"It's really about a mindset that every company is a sports team, not a family. And if anybody in a company is telling you that their culture is a family, don't drink the Kool-Aid. Remember that no matter what the HR team says, you are a family, in the back of your head always say, this is a sports team." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast


"So one of the tricky parts I like about what Netflix has done is that they defined their corporate culture as not a family. They see it as a sports team. The reason is simple—if you are my brother or sister, if you are my family, I can’t fire you. But if you’re a sports team, we need a striker; if you’re injured, we need a new striker; we need a defender; we’re competing, and we need to do a transfer. The crux is to accept that companies are closer to sports teams rather than families, while still treating employees well." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast


"And I think where a lot of people screw up is that because they feel like it's a family dynamic, they avoid the difficult conversation. They avoid talking about performance reviews or having hard conversations. As a result, they end up blindsiding the employee, which comes across as unprofessional. But if you think about it from a sports team’s perspective, you do the right thing. You’re a professional. You tell them early, you coach them, you give them a chance, maybe even a second chance. And if not, you set a boundary and say, ‘Let’s give you a handshake, let’s have a termination package that’s fair, let’s find you a new job at a new place, and let’s keep the relationship alive.’ The more professional you are in that process, the better." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au discussed the founder’s dilemma of when to persevere or when to pivot, and why company culture works better when treated as a sports team rather than a family. He illustrated the points with startup case studies like Instagram, Netflix, YouTube, and Rippling, showing how companies evolved by changing either product or customer. He also emphasized professionalism in managing team changes and exits.

01:45 Persevere vs. Pivot: Jeremy explains why founders must balance persistence with flexibility, using new data to know when to change direction.

03:20 Lean Canvas in Action: He shows how the tool helps identify whether to adjust the solution or customer, depending on what fails to fit.

05:05 Instagram and Netflix Examples: Case studies show how Instagram pivoted to photo sharing and Netflix shifted from DVDs to streaming and content creation.

07:10 YouTube and Play-Doh Pivots: YouTube evolved from a dating site to a universal video platform, while Play-Doh went from wall cleaner to toy.

09:02 Sports Team Culture: Jeremy stresses that companies should act like sports teams, not families, with honesty, performance focus, and fair exits.

Jeremy Au (00:00)

So when you are a startup, some of you have already asked this question, which is, if you're building a company, should you

persevere or should you pivot? Because when you're learning something, are you learning that you're on the right track or are you learning that you're on the wrong track? And what's really important is that your ability to change your mind and your ability to persevere are both super key. So what I mean by that is when you are building something as a company, the people don't like you. And we talk about how Machiavelli and the Prince identifies that people are incredulous about a new order of things.

And people are scared about the introduction of a new order of things because they are benefiting from the old order of the world. And so you need to have the ability to persevere in order to be able to drive change and keep going and being an inspiring beacon to rally the troops. At the same time, you have to be able to be flexible. You have to be able to change your mind. You have to be able to listen. Because if you're inflexible and you're going the wrong direction, then the company will fail.

And so you have to be able to pivot, which is a nice way of saying changing your mind with the influx of new data, new experiments, and new conclusions. And so the ability to persevere versus pivot is important for all of you to be thoughtful about over time. And so what does it mean to persevere versus pivot? When we talk about a lean canvas, which all of you have available and will be filling out, you'll be filling out obviously the problem, the solution, the customer segments, the unfair advantages. You fill it out.

And then obviously you decide to say, okay, you might have to change your mind. Maybe the solution is not very good. So the solution needs to be changed. We want to go off to the same problem, but we want to approach the problem from a different way. And some of you will say, the solution is good, but we need to change the customer, because the customer doesn't understand what we are trying to build for the world. So there are different ways for us to do that. So let's give us examples of people who have used the Lean Canvas and kept the problem the same

but change the solution or to cap the solution the same and change the problem and customer segments. So for example, if you look on this is these are three companies that kept the customer but changed the product. So Instagram, Netflix and Rippling. So Instagram used to be something that was called Bourbon, which was the equivalent of Foursquare. Most of you don't remember what Foursquare is, but it'll be the equivalent of saying I checked in at this place

and I'm now the mayor of this place, right? So it's basically like a geomap to say that I can see where my friends are and see how often they go to these places, whether it's a coffee shop or not. So Instagram used to be called Bourbon. And then what they realized was that people really like attaching photos to the places they visited, which was the coffee shop, the matcha art latte

you know, the durians, whatever it is, the photos were what people liked. And so they decided to keep the customer, which was at a time millennials, but then they changed the product. They only kept the photo sharing part of it. They killed everything else. The check-ins, all the other stuff. The photos became the top of the product, which is why now everybody uses Instagram. The other one is Netflix. So Netflix, all of us, I have been watching K-pop demon hunters, right? And so obviously Netflix is there.

