Startup Grind: Paul English Says the Team's the Key

by Judith Dinowitz

I arrived at the Pivotal Labs building on Thursday, June 4th, to see Paul English, the co-founder of Kayak.com and the founder of a new venture, Blade. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a ticket, only two days before the event. Normally I don't attend meetups that aren't free, but this week, I had been feeling stir crazy -- call it the occasional result of parenting five kids and working from home. I went online, looking for a chance to get away, network, meet some new people, and hear something worthwhile.

Several people laughed when I said I came to the meetup to have a night on my own. Of course, I'm also looking for a job as a product manager, and one thing General Assembly taught me was that if you want to find that job, you'd better network, network, network.

Was this meetup worthwhile? Definitely! It was filled to capacity with all sorts of creative people, so the networking was awesome. There were fridges full of free drinks, and not just beer or soda, and free pizza for those who don't keep kosher. But the best part of the evening -- the reason I paid my fee -- was Paul English. I'll be giving you some of the highlights of his story and his insights on founding a startup and making it a viable business.

The Start

At the age of 16, Paul had his first experience as an entrepreneur when he sold a game to a video game company that produced games for the Commodore 64. They paid him $5000.00 for the game, but went out of business before they put it on the market. Still, it gave him a taste of the entrepreneurial life.

An Unforeseen Transition

Among the unexpected turns in the road to Kayak.com was Paul's boss at Interleave promoting him from the senior engineer to the head of Marketing. His boss asked whether he wanted to be in charge of the marketing department or the engineering and business management sections. Paul opted for engineering and business management, so of course, his boss gave him marketing. The only problem was, Paul was still unsure what marketing was.

Not deterred from doing his job, he educated himself by spending a year on the road with the sales team. He said that to be really great at marketing, you have to be great at thousands of other things, such as brand strategy and user experience. Paul is excited about the intersection between marketing and user experience.

Simplicity in User Experience

In the course of his career, Paul spent four years at Intuit, where he worked with Scott Cook and Craig Carlson building software for small businesses. From Scott and Craig, he learned the importance of simplicity in the user interface. As Paul put it, "Software sucks. It's hard for me to use. And if it's hard for me, how is it for the non-programmer?" Intuit made the whole process of using their software easy for the user. For example, they would let the customer bill a client who wasn't yet in the database. The software would just set things up behind the scenes and add that customer. In every touch point with the customer, Cook and Carlson looked to make things simpler.

Paul left Intuit when a new executive was hired who was very focused on process rather than product.

Three Keys to Success and the Primacy of Recruiting

Paul mentioned three key pieces of the puzzle that help a company develop a product successfully: process, amazing people, and an intense focus on the business' mission. Why is the business here? If your company culture remains focused on that question, and you have a process that lets you develop at high speed and a good team, you're doing well. Paul has always emphasized recruiting because a strong team is the most important part of the mix. The company with the best team knows how to jump on opportunities. The team should come first, the customer second, and the business metrics third.

Kayak.com: Brand and Interface

Paul co-founded Kayak in 2004 with Steve Hafner, and spent 10 years building the company. Paul didn't spend much time looking at Expedia, the competition; their site did not impress him. He remembers how slow and bloated the site was, and that the interface seemed to be trying to get the users to do different and conflicting actions. When they developed Kayak.com, he and Steve tried to create a simple user interface.

He said that in his company, 4 out of 10 hires are designers. "There's a reason we spend so much time on design… If it doesn't succeed, at least the product was nice and fast!"

Even before launch, Paul spent a great deal of time developing the Kayak brand, hiring Karen Costello to work on the brand and company identity. The brand strategy that they developed led to a lot of the company's decisions.

Mistakes Along the Way

When building a company and product, the road is not always smooth. At first, Kayak was losing money with every sale, paying $1.00 to get a customer to their site and making only $0.20 per sale. This was one of the hardest problems they had to solve.

Not all of his hires worked out, either, and Paul would often take that personally. "When I hired someone who didn't work out, I felt it was my fault," Paul admitted.

He cared very much about learning from those mistakes -- so much that he used to keep a list of his biggest screw-ups with Kayak.com on his phone, so he wouldn't repeat them.

Blade.net: His Newest Venture

In December, Paul stepped down from being CTO at Kayak to become the CEO of his new venture, Blade. In An interview on Tnooz.com Paul said that he doesn't view Blade as an incubator. "My colleague Bill O’Donnell says incubators are places that have warm lights, they keep the chickens warm. If you visit an incubator, there’s nice coffee, soft music, people sitting with their headphones on. It looks awful, like a floor of comatose people. Not enough sense of urgency."

In his talk at Startup Grind, he described Blade as a financial partner and advisor, taking on companies that have the necessary ingredients to be successful and helping them get there. His decision on partnering with a company rests on the following criteria: 70% on who the founders are, 20% on what problem they are trying to solve, and 10% on them knowing what they actually do. He believes that having clear roles for each person in a company is vital.

Swift Action and No Yes Men...

Paul English said that it's preferable to have colleagues with different opinions. Fighting about an idea can keep a founder from doing something stupid or heading down a path blindly. Also important is the concept of acting fast and thinking critically. At the beginning of his talk, he described himself and Steve Hafner as men of action -- yet something else he looks for when considering whether to take a company on for Blade.

Bang for the Buck

The question of what makes a company successful is one that Paul has obviously spent many years considering. If I was only going for the networking, this event would have been worthwhile; Paul's stories and wit made it a very profitable venture for me. I'm looking forward to going to the next one, happening at Pivotal Labs on Thursday, July 8th. Joel Spolsky will be speaking. I hope to see you there!