Dave mentioned about the need to 'cut' those who were close to him since he was young, given there is a need to get people who have more accountability over loyalty. Learning from this and starting a new business/venture, would you say to initially get people who are competent and accountable over those who are close to you?

Name: Shifting from Loyalty to Accountability
Uploaded: 2014-04-08T04:53:29Z
Description: When Dave Smith came to the harsh realization and he alone was in charge of his future, he took a resourceful route to become an expert in his field. Mixing the desire to make it with the imagination to fake it, he went to great lengths to connect with TekScape IT customers and make them believe that his tiny organization was big enough to solve their trickiest problems.

i always feel so hard to work with someone who is close to me because maybe i can't separate between work and private life

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Course: Entrepreneurship > Unit 1

Lesson 11: Dave Smith - CEO & Founder of TekScape IT

Shifting from Loyalty to Accountability

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When Dave Smith came to the harsh realization and he alone was in charge of his future, he took a resourceful route to become an expert in his field. Mixing the desire to make it with the imagination to fake it, he went to great lengths to connect with TekScape IT customers and make them believe that his tiny organization was big enough to solve their trickiest problems. Created by Kauffman Foundation.

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myroyalkingdom
Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to myroyalkingdom's post “He says people were more ...”
He says people were more willing to tell them what they really thought when they didn't know he was the CEO. So he pretended he wasn't the CEO. I don't see how falsehoods like that could be beneficial enough to make them an acceptable practice. And I don't see how being upfront about who he was could have been detrimental enough to to make lying the prime option. Is this commonly done?
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(6 votes)
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- Ezekiel Toronto
  Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to Ezekiel Toronto's post “Ceo or coordinator but ea...”
  Ceo or coordinator but each party has a say in fact theyre v 2mngmnt 3drctr all mntres synhcruoain
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  (1 vote)
coach.jasper
Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to coach.jasper's post “Dave mentioned about the ...”
Dave mentioned about the need to 'cut' those who were close to him since he was young, given there is a need to get people who have more accountability over loyalty.

Learning from this and starting a new business/venture, would you say to initially get people who are competent and accountable over those who are close to you?
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(4 votes)
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- phamvantam245
  Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to phamvantam245's post “i always feel so hard to ...”
  i always feel so hard to work with someone who is close to me because maybe i can't separate between work and private life
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  (2 votes)
Rose
Posted 10 years ago. Direct link to Rose's post “Where do you draw the lin...”
Where do you draw the line on infrastructure frugality? At what point did you get an office and buy chairs?
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(4 votes)
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zlbowers1
Posted 7 years ago. Direct link to zlbowers1's post “What was the criteria use...”
What was the criteria used to select CEO's to speak for these videos?
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(3 votes)
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- Jedidiah Delich
  Posted 7 years ago. Direct link to Jedidiah Delich's post “That's a great question! ...”
  That's a great question! I think it was simply based on their availability and their own personal desire to share their story with us. I am glad they shared!
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  (1 vote)
John Given
Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to John Given's post “I appreciate the can-do a...”
I appreciate the can-do attitude, but if you are lying to your customers to make them think you are bigger than you are, for me that crosses an ethical boundary. If I was a customer and learned that was your practice, my first thought would be, what else are you lying to me about?
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(3 votes)
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Video transcript

- Hi my name's Dave Smith, the name of the company is TekScape IT. When you're starting a company you have to make certain decisions. Do I get VC capital? Do I get somebody, you know an angel investor? Or do I bootstrap it and build it on my own? I did it on my own because I had a technical expertise. My mom she's a great lady but she would always tell me like make sure you can afford it, make sure you can do this, make sure you can do that. So she was always very concerned about me. She didn't realize until three and a half four years into the business that alright you're actually good. She would send me oven mitts you know to make sure I had stuff for my apartment and so forth. My business card said Director of Services. I went to a customer and the customer said to me, "I want to talk to your manager." I said tell me what your complaints are and I'll talk to the manager and I'll come back to you. He's like, "Look the prices are too high." And I'm like alright what do you need to get the price at? And he's like, "If I got it here I'd be happy." So I said give me a couple days, I'll talk to him, I'll come back to you or I'll bring him in. So I came back to him and I said look he says he'll do it. He's like I'm so happy that you talked to your manager for me. I had to present myself as not the CEO because I needed the ability to negotiate with people. If I was the last stop, it would've been a very difficult conversation but if I had presented myself as somebody in the middle, they were much more open and it gave me what I needed to know in order to close the deal. I had two people that worked for me out of a studio apartment, we did conference calls in our office and one of us would be in the closet, the other one would be in a bathroom and we'd be pretending as if we were in different locations in the United States. How's Boston today Paul? I paid $2000 a month in rent and sold 1.3 million dollars in revenue. I knew we were going to deliver what we were going to deliver, but if they knew how big I was sitting at a glass table with three of us around it, we had folding chairs because I didn't want to buy the $250 chairs. I had a $75 Target chair in my apartment. I had one that was padded and one that wasn't so whoever got there first got the padded one, the other one got the other one. My initial team were people that I could trust or that I worked with in previous engagements or people that I had went to high school with or people that I was best friends with, what I learned over the period of time is that there's a certain point where loyalty has to change to accountability. And so that was a very huge shift in my business where I had to switch from this loyalty to accountability for the people that are friends of mine since I was 15 years old. But I needed them to be accountable for the product that they were delivering and that shift was hard. I'm harder on the people that I knew before the business than the people I hire after the business 'cause I have way higher expectations for these people. That's the fight and the people that are here are successful because they fought through that.