Most venture capital firms mythologize the Zucks and Musks of the world. It’s hard to blame them. I mean – if you’ve got Jeff Bezos or a similar figurehead in your office, by all means, get them a term sheet.
But the “lone genius” approach has some very significant shortcomings.
- It’s not scalable: Waiting for a single, exceptional genius who can bear all the weight on their shoulders is inherently unscalable, limiting the potential for innovation and growth.
- It excludes some of the best talent: Identifying “the next Zuckerberg” requires a kind of pattern-matching that slams the door on a lot of incredible talent who don’t look, act or sound like one particular archetype. The world is changing quickly. What worked in the past isn’t necessarily going to work in the future.
- It plagues you with founders with oversized egos and too little to show for it: Seeking out and backing individuals with larger-than-life personas can create an environment where ego and bravado overshadow talent. Silicon Valley is ripe with founders whose ego:accomplishment ratio is out of whack. A little chutzpah never hurt anybody, but a founder with more confidence than knowledge is antithetical to successful company building.
So, how do you solve for all of this? How do you build companies when talent and big ideas often outpace the availability of these mythical “star” founders?
Our studio model at super{set} is a paradigm shift from the traditional VC approach. Instead of seeking mythical talent and offering top-down critiques, we embrace a collaborative philosophy that guides and empowers founders throughout their entrepreneurial journey, with a focus on craftsmanship over critique.
I’d like to focus on one specific proof point: Habu, a super{set} company, was acquired last month by LiveRamp for $200M in an all-cash deal. A leader in the data collaboration category with innovative data clean room technology, Habu enables companies to share, make sense of, and act on insights on decentralized data without compromising privacy or data ownership The startup grew quickly and successfully penetrated the enterprise market in just under five years, cementing customers like The Walt Disney Company, L’Oréal, and Pepsico, along with other leading brands across CPG, retail, gaming, media & entertainment, automotive, and financial services. Not only was Habu’s product all about facilitating collaboration – in the sense of data collaboration – it was also successful because of the culture of collaboration we instilled across the super{set} studio.
This exit marks a significant moment not only for the extremely talented team behind Habu but also for its potential to change how we view entrepreneurship. Unlike the traditional, often romanticized narrative of the “lone genius” building empires, Habu’s success speaks to a different approach – one built on collaboration, economies of learning, and a commitment to company-building as both art and science.
- We’re crafters, not critiquers: A lot of VCs will tell you that their expertise comes in the form of advice: “We can tell you what to do because we’ve seen it done before.” At s{s}, we don’t tell you what to do. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our teams — whether at the whiteboard or in the boardroom. It’s not just that we’ve seen it done before, it’s that we’ve DONE it before. It’s not just that we know what works, it’s that we know what doesn’t because we already died in all the ditches we implore our Co-Founders to avoid. We help teams steer clear of the mistakes that we’ve already made — and in that way, we lock arms and commit to making brand-new mistakes together.
- We deliver results through people: People make the difference, and attracting and growing the right talent is as important to the success of a startup as the product it sells. Habu’s CEO and COO are homegrown heroes: both were key executives in the buildout at one of our past companies. They were known quantities molded in the startup crucible. Both are brilliant individually, but together, as with all good teams, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The entire team had the characteristics that we consider to be the necessary conditions for success: ambition, grit, and clockspeed. The grit really mattered on this build. It’s easy to see an exit from the outside with rose-colored glasses, but that belies all the shit sandwiches the team had to eat to get here. This company faced several extinction-level events – but because s{s} focuses on building resilient teams over identifying mythical founders, they fought their way through.
- We create the right soil conditions: It’s not enough to have the right team; you also need the right environment. (Once you’ve got the right seeds, you need the right soil.) Creating the right soil conditions is something we do meticulously. We’ve created an economy of learning where all the companies in our studio learn from each other. As an artist myself, I think of it a bit like an artist’s collective. You get to peek over at somebody else’s canvas and see what brushstroke they’re using to capture the way sunlight seeps through the window. Most startups only get to learn from their teammates. At super{set}, any company’s learning is everybody’s learning.
Habu’s success is an immense point of pride for all of us at super{set}. It’s also much more than just an exit, it’s an exclamation point. Maybe from the outside, it’s not always clear there is a method to our madness, but Habu’s acquisition by LiveRamp puts the proof in the pudding.
“Habu would not be where it is today without Tom, Vivek and the super{set} team,” said Mike Moreau, co-founder of Habu. “They helped set up the sockets with early technical and design decisions, helped bring on our early customers, and were there throughout the entire journey helping Matt and I make the right bets.”
The super{set} model is not just an alternative, it’s a blueprint for the future of entrepreneurship. If you’re ready to challenge the status quo and join a community of passionate builders, our studio doors are open.
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