the ER, I tell them, "Hey, uh, my doctor told me my hemoglobin is 5.4." And she's like, "No it's not, because you'd be, you'd be l- laying in a coma on the floor." So yeah, you absolutely sacrifice your health over, over this process.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:23

      Christian, when we first did this, I was, I don't know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory age, probably about 15.

   3. CLChristian Lanng0:28

      (laughs)

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:28

      Uh, thank you so much for joining me once again on the show.

   5. CLChristian Lanng0:31

      Thank you so much for having me, yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings0:32

      No, listen, the pleasure's all mine. I would love to start though with actually the announcement that you made a week or so ago about Tradeshift and your position there. Can you

2. 0:41 – 15:04

   Mental Health and Career Shift

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:41

      start by just telling us about the position change there and what's going on?

   2. CLChristian Lanng0:45

      I've been CEO, co-founder, and, and chairman for, for Tradeshift for 14 years. It, it sounds crazy even saying that number. You know, it was inseparable for, for my life, I think, in every way. And I think this year especially, um, I have done a lot of reflection over how the last few years has been, and, and also reflection of not being happy. And I think as founders, and, and often as founders and CEOs, we think we just have to keep doing the job no matter what. Uh, for me, it was really important to get the company to a place where it was in really good shape. But I also made the decision, I think, a long time, like earlier this year, that I would find, uh, and figure out a transition and, and, you know, move to what's next. It's probably the hardest decision in my life, and I had no i- clue how to do it. There was very few people you can talk to about, like, how do you do this, how do you exit this thing you built?

   3. HSHarry Stebbings1:29

      Can I ask you the first question, which is like, I think a lot of people misuse the word burnout.

   4. CLChristian Lanng1:34

      Mm-hmm.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings1:34

      Or actually have it, but don't know they have it. When did you first realize that actually the feelings that you had were not maybe right?

   6. CLChristian Lanng1:42

      You know, it probably started during, honestly during the pandemic, right? We were, you know, I'm a very, um, I'm a very social person. I loved coming into office, I loved having all of the engagement with everyone, seeing the creativity of what we're building. And suddenly, I was just sitting, uh, you know, for 14, 16 hours in front of a screen every day, no breaks. Uh, I remember having to do sort of like scheduled bio breaks just to (laughs) be able to run to the restroom, and, and the rest was just one continuous stream. And I, I remember, this sounds bad and for everyone who works at Tradeshift don't think about it that way, but like, I end up hating looking at that screen. I end up hating, uh, I mean, even seeing, uh, at some points the logo, right? And, and it doesn't mean I don't do the work and I didn't, you know, believe in the company and, and didn't wanna get home. Like, I have so much drive towards that. But there's something really, really wrong when the thing you're supposed to love is actually thing that y- you almost, like, you can't bear thinking about it, right?

   7. HSHarry Stebbings2:35

      When you felt that, did you realize straightaway that that was happening? Did you realize that it was a problem?

   8. CLChristian Lanng2:40

      No, you know, in fact it's like, "Oh, I don't like this meeting," or, uh, "This content here is not good," or so, but then you start realizing it's across the board, right? It's like a bit like the frog getting boiled slowly, right? Y- you don't see it when you're in it, and, and it took, sort of some pretty big reality checks, both on my health and, and on my work, that made me realize, no, you're not in, in a healthy place, right?

   9. HSHarry Stebbings3:00

      Can I ask, what were those reality checks? I think everyone talks, you know ... Was there like a moment when you were like, "I have to change this"?

   10. CLChristian Lanng3:06

       I think one thing was, you know, like, um, just g- as I said, going around during COVID, and, and you know, I mean, realizing, you know, I'm thinking every day more about what food I'm gonna cook tonight, what hike I'm gonna do. Like, and that sounds innocent, but like, at some point, my girlfriend, she's like, "You know, you know you like literally only wanna talk about things that are not Tradeshift. You don't wanna ..." You know, if I talk about like even for a second, you change topic. You don't wanna like meet anyone, you don't wanna go out. You're just sitting at home. You either wanna play computer games or cook or ... And you used to be this insanely social person. And you know, realizing that my whole personality was almost like flipped around was, was, was a big part of it, and, and I mean, she kicked my ass also and said like, "Look, this is not who I've saw." I mean, she's like, "I fell in love with you." Like, a different person, right?

   11. HSHarry Stebbings3:57

       Can I ask you, and just like hearing what you say here, you're a very social person. Everyone struggled in COVID.

