Eoghan McCabe is the CEO and co-founder of Intercom

This was an incredible talk recorded live during the ODF22 cohort. Thanks again to Intercom for hosting.

10 important ideas (and timestamps) from this conversation:

1/ Innocence and Naivety Can Be a Superpower

7:58 - “There was a phenomenal amount of naivety that allowed people to do things that were kind of like conventionally the wrong thing to do.”

2/ Be Contrarian, but Not Recklessly So

10:05 - “If you talk to 100 funds right now and you can’t raise money, change the damn idea.”

3/ In-Person Work is Better

11:55 - “In person is better. And I think that the people who promote remote working are lazy and antisocial.”

4/ Find Your True Passion—or You'll Fail

17:55 - “Please follow your passion. Please do the thing that you love.”

5/ Great Companies Ride Multiple Waves

21:23 - “Great companies are built on successive waves… secular movements. They either create them themselves or they jump on ones that have started already.”

6/ Hard Work is Under Attack—But It's Essential

23:37 - “Most likely you’re going to want to need to work seven days a week and 12 hours a day to get your thing off the ground.”

7/ Extreme Homogeneity Early On Beats Diversity

25:03 - “In early-stage startups, you want extreme homogeneity. You want people who believe what you believe.”

8/ Customer Intimacy Over Everything

26:29 - “They’ll obsess about talking to customers… getting inside not just their heads but their hearts.”

9/ Early Failure and Rejection Strengthens You

29:08 - “The things that bruise our egos the most tend to eviscerate the parts of our ego that were making us so fragile in the first place.”

10/ Hiring Brilliant People is More Important than the Idea

41:51 - “The people who put that team together had an eye for that X factor.”

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If you're exploring starting a company apply for ODF - our 23rd cohort kicks off November 8th in San Francisco

Today we’re chatting with Mo El Mahallawy, CTO and co-founder of Shepherd.

Shepherd is all in one commercial insurance platform focused on high hazard industries. The company is on an absolute tear and this month they announced a $13.5M series A.

Mo and I decided to sit down and record a conversation because the journey of Shepherd will resonate with many potential founders who are try to find those two key missing pieces: who might I start a company with and what might we build together?

Right as the world was shutting down due to COVID, Mo joined ODF3 where he met one of his co-founders at Shepherd — Justin Levine. Mo and Justin soon embarked on a journey to determine what they could build together that had potential to solve a real customer problem.

After pivoting through several ideas across a variety of sectors, they honed in on an area where one of them had a unique insight — construction insurance.

This is an instructive story about how to find co-founders and how to build a great business together. Enjoy!

Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that!

ODF has helped 1k companies like Shepherd (ODF3) find their co-founders, get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our IRL cohorts in San Francisco are now open. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com

• Mo on X/Twitter and his company Shepherd.
• beondeck.com
• On Deck on X/Twitter
• Julian on X/Twitter and blog
• Podcast episode archive and show notes

Today’s conversation is rare but vital — we spend much of our time talking about the challenges around shutting down companies. While I spend most of my time writing about how to build towards success, the stark reality is that most companies fail. Shutting down your company is incredibly painful but it’s particularly lonely — you often feel like you have limited support and guidance.

That’s why Stevie and I felt it was so important to record this episode. We hope this episode is a resource to every founder in the years ahead that makes the decision that it’s time to move on. It’s packed with personal stories from Stevie, tested tactics, and best practices.

We also spend some time talking about startups, identity, and the long arc of ambition. Contrary to what you might expect, I found this to be an inspiring and entertaining conversation — I think you will as well.

Are you exploring starting a company? We’ve got a program for that!

ODF has helped 1k companies get started and go on to raise over $2B. Applications for our IRL cohorts in San Francisco are now open. Learn more and apply at beondeck.com

• Stevie on X/Twitter and her newsletter Highly Regulated
• beondeck.com
• On Deck on X/Twitter
• Julian on X/Twitter and blog
• Podcast episode archive and show notes