The Process: 
Getting Company Culture Right (Ep.6)

Michael Gervais (0:10)

All right, welcome to The Process. Alex, how are you?

Alex (0:14)

Mike, how are you, man?

Michael Gervais (0:16)

Yeah, good. It's been a couple months since we last synced, and I'm super looking forward to learning what you've been up to and kind of some of the decisions you've been making and where you are, heading into really the scouting combine of next generation entrepreneurs, your Kairos 50 So I'd really like to catch up where you've been.

Alex (0:37)

Yeah, I don't know about you, but it's certainly been the busiest time of the year for us. It's really been crazy. Last time we spoke, we were starting to talk to Michael from HomeVest.

So we were looking at the broader issue of, how do you create a more affordable pathway for renters to start owning a home? So we talked to Michael from HomeVest.

Michael Gervais (0:59)

That was a great... I really enjoyed that conversation. I don't know what it was like for you, but what was your experience in that conversation? Because it felt like I was getting in there and I was asking hard questions, and he was thoughtful and really paying attention to how he was going to shape his responses, but they were authentic, and it felt like he was being true to himself.

So I know you're up to many more things, but I can't wait to hear your response with that as well.

Alex (1:29)

Yeah, I mean, let's get into that. I think, again, zooming out the broader problem that we're looking at solving is people are kind of locked out of owning a home for a confluence of reasons, but one is they just can't afford a down payment.

So Michael was focused on creating a cleaner bridge between renting and owning by helping people afford the cost of the down payment. And look, I loved just listening to that convo. I thought it was fascinating. I think at the time, we were evaluating one of three paths. Path one was we got involved operationally with him in building this company out. Path two was we really support him and his vision, but just come in as an investor. And path three was we do nothing. And where we actually landed was path two. So we love Michael, we love the vision, we backed him.

I think when it came to how his style of building a company and solving this problem, meshed with our style operationally, we thought the culture fit wasn't aligned, but by no means an indictment of Michael, we love Michael and we ended up backing him. But I thought that the conversation kind of guided us all in that direction and Michael certainly was on the same page with us as well.

So from a business perspective, I mean, it was extremely insightful. And also I just loved kind of hearing you drill into the founder psyche.

Michael Gervais (3:03)

Yeah, that was really good. So am I hearing this correctly that I just saved both you millions of dollars? Is that what you just did? And somehow this isn't going to kind of reap its rewards back into my financial statements.

Alex (3:17)

Yeah, what I would describe it is that we both are using our time more effectively because of you.

I can't, you know, we now have to win as a company. HomeVest has to win. But I think it was good to just be very, very thoughtful upfront, which is rare in entrepreneurship about whether your work styles align under a five to 10 year vision. And that's what's so interesting about entrepreneurship. It's like, you always want to get to the next step. So you're willing to make short-term trade-offs.

But the one area where you really shouldn't be doing that is people you're starting your business with because you're setting a culture for the company. And I think what you revealed and was really fun to kind of hear play out live is, Michael is very methodical and conscientious and careful about the way he wants to build this business. And I agreed with your takeaway, which is he's a great founder for this problem, right? I think his personality wouldn't match for every type of problem, but he was great for this very nuanced, very complicated solution in the housing market.

Michael Gervais (4:27)

And when you think about your model, your high-performance model for selection and for backing, and if the company vision is in the center, and then surrounding that vision is strategy, is founder, psychological makeup, it's culture, it's resources, financial and otherwise, and there's probably a couple other variables that I'm not thinking of clearly right now, but how big of a piece is culture for you when you're thinking about if this company can be successful?