   12. CLChristian Lanng4:04

       Yeah.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings4:04

       How did you get over the thought that, "Ah, it's just COVID, and actually I'll get over it when we get back into the real world"?

   14. CLChristian Lanng4:12

       Yeah, no, I think that's actually (laughs) I mean, it sounds bad, but I think that's almost what broke me, right? Because you know the moment when COVID was over, we were like, "Okay, finally, we can get back. Finally." You have this hope. I mean, there's, uh, there's a very famous saying, like, "The most dangerous thing in the world is hope," right?

   15. HSHarry Stebbings4:23

       (laughs)

   16. CLChristian Lanng4:24

       Because then you get back and it's not there. The energy is not there the same way, right? And I think at the same time, um, I mean, obviously COVID was an extremely challenging business environment as you can guess. Also, every unicorn were, are struggling massively, right? We, we moved from a world where there was 40, 60X revenue multiples to a world where there's 7X, right?

   17. HSHarry Stebbings4:44

       (laughs) Bringing back 21. (laughs)

   18. CLChristian Lanng4:46

       Yeah. And, and, and so you have to restructure financing in that environment. You have to go out. All the shareholders who've been loving what you've been doing up until that point really do not like to have those conversations. So it's also you move from not just from an environment where you think you're gonna be back and it'll be creative and it'll be fun, but also to an environment where every single conversation you have is just hard-edged. It's tough negotiations. And that's fine, like and that's the job. But it's also I think at some point, you know, you gotta get the job done. I feel like you owe it to employees, you owe it to sh- actually shareholders, to everyone, that you get the company to the other side. But grit alone don't make you happy, it just make, it, it just get the job done, right? It just gets you to the other side. But the cost for me was very, very, very high of getting to that other side, right?

   19. HSHarry Stebbings5:29

       Do you ever think that your happiness doesn't matter? I was telling someone yesterday and it was like, "It doesn't matter that I am happy. What matters is that the machine of Harry and Harry's brand keeps going because the money that the machine makes funds so many other things, funds mothers, brothers, fathers, teams. Uh, who the fuck cares if I'm happy?"

   20. CLChristian Lanng5:50

       Yeah, no, I think, I mean, yeah, absolutely.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings5:52

       (laughs)

   22. CLChristian Lanng5:52

       I mean, I, I've been thinking that many times during this spring and this year honestly, right? And I think, you know, as I also said, right, like in the beginning you, when you try to figure out what it means to be a leader, you think...... oh, yeah, it's about having people follow me. But then you realize, like, you know what? Once those people follow you, (laughs) then you have a real responsibility because, you know, I mean, it's pensions on the line, mortgages, children. Like, at that point, you make some choices where you say, "My happiness is not what's most important." I mean, I made some decisions where I could have gone a different path. I could have been a very different path and probably, you know, had a very different outcome and been happier, but it would not ha- I mean, it would have been a disaster for the company and for everyone involved. You kind of have to sort of eat that, uh, bit of medicine. But I think the flip side of that is, with happiness comes also great work, comes great creativity, and, and so on. So it really depends. I feel like most founders are people who can't quit, and, and that's both a blessing and a curse. But happiness is not a given.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings6:53

       I, I do want to get to not quitting, 'cause I think it's a mantra that we all say a lot. But I do just want to ask, when you're feeling these things, you mentioned the different people involved, do you communicate to them? Do you say to your team, "Hey," like, "I'm actually just struggling with a couple of things right now, so can you give me some space? Can you be more patient with me?" Do you communicate your mental position with them?

   24. CLChristian Lanng7:13

       Yeah, like there was a very small circle of, of people in Tradeshift that's been around for 10 years. I told a few of them. Um, I, I like, "Look, I am really, really struggling, um, and I'm trying." But it's also, as the leader, like you're a symbol (laughs) in a way, right? You can't go in a town hall in the whole company and say, "Listen, guys, I'm actually getting severely depressed at doing the work," or like, you know, "I'm, I'm suffering from burnout, and I'm not sure I can go the distance." And, and-

   25. HSHarry Stebbings7:39

       Can you not say that?

   26. CLChristian Lanng7:40

       I, I mean, maybe you could. Maybe I could. I don't know. That's a great question. I chose not to. I chose to say, "No, no, we can get through this," right? Because also I felt like a lot of other people were, of course, struggling, right? Like, you know, we were going from a world of hypergrowth to, you know, margins and profitability, right? Like, the work environment was also changing a lot for everybody in Tradeshift. And we went through layoffs like everybody else, right? Like, you know, to, to improve profitability and so on. So I think in all of that, if you didn't stand up as a leader and say, "And by the way, uh, I'm also feeling, uh, slightly depressed and burned out," I think I might have gotten, like, an FU from (laughs) a good chunk of the company, right? So.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings8:16

       I know. I, I, I do agree with you. I think the other thing that's hard is also the relationships you have personally.

