00:01:45 · Jina Kim
[00:01:45] S6: You know, as a leader, you might think, Oh, I've been there. I've done that. I know everything. You don't know everything. You never know when you're going to need help. You don't know when you're going to fail. You are still going to learn from everyone. In a way, for you to be a better leader, you need to course correct right away. Unless you make that correction as soon as possible, it could be like a decision that fails your startup. Hi. My name is Jina Kim, and I worked in Silicon Valley for about ten years. I started out as employee number four at Carta, you know, as an operations manager. And I also help with customer support, customer success, and I built that team from ground up. By the time I left, Carta was $8,000,000,000 in terms of valuation. We had about 1,000 employees. What I focus on is helping startups grow in terms of customer journey and go to market strategy and helping them also with just growing their customers. I think this was back in 2016 when eShares was still growing. One feedback that I got was actually from Henry and he said that in a company survey, someone wrote, I don't want to work with Jina. And I really thought of it. And at first, it was very hurtful because as employee number four, I thought, okay, I'm doing my best to make eShares successful. Why is it that this person is not feeling that I'm doing that? And I kind of thought back to like what the things that I did. And I looked at my Slack messages and I realized communication is a problem. We were getting to the point where we were bigger and certain messages that I was sending to the product team seemed like I was ordering them what to do using my influence as employee number four. That's when I realized, okay, I shouldn't take any of these human relationship for granted because success is not permanent. You never know when you're going to need help. You don't know when you're going to fail. You know, as a leader, you might think, Oh, I've been there. I've done that. I know everything. You don't know everything. You are still going to learn from everyone. You get a new intern that came in straight out of college.
00:03:59 · Jina Kim
There's something that you are going to learn from that person because I think a lot of founders, yeah, they think that, okay, even if like they made a mistake, they kind of have to like go with their own vision and keep going that wrong path. But when you think about it, everyone already knows that the mistake has been made. In a way, for you to be a better leader, you need to course correct right away. Unless you make that correction as soon as possible, it could be like a decision that fails your startup. You never know. Like, some people might have really great solutions, but they might not be telling you because they're an introvert or because they're scared to speak up. And by creating this collaborative environment, you might actually have a better result. One thing that I learned at Carta is that as a manager, you're the one who's doing the toughest job. So at Carta, what we would say is like when you get promoted, people don't say congratulations. They say I feel sorry for you. So the reason why a leader should take on the toughest job is because that's the only way you'll get the respect of your team, especially at a startup. If you're just directing your team members to do what's needed, they'll do like literally just a 100% of what they need to do. But at a startup, you really... Everyone needs to put in a 120%. And so that motivation factor is so important. For me, my leadership skill style, I want to listen to the people I work with, and I want to have that genuine connection with them. I don't want to say I know everything and you need to do it my way. Even as like a customer success leader, I want... During my one on one with my team members, I ask them.
00:05:45 · S0, S1, S2, S3, S4
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00:06:51 · S4, S7
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00:07:30 · Jina Kim
[00:07:30] S6: I'm like, what is it that you wanna do ultimately? And if they wanna be an engineer or if they wanna be a data analyst, I want to help them do that. They could do it through an internal transfer or it could be by just going to another company. But at the end of the day, people are going to do what they want to do. And so for you, if you help them get there, it's actually good for the startup. Another thing that's really important is that as a leader, you're there to unblock the problems that your team has. If the team is working on something and they're hitting some kind of roadblock, in a way, you have the hardest job because you're doing things that might be very difficult for the team to do, so you're doing that. At Carta, what I did was when we have very difficult customers, I was the one who was talking to them and I'm the one who sort of apologizing to them. That's really helpful for the other team members to see. Then they realize, Oh, wait, Jina is there to really take care of me. It's not about just asking me to do things that are impossible. You know, one thing I believe is that employee happiness equals customer happiness because when the customer success employee is happy, that feeling will transfer over to the customer and they will try to be do more than what they have to do. So as a leader, you're not gonna be able to see what the employee is doing all the time. You have to trust them. The only way to know that is by being a good leader and motivating them and truly caring for them and having that genuine connection with that employee. One thing that I really loved about Carta is that it was run like a sports team. The managers were considered more of a coach. And when you look at a sports team, the overall goal of the team is to win, right? As a sports team, the coach is there to really help the team understand what they did wrong and then they'll improve it so that they can win for the next time. Having that kind of coach in your personal life is I think also very helpful because that coach can help you get to the right path. And they're not just like creating this path for their sake, but it's for you. They're helping you go to that unique path. So I didn't have an actual personal coach until two years ago. Before that, I used a lot of people that were in my life as sort of my coach.
00:09:57 · Jina Kim
One coach I had, an informal coach I had, I would say would be Henry. Even when he was giving me negative feedback, he was very gentle about it and gave me the reasons why, which I think is very important. I also had another informal coach, this lady that I work with, and she is right now in her 70s, and she's gone through a lot, she was a single mother. She actually encouraged me to come to California. You know, you don't have to have a coach who's like super successful or anything like that, but someone who is like genuine that you can talk to that really cares for you, think it's really important. Know, one thing I notice is that, you know, when people talk to coach, you know, if you don't agree something that then you don't agree. And then, you know, you kind of come to terms and find the best approach. I think that's really important. What my, you know, customers would tell me is that they want to focus on the product and they don't want to deal with issuing stock options or dealing with investors. The fact that now this was all done by Carta was really helpful for them because they're able to use their time more effectively. And those are the types of moments where it's just so rewarding. Now I would say my KPI is when I get that look on the founder's face, that they have that moment, and it's actually helping them grow and become a better company and helping their employees be happier and help them, you know, create that better work environment. And I want to do that for a lot of the startups that are not in Silicon Valley because they don't have all the resources that that Silicon Valley startups have. So if I can bring that to them, that will give me joy.