Spenser Skates - Challenging Big Ideas - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 42]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This episode of Founder's Field Guide is brought to you by Dell Technologies. Enjoy a powerful business upgrade with Dell Technologies Black Friday in July event. Get amazing savings without the 50 percent off high-performance computers and tech built for business, and be able to take your office with you with Windows 10 Pro. Plus, get great offers on Dell servers, monitors, docs, and more, all with easy financing options through Dell Financial Services. Call 877-ASK-DELL, that's 877-ASK-DELL, and speak to a Dell Technologies Advisor today.
If your startup doesn't have the right compliance certifications, you can't close major customers. It's that simple. Vanta is trusted by over 1,500 SaaS companies to automate the time-consuming and expensive process of preparing for a SOC 2, HIPAA, or ISO 27001 audit. With Vanta's continuous monitoring solution, you avoid hosting auditors on-site and taking hundreds of screenshots to prove that you're compliant. Here's how it works. Integrate with your cloud provider and tools, check off items on the customized to-do list, and let Vanta continuously monitor your security so you can focus on growing your business. Founder's Field Guide listeners can redeem a $1,000 off coupon at vanta.com forward slash Patrick. That's vanta.com forward slash Patrick.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs, and operators building great businesses.
I believe we are all builders in our own way and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types. Founder's Field Guide is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all of our podcasts including edited transcripts, show notes, and resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:47)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of Oshanose Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:12)
My guest today is Spenser Skates, CEO and co-founder of Amplitude Analytics. Spenser founded Amplitude in 2012 with a thesis that building the best product requires deep cross-functional understanding of customer behavior. During our conversation, we discussed Spenser's long history in programming and how his early experiences tie into his work today. We also explore the nuances of equity compensation, how different VCs can play a role in the success of a startup and Spenser's desire to see more direct listings versus IPOs. While many founders follow the path of others, it's clear that Spenser takes time to challenge the status quo. Before we transition to the episode, I wanted to highlight our newest series, Business Breakdowns.
In this episode, you'll hear how Spenser's team worked with the meditation app Calm to optimize for customer growth. It was particularly interesting to hear this story after listening to the Calm breakdown. Find episodes of Business Breakdowns on your preferred podcast player or at joincolossus.com. Now I hope you enjoy my conversation with Spenser Skates.
Spenser, I was toying with where to start this conversation. I came across kind of an interesting factoid about you, which is I think you twice won a programming competition at MIT. This is going way back. I'd love to describe that competition and what do you think is the reason that you were able to win it twice?

**Spenser Skates** (3:31)
You've done your homework. The programming competition, whether you don't know it, is this competition called Battlecode, which is hosted over this kind of one month break that MIT students get in January of every year. It's a video game and the competitors create an artificial intelligence for the video game.
Think of it like StarCraft. For those of you who know that, you have a bunch of units, you send them around a map, you try to fight and kill the enemy. I first heard about it my sophomore year at school and I was like, holy cow, this combines all the things I love. This combines programming, this combines video games, this combines a competition. It was this really prestigious thing at MIT. People joked about it as like the Super Bowl for nerds where a lot of the top companies would recruit there. A lot of startups, a lot of big tech, a lot of finance, high-frequency trading firms would recruit there because the work actually ends up being quite similar more so than anything else you do in school. My sophomore year, I got really into it. I was so passionate and then I just totally sucked because it was my first time doing it.