   28. CLChristian Lanng8:21

       Yeah.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings8:21

       And I feel like maybe this is kind of masochistic male, uh, b- bad kind of feeling that I have, but I feel like I need to be the strong one. Like, I can't go to my mother with MS and be like, "Oh, I'm struggling with my mental..." Like, I have to be the strong one, so she knows she can rely on me.

   30. CLChristian Lanng8:37

       Yeah. No, I mean-
3. 15:04 – 27:33

   Insight on Startups and VC Life

   1. CLChristian Lanng15:04

      in, in generative AI. Um, I, I studied as a sociologist with language as, as a primary, like conflict system and language. So everything that was happening in generative AI was piquing my brain a lot. And when you're figuring out every time like that once a week you're listening in to that team meeting or hearing or seeing what they're building, that that's the most exciting moment in, in what you're doing, and you know what you're doing every day is the thing you just gotta fight to do, then I think your energy is also flowing differently. And I think that's also why the idea of, of being able to sort of have a bit of a blank slate and think differently and build differently and, and, and use all of my experience, that's, that's really exciting.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings15:42

      Can I ask you a bit of a weird one, but it's, you know, we're constantly told the mantras of never give up, never ring the bell, persistence is the key to entrepreneurship, the winners are the ones who just stay.

   3. CLChristian Lanng15:52

      Mm-hmm.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings15:52

      I remember Jason Calacanis told me with podcasting, he said, "It's very simple. The winner is the one who just survives the longest."

   5. CLChristian Lanng15:59

      (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings15:59

      Jason, I fucking survived a long time.

   7. CLChristian Lanng16:01

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings16:01

      Uh, but how do you think about that persistence, never give up?

   9. CLChristian Lanng16:06

      I, I mean, I think it's true, unfortunately or fortunately. I th- I think a big problem over the last six to seven years is we started telling everyone they should become a founder. And at the same time, we didn't tell them what that means. The people I know who persisted, right, like, you know, the people who, for instance, for like we joke at like the Danish mafia of the early, you know, Zendesk, Unity, all these guys, none of us are normal people. (laughs) Like none of us, with extremely unhealthy life work balances, right? And, and so I don't think-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings16:34

       Do you have to have that to be successful?

   11. CLChristian Lanng16:36

       I don't know. I'll try to see if, if it can be different this time. Like I'm, I'll try, (laughs) but I don't know. And, and I have a feeling once I've really pulled into the idea, it'll be hard, right?

   12. HSHarry Stebbings16:45

       What do you think we don't tell founders that they should know? 'Cause you're right, it was this normalization of entrepreneur, everyone can be a founder, and everyone became a founder.

   13. CLChristian Lanng16:54

       Yeah. No, I think there's a lot of things. I mean, the, the, the first thing is for 99% of startups, you know, I mean no offense, but VCs is gonna own most of your company by the time you have worked for six or seven years and your salary will probably be less than if you had worked anywhere else combined. And that's if you're lucky, right? Like 99% of chance you just don't pull-

   14. HSHarry Stebbings17:13

       That's if you're alive after six years.

   15. CLChristian Lanng17:14

       Exactly right. And the second thing is also just like that as you just said, it's just about surviving, et cetera. Like are you willing to really think through what that means and the cost of your family life, your connections, your friends? Like I, I'm lucky I have like two or three people that still talk to me after 14 years, but that's about it. (laughs) Like everybody else is like, "We used to know you, but like we don't," right? And-

   16. HSHarry Stebbings17:36

       What, what d- what do you mean by that?

   17. CLChristian Lanng17:37

       I mean, I mean people outside the company at the time, right? And, and-

   18. HSHarry Stebbings17:40

       Just because you lost friendships?

   19. CLChristian Lanng17:42

       Yeah. And, and the only friendships I sort of retained over that long time in, in the end happened to be people I was working with.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings17:48

       Do you regret that?