If you haven't watched it, you're lame. So you feel like you have to watch it because if you didn't watch Squid Games, you're a total loser, you're totally out of touch. Everybody watched Squid Games. Don't you know what happens at the cliffhanger, et cetera, et cetera, right? So all of us are watching Netflix. But what's interesting is that Netflix actually started out a long time ago and they started out on DVDs, okay? So they actually had physical DVDs that they were shipping to and throw in the mail. Then they realized that people...

wanted to watch on their new devices, their new smart TVs, and so on and so forth. So they started doing streaming, which we all use today. But what's also really important for us to understand is that Netflix is no longer just doing streaming. They're also doing production and funding for new intellectual property and shows. So for example, Squid Games, as well as K-pop Demon Hunters, are examples where Netflix funded the production of these costs.

In the past, they streamed the intellectual property but it was filmed and funded by somebody else. But for K-pop Demon Hunters, what has happened is that Sony was the one that conceptualized it. They accepted a fixed fee. They didn't expect it to become super hot. And then Netflix said, will pay for it upfront for the rights to have all of the upside, all of the bonus upside. And Netflix was able to make this into a billion dollar outcome for themselves effectively, right? And...

We all know that now there's gonna be a K-pop Demon Hunters number two, there's gonna be some anime sequel, there's gonna be concerts, there's gonna be Spotify playlists. So they're gonna create a whole universe around it, similarly to how everybody started seeing Squid Game costumes for Halloween after Squid Game came out, right? So, you know, Netflix moved from DVDs to just streaming current intellectual property to producing and funding the intellectual property, right? And so the product, the approach keeps changing over time.

Now, of course, we talk about Rippling. So Rippling used the founder, called Conrad Parker, used to basically build a company called Zenefits. They were selling to HR officers, and they were doing this selling benefits as a platform. So if you wanted to give your employees the benefit of massages at the corporate office, for example, you would use this platform to engage it. But when he was forced out of Rippling,

he basically came to the insight, which was that actually HR officers don't just want benefits, they want everything. They don't want to handle laptop installation. They don't want to handle onboarding. They don't want to handle payroll. They want to outsource all of it. So he built a company that does all of it. And today, Zenefits was a billion dollar company, and now it's zero. And Rippling is now a billion dollar company globally today, right? So same customer, which is a HR officer, but...

different product. So the other version is also possible, which is that you can keep the product, but you change the customer, right? So for YouTube, they started out as a video-based dating site. Okay? So all of us watch YouTube today, and at that time, all the videos on YouTube were just people saying, hi, I'm Jeremy. I enjoy reading science fiction, and please date me and reach out to me, right? So that would be what YouTube was in the early days.

But what they realized was that this group wasn't very good. They weren't watching lots of videos. And so they pivoted so that anybody can share any type of video. And so YouTube became the same product, but different customers. If you look at Play Doh, which my kids were playing with this morning. So Play Doh used to be a cleaning putty. It used to be something that is for wallpapers for like a consumer good at home. But basically they realized that, we add colors to it. It can become a...

children toy for them to use. So lastly, you look at PayPal, they have always been doing some level of payments and they started out basically doing encryption and then they changed it from PDA to PDA, which is personal digital assistant to another personal digital assistant like Palm Pilot. And obviously they went on to handle eBay for payments. So they kept changing the customer over time.

But the core of it was always some level of payments component that they had.

If you are a startup founder or business owner, you start up a company with your early believers and then over time you have to change employees, right? And the team gets bigger. So I think what you have to realize is that it is 100% normal.

So I've built companies over time, I've been part of companies over time, I still remember the first person I ever fired. And it was a very painful experience because firing was a very personal experience for me. Today, obviously, I have had the unfortunate position of having done more, either in performance reviews or terminations or whatever it is, or even actually receiving resignation letters from teammates of I've had, right? And so I think what I want to say is this, that no job is forever. You know what mean?

If you take the opposite angle, which is that would you expect anybody to work for a job forever? answer is no, right? It's not lifetime employment. So I think we just acknowledge that companies and people are different. Companies are teams, sports teams are different. So companies are judged based on performance and humans are judged based on relationship. So I think that's really quite important. So one of the tricky parts that I like about what Netflix

has done is that they define that a corporate culture is not a family. They look at their corporate culture as a sports team. The reason why is that if you are my brother or my sister, if you are my family, I can't fire you.

We are by blood, we are gonna stick through thick and thin as much as possible. But if you're a sports team, then we need a striker, you're injured, we need a new striker, we need a defender, blah, blah. We are competing as a other type, we need to do a transfer. And so I think the crux of it is that we just have to the mindset that companies are closer to sports teams rather than families. At the same part of time, it means that you still treat your employees well.

And I think where a lot of people screw up is that because they feel like it's a family dynamic, they avoid that difficult conversation. They avoid talking about the performance review. They avoid that difficult, heart-to-heart conversation. And as a result, they seem to blindside the employee who comes across as very unprofessional about it. But if you think about it from a sports scene perspective, then you do the right thing. You're a professional. You tell them early. You speak to them early. You coach them. You give them a chance. You give them a second chance.

And if not, you set a boundary and you say, let's give you a handshake. Let's have a termination package that's fair. Let's find you a new job at a new place and let's keep the relationship alive. Right? So the more professional you are in that process, the better. So I think it's really about a mindset is that I think every company is a sports team, not a family. And if anybody in a company is telling you that their culture is a family, don't drink the Kool-Aid. Remember that no matter what

The HR team says that you are a family. In the back of your head, they always say, this is a sports team.