The Mint Recap: Fireside Chat with Tim Chen of NerdWallet
We had Tim Chen, CEO and Co-Founder of NerdWallet, come to The Mint last week to talk to the founders of our inaugural batch. To make things even more fun, Jake Gibson, Tim’s Co-Founder, interviewed him in a fireside-style chat. It was an awesome conversation reflecting on their early days of starting and growing a company, so we’re sharing some of the insights and learnings.
1. Find a durable advantage.
If lots of other people are doing the same thing as you, or you can’t articulate your durable advantage, then you probably don’t have one.
If people think you're crazy, you might be on to something.
2. Staying small, scrappy, and nimble preserves optionality.
While exploring and experimenting, you'll make many mistakes. Survival is key to eventually finding what's right. As you hire and raise money, flexibility lessens, highlighting the importance of the accuracy of your initial assumptions.
3. Startups require rapid experimentation, ongoing learning, and not being afraid to be wrong.
This mindset applies to every aspect of the business — not just product, engineering, and design, but also sales and marketing.
4. The wrong hire in a critical role can cripple a company.
As an early-stage founder, perform various job functions for as long as possible to better grasp the problems you aim to solve. Then, you can make informed hires.
Distinguish non-core aspects of the business — that will benefit from established methods and experts to execute them — from core differentiators that demand unique thinking and building from first principles.