   21. CLChristian Lanng17:50

       Yeah. I think absolutely, actually.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings17:52

       What would you have done differently? Like help me, 'cause I feel like (laughs) you're a chapter ahead-

   23. CLChristian Lanng17:57

       (laughs)

   24. HSHarry Stebbings17:57

       ... and I'm making the mistakes that you-

   25. CLChristian Lanng17:59

       I mean, I don't know, right? I mean, it is, it is about like, I mean, it's so weird, right? Because like, you know, I'm sort of a side story, I used to play a lot of poker. Then my friends was like, "Why don't you play poker anymore?" I was like, "Well-"... once you've done a $200 million funding round and you've just stared each other down at that table, and I'm, I'm not saying founders sometimes bluff, but sometimes we do and, and sometimes we take it home. It's really hard to get excited sitting at the table (laughs) and, you know, playing about 100 bucks. Like, or even if it's more. And, and so I think our lives become so different. What do you talk about? Like, "Well, I've been traveling around the world." Like, honestly, like, there were many years I did between 150 and 200,000 miles a year. I was looking at my average, I think I spent around four and a half, four years in hotels over 14 years. You lose, like, in a way, connection with reality. I mean, what are you gonna talk about? Everybody else is like, "Yeah, this, this is what happened this week and we went to work." So I think you gotta find ways to, to, to find those common threads.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings18:54

       Is your health just in the shitter in those moments? I mean, that, that travel is brutal.

   27. CLChristian Lanng18:58

       Oh, absolutely. I mean, (laughs) I mean, this is probably too much. But, like, I mean, I almost died of anemia actually, because, um, I just didn't have time to go to the doctor. You know, I felt really fatigued, I felt really tired. And, you know, just before annual sales kickoff, I, I went, I went to the doctor and said, "I feel really fatigued." He's like, "Let's, let's take a blood sample." And we did, and I went off to Las Vegas to do the rah, rah, rah, and, you know, in front of the whole company. And when I stepped down from stage, there's a text message from my doctor that says, "Go immediately to the nearest ER and tell them your hemoglobin is 5.4." So I remember be- I'm sort of in a blur going to-

   28. HSHarry Stebbings19:34

       So you went back on stage, finished the talk. (laughs)

   29. CLChristian Lanng19:36

       (laughs) No, I was done with the talk. I delivered the talk. Arrived in the ER, I tell them, "Hey, my doctor told me my hemoglobin is 5.4." And she's like, "No, it's not, because you'd be, you'd be laying in a coma on the floor." And then I said no, and I showed her the text message. The next thing I knew, I had, like, you know, a bag of blood on my arm and, you know-

   30. HSHarry Stebbings19:50

       Did that sink into you? I mean, that's quite a-
4. 27:33 – 37:43

   Financial Perspective and Investor Relations

   1. HSHarry Stebbings27:33

      you feel about your relationship to money today and did that change?

   2. CLChristian Lanng27:36

      So for me, money has never been the goal. Um, it's kind of weird. Like, I always just been a very curious person. Like, I actually didn't really like, I mean, I always just stumbled into things that sort of piqued my curiosity and then I start digging at them, digging more at them. And what I found is that if I follow my curiosity, it tends to follow that, you know, (laughs) success and, and, and, and money and so on. But I think also in my later years, right, like it's, it's easier when you don't have any kids and it's just you, you know? Like, I mean, what is risk really then? Like, risk is just all the investors and, you know, especially when they wanna extract a bit better terms or, you know, bully you in a down market or whatever, right? They will tell you like, "Oh, we would lose you, we'd hate to see you lose everything," right? But the reality is my everything is my mind, right? They can lose some money, but I can, I cannot lose my mind. I can still, you know, tomorrow go out and think about what's next. And so I think for me, money is... Later in life now that I have a family and that people like... Of course, it's important that you can support everyone, but it's never been the goal. It's really nice. Like, I mean, people say money can't buy happiness, haven't tried. (laughs) You can definitely make things nicer and you can make life nicer, but I think it gets very hard to sustain that drive if it, if it's the only thing. D- there gotta be something y- y- you, you wanna scratch at or peek at or, or, or, uh, you know, that, that, you know, tickles your mind, uh, enough that you wanna keep going.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings29:03

      Can I ask you, you mentioned that there's two sides to this, but you know, e- you said it's like an ultra-marathon the last 14 years-

   4. CLChristian Lanng29:09

      (laughs)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings29:09

      ... or many ultra-marathons. I, I totally get you and understand that. My question to you is on two sides. If we thought about kind of investors on the negotiating and discussing terms with you, what are the bullshit things that you see about VCs, investors, that you think more founders should know or wish you'd known earlier?

   6. CLChristian Lanng29:29

      First off, uh, overall Trade Shift has been lucky to have an extremely great group of investors around the company the whole way through. I think one of the things that we were lucky early on is that we have a lot of investors that were actually, in a way they were thinking evergreen, they did not have to have necessarily an exit in three, four, five years. Especially 'cause we, uh, as when we talked nine years ago, massively underestimated how hard it would be, how long it would take.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings29:53

      I think one of the biggest for me is like there is misalignments between founders and VCs. I need-

   8. CLChristian Lanng29:57

      Of course.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings29:57

      ... I need my cash back and I need more of it back than I gave you. And there will be times when I need it back and it doesn't suit you.

   10. CLChristian Lanng30:04

       Yeah, of course. And I, but I also think VCs get pissed off when founders use exactly the same strategies as they do, right? And I'll, I'll take an example, right? In the latest financing round for, for Trade Shift, I refused to sign the papers until the employee stock option pool got moved from common to Pref2, because I did not want...... all of our employees to be on the water in any potential transaction in the future, um, and that did not include founder stock. I knew, and, and, you know, this is the thing where people understand waterfalls, they understand the games, they understand the leak preps, they understand how everything flows, probably did win me the most friends in the, in the world at that time, and, and I did wait quite late because I knew if I was bringing it up, hm, you know, nine months before, it would be hard, but, but, you know, when the transaction's about to happen, then-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings30:51

       It's too late. They've put too much time in.

   12. CLChristian Lanng30:52

       E- e- exactly right.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings30:53

       Yeah.

   14. CLChristian Lanng30:53

       And, and this is the other thing, right? Like, runway works both ways, right? I mean, runway is, is an excellent tool, um, to, to make sure you also are able to have some leverage in that negotiation, because the reality is, if, if your company is doing well, and if, if you're great and, and if the runway is, is shorter, then, then everybody needs to come to a conclusion faster, and, and that can work both for the founder and for the VC. So VCs are not your friends, but the best VCs can help you get a, a great, a much better outcome, and I think one of my regrets, I mean, I said we have a good group of, uh, investors around TradeSheep, but I think early on, we were too focused on valuation, and we could probably made some other choices then and spent a lot of time-

   15. HSHarry Stebbings31:31

       What would you have done differently?

   16. CLChristian Lanng31:33

       Probably taking some lower valuations and not having to fight as hard to catch up to, to those numbers, um, to be honest, but-

   17. HSHarry Stebbings31:39

       So, let's just dig into that. So you took higher valuations, and then you felt a pressure to then catch up to them.

   18. CLChristian Lanng31:45

       Yeah, I think it's a very classic trap.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings31:46

       Did you do things that you wouldn't have done otherwise?

   20. CLChristian Lanng31:49

       I mean, yeah, if you think about it, right, and this is, this is, as I said, 14 years ago, we raised our A round at, at $100 million dollar valuation. Uh, we did our B round at 140, C at 350, right? So these were hefty numbers 14 years ago. We could because we had a strong vision and strong product and, and, and strong customers, but it also meant that when real SaaS metrics started emerging and the market started normalizing, and then it was really, really tough, right? Because, uh, we had to catch up to that, and, and we had to do some creative structuring of financing in the interim because you couldn't go out and raise necessarily the same market, or you would be forced into a down round and so on. So I think I got, like, a PhD in, in, in finance, uh, as well in, in the last 14 years, right?

   21. HSHarry Stebbings32:31

       But I, I actually tweeted yesterday, uh, how many very, very successful companies today raised 100X ARR rounds? So a million in revenue, 100 million price. And Parker Conrad from Rippling, who-

   22. CLChristian Lanng32:45

       Yeah, yeah, I know him.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings32:46

       ... I know and is-

   24. CLChristian Lanng32:47

       Mm-hmm.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings32:47

       ... you know, uh, been a guest on the show many times. He was basically like, "This is a narrative that VCs like to spin. Actually, having the capital allows you to do different experiments, which is good. It's unrelated to valuation." I think he's wrong.

   26. CLChristian Lanng33:03

       Yeah.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings33:03

       And I think he's wrong because it's like, he's very good at deploying capital efficiently.

   28. CLChristian Lanng33:07

       Yeah.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings33:07

       But 99% of people-

   30. CLChristian Lanng33:08

       Not all.
5. 37:43 – 50:43

   Leadership Challenges and Team Dynamics

   1. HSHarry Stebbings37:43

      that one could do, or is it just the nature of the structure?

   2. CLChristian Lanng37:46

      No, I think, look, I have investors where I have this relationship with, right? Like, I mean, a bunch of our investors also wrote me after my post. I mean, eh, some were, were happy with the results of the round, we just did, some were unhappy, but they still wrote me. And, and so that meant a lot. Like, eh, but, but it is clear, right? Like, look, of course investors are in it for the money and, and, eh, I mean, to, to some degree, uh, most degrees (laughs) I think founders are as well. But it's better when there's an understanding. And, and yeah, I mean, there's the old saying, like, you know if an investor is good if they show up when, when shit is hard, right?

   3. HSHarry Stebbings38:17

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CLChristian Lanng38:17

      Like, everybody is just cheering when it's like (laughs) up, up, up. It's like, yeah, go faster. But the investors that I have a relationship with today are the investors that were there when, when stuff was really, really hard or when something blew up in a way we didn't expect or whatever, and they were still there. You know, as an investor, you probably have some control in the sense that you show up for, for, for your founders when everybody else is about to bail on them, for instance, right?

   5. HSHarry Stebbings38:38

      Can I be honest? I don't think they come to you, and I don't think they come to you 'cause they just don't feel they can.

   6. CLChristian Lanng38:43

      No, I mean, that's fair, that's-

   7. HSHarry Stebbings38:44

      And so, and so then I, I think, "Well, is there anything that I can do to, to let them know that they can?" Is why, uh, honestly, is why I do shows more like this where I show that-

   8. CLChristian Lanng38:51

      Yeah.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings38:51

      ... "Fuck, I've got problems." (laughs)

   10. CLChristian Lanng38:53

       Yeah, yeah. No, and I'm, and I think actually this is part of, um, used to be part of the leadership principles in TradeShift, uh, which one of the very first things I taught all our leaders is show vulnerability. And the reason I say that is, you know, in American business culture, you just gotta be perfect. Like, it's like, "Hey, what do you think about this?" You have an answer, right? And actually that's why ChatGPT is kinda screwed, because it just wanna give a perfect answer to everything, and it can't say, "Hey, could you clarify? I don't know." Or whatever. So I told my leaders that, no, people will actually trust you more if you show vulnerability, if you say, "Hey, this is an area I'm bad at as a leader. This is an area I'm good at." Because that help build a relationship with people. And I think the same is true as an investor. I think it's absolutely the right strategy to show vulnerability and say, "Look, I've struggled with these things," and so on, because it makes you a human. And I much rather work with a human than, you know, somebody who's just-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings39:36

       Can I be really harsh?

   12. CLChristian Lanng39:37

       Yeah.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings39:37

       Transparency is a core trait.

   14. CLChristian Lanng39:38

       Yeah, absolutely.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings39:40

       But you didn't share it with the team when you were struggling.

   16. CLChristian Lanng39:43

       (laughs) No, that's spot on.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings39:45

       (laughs)

   18. CLChristian Lanng39:45

       Like, you know, uh, I failed at, at the first leadership principle I, I taught most of our leaders. That's right. And, and I've, maybe they'd gone differently if I had. Yeah.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings39:54

       I'm not sure.

   20. CLChristian Lanng39:55

       I think to try to be real people is, is, is very, very important. And I think vulnerability is actually one of the biggest trust-building things you can do. Uh, now, the hard part is, uh, you know, I've also plenty of times shown vulnerability and gotten screwed over hard, right?

   21. HSHarry Stebbings40:09

       How so?

   22. CLChristian Lanng40:10

       Um, just because people take advantage. They see an opportunity, they see money, and, and then it's really hard the morning after to wake up and say, "I don't wanna become a fucking cynic." You know? I'd rather have one more time where you say, "Okay, I was vulnerable, and I got F'ed, but it was more important that I don't lose who I am." Now, people around me will probably say, "Yeah, that's true, Christian, but you could be a bit more (laughs) like, you could still be a bit more skeptical and a little bit more critical of people." And, and, you know, yeah.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings40:40

       When your trust is broken in someone you believe in or trust, it's very hard not to be jaded.

   24. CLChristian Lanng40:45

       It is. It is the hardest thing in the world. But if you let yourself become jaded, then you let those people define who you are.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings40:51

       Someone said to me, "Revenge is someone else having rent in your mind."

   26. CLChristian Lanng40:55

       Yeah.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings40:56

       And, uh, like-

   28. CLChristian Lanng40:56

       They don't, they, you know, it's hard. I mean, I say it's like it's easy to just do this, right? It is really, really effing hard.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings41:02

       Yeah. I have people who like shit on me Twitter, and then they're like, "I've been thinking, and you're this, and you're this, and you're this." And I go, "You know how much I've been thinking about you?"

   30. CLChristian Lanng41:10

       Yeah. (laughs)
6. 50:43 – 1:11:50

   AI Perspective and Future Insights

   1. CLChristian Lanng50:43

      the way that your brain works, and all these systems should be in the background?

   2. HSHarry Stebbings50:45

      So what is Beyond Work, sorry?

   3. CLChristian Lanng50:47

      (laughs) Yeah. So Beyond Work is- is-

   4. HSHarry Stebbings50:48

      That sounds great, but like (laughs) yeah.

   5. CLChristian Lanng50:50

      Yeah, no. Um, Beyond Work is- is essentially the idea that we should be able to automate any work we want as regular people. And we should be able to take any task and combine it and collaborate with other people around it, without having to log into applications. Imagine you have a problem, say, "Hey, I wanna create a vendor database based off all these invoices." Then the user interface just appears and show you that, and then it goes away. So-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings51:14

      So it's like a meta layer that sits on top of all your existing apps, plugs into all data sources.

   7. CLChristian Lanng51:18

      E- exactly right, but it's centered on humans in the center. Salesforce don't have a human in the center. Salesforce makes you into a robot that has to click buttons in a certain order. And why on earth should you learn that? Like wh- wh- wh- why should you spend 10% of your brain storing information that's completely useless for anything you do? What you really want to be doing is to look at that data and, you know, pull out conclusions or figure out like, "Who's our top ten- 10% salespeople?" And we have s- some amazing powerful tools right now, like f- of course, the new large language models. But they don't really solve the problem of work, they just give us some power, give us some- some stuff we can do an engine. But what I've really been thinking about is, how can we put all of this together in a new way? How can we generate a completely new work experience? And the funny thing is, took it out to- to a few of my friends who- who are like C-level executives in some of the largest companies in the world, they're like, "Holy shit, how fast can we get this?" Because I think we've forgotten, like I mean, just some simple numbers, right? IT corporate budgets, they went from 300 billion to $780 billion in enterprise software over the last ten years. At the same time, we doubled the amount of people in shared services, eight to 16 million, and we doubled the amount of people in corporate IT, four to eight million. Why? We're buying all of this amazing software that should make everything better and more efficient and more productive, but instead we- we just become less efficient, and we hate our life more.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings52:38

      Do you not find this... So I find this with like company fundraising, so which is like, hang on a minute, in a world of open source, insane tooling, product-like growth, cheap tooling, we need more money to build startups that are often quite lightweight and SaaS tools?

   9. CLChristian Lanng52:51

      (laughs)

   10. HSHarry Stebbings52:51

       We should need less than that.

   11. CLChristian Lanng52:52

       A- a- absolutely right. And I think that's actually where, I mean, one of the reasons also I- I got so fascinated was like, to me, building a startup today that is AI first is as pivotal or revolutionary as it were 14 years ago to build the first cloud companies. So I think, in fact, I think... And I'm not talking about ChatGPT and all that. I mean, that's amazing and they're probably gonna invent either superhuman intelligence and we're all gonna die, according to Elon Musk, or it's gonna be totally fine and, uh, they're gonna be almost as good as self-driving cars, but they're gonna fail some of the time, right? But what I'm talking about is, what are the companies building this architecture gonna look like? And 14 years ago there came something completely new, cloud computing, and suddenly we could make software in a whole different way, from on-prem, and changed the world, it changed the enterprise world. And- and I think today, there's a new generation of startups that's gonna come over the next five, ten years and they're gonna be built on an AI first architecture. And what I personally find exciting is nobody have an idea what that look like yet. Nobody.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings53:46

       I think, I think there's a big difference though, and the big difference is who are the winners in cloud? Winners in cloud are Google, winners in cloud are Amazon, winners in cloud are Microsoft. Who were the winners before? Google, Amazon, Microsoft. Here, we have such a strong incumbent set that we have never had before. Everyone's like, "Oh, compare to mobile." What? Motorola?

   13. CLChristian Lanng54:07

       Yeah.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings54:08

       Like, or Nokia? This is a s- this is a fundamentally different world.

   15. CLChristian Lanng54:12

       I think you are right when you talk about consumer. And I think, by the way, uh, everybody will be making mis- make a big mistake if they count Apple out of the AI race. They're gonna come with 100 miles an hour and when they come in, it will be really, really good. But if you think about those winners, what they really provided was platforms. We went from having a thousand to 35,000 SaaS companies in ten years, right? And if you look at the explosion of unicorns, for instance, a very good chunk of them were SaaS companies, right? Because enterprise is a multi...... polar world. It's, it's not winner takes all. I mean, Peter Thiel's power laws works really well in consumer, but in enterprise, there're so many moats. I mean, like really. Compliance, regulatory, incompetence. Like (laughs) there's just layers of layers of layers of stuff that makes decisions happen differently. And I think the other thing is, if you look at the next generation of stuff about these moats, if you asked me last year, I'd say, "Somebody like OpenAI is gonna be like the AWS of, of AI."

   16. HSHarry Stebbings55:06

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CLChristian Lanng55:06

       But nine months later, I was running on my laptop, a model that was as powerful as ChatGPT-3.5 that was released as open source by Facebook. So I've never in my life in computing, seen something that moves this fast. And you know what's really, really exciting? I mean, I've done this my whole life. I have no clue how this is gonna turn out. I don't know if the incumbent's gonna win or somebody else, I don't care. I just want to build something that's valuable for, for people. Um, but I think it's really exciting that we don't yet know how it's gonna play out.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings55:34

       Do you think... One thing I've been thinking a lot about actually is like, does it actually remove the importance of user interfaces?

   19. CLChristian Lanng55:40

       Completely. I mean, user interface, okay, I'm gonna say something that's blunt. User interfaces are stupid. It's only because we only have had that metaphor, right? We, we create screens with buttons, and I mean, every year, every enterprise vendor is forced to come out with more screens, with more buttons. Why? They sell user licenses by the seat. (laughs) Guess what? Is their incentive to make the application more complex or less, less complex, right? They only go one way. So why would you need that if you can just say, "Hey, I'm gonna take two weeks of vacation. Could you please update the company record?" Or if you could say, "Uh, I would like to generate a vendor database based on this folder, uh, G- Google Drive folder I just threw at you with, uh, invoices." Natural language, of course, is far more efficient, but we can't just do prompt, we can't just like... I mean, everybody says, "Well, you can do anything you want with ChatGPT." Well, I mean, 99% of people use it as Wikipedia, and that's it, right? So we need more. We need the ability to, you know, be able to push buttons, we need... But we need to have a completely different experience. When mobile came, it took five years before we really started having the concepts of responsive mobile web design, user interfaces emerge. And I think we're seeing the same right now. There will be a new generation of user interfaces that haven't fully been invented yet. But we will look at all of the screens of the applications we use every day as dinosaurs in less than three years. Be like, "Holy shit, why were we sitting with thousands of buttons and thousands of screens?"

   20. HSHarry Stebbings57:00

       It's very... I had Miles Grimshaw on from Benchmark, he's actually came out today, and he said that, you know, the future of AI is essentially selling the work and not the software.

   21. CLChristian Lanng57:08

       Completely.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings57:09

       Which is-

   23. CLChristian Lanng57:09

       Beyond Work. (laughs)

   24. HSHarry Stebbings57:10

       You, you agree with that?

   25. CLChristian Lanng57:11

       Yeah, and, um, that's why we named the company Beyond Work. (laughs)

   26. HSHarry Stebbings57:13

       (laughs)

   27. CLChristian Lanng57:13

       And, and I think, uh, you know, the po- th- the point is, y- your HR system, that's the head of HR that buys that. It's not you, uh, that, as a worker who sits every day. Uh, the same for the AP system, same for any system. Whoever made a set of tools, a platform for you as a worker? It's like, I mean, if you're, uh, you know, a forester and you're cutting down trees, you would have a chainsaw as your, as your, (laughs) as your daily tool, right? But all these systems has been made by somebody else who's charging by the license by the user, bought by people who don't use it, and then we wonder why the people who sit in the middle there are miserable. And I think, by the way, like demographically-

   28. HSHarry Stebbings57:46

       Is that not why there's product-led growth though? Like, this is a phenomenon that we've seen over the last five to 10 years, right? You, uh, a user gets their credit card out, they sit in a trade shift, and they can buy a single license and go.

   29. CLChristian Lanng57:56

       Yeah. I think, I mean, product-led growth is, is definitely one, one way, I think, and, and that helps. That just means you need to make your product good enough that people find value organically. I think that's super healthy, and I think that's much healthier than the sort of SaaS revenues of classic enterprise content software. Sorry to, to the people I've sold for the last 14 years.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings58:13

       (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:16:00