Building Compa and family, 3 years in
A brief interlude from comp insights to share my founder journey
Three years ago I announced Compa to the world. A few months earlier, my first daughter was born. When we introduced offers-based market data last May, my second daughter was 6 weeks old.
…So, hopefully I break the habit of growing my family as fast as Compa.
This week I’m taking a brief interlude from comp insights to reflect on my experience building Compa and family alongside each other, which has been, in a word, transformative.
And while Joe’s flight metaphors are my frequent go-to, I’m instead relying on a few immutable truths often uttered by my philosopher sales leader, Bobby (who is better known to some as Point Break*), to frame my thoughts:
“Leap and the net will appear”
“Action is the answer”
“Honesty sets you free”
1. “Leap and the net will appear”
There is never a perfect time to do anything.
It’s always risky. Always tradeoffs. Excuses come easily.
The question is: what do you want from life?
Once you know that: do you have the courage to go get it?
I used to jokingly agree with people that it’s horrible timing to both found a startup and start our family, but over the years I’ve evolved my view. Actually, the timing is profoundly focusing.
Taking a big risk — indeed, betting everything on myself — brought focus to doing what matters.
My world is small: family and Compa.
When I carve out 5-7:30pm every week night to be fully present for family walks, dinner, and bedtime with the baby girls, it means that each hour of the weekday counts that much more.
Building a family and a startup work in tandem because the underlying energy is the same:
They both need everything I’ve got
They both crawl before they walk
They both fill me with unspeakable pride when we grow and succeed
When you know what you want, take the leap as soon as you can.
Risk clarifies.
2. “Action is the answer”
I founded Compa coming from the world of perfection.
On my first day at Mercer, someone told me that that if in college 98% right is an A+, in consulting it’s an F. I took that to heart. Over the years, I built this muscle in the corporate world; perfection matters a lot to me.
But a startup forces action. You must go fast.
And as badly as you want to bend the laws of physics, fast is antithetical to perfect.
Building a startup is a fundamentally uncertain enterprise. So much of the path ahead is shrouded in the unknown, which you can only un-shroud through action. Action converts uncertainty into information you need to calculate risk, and act again.
So the catch-22 is that getting something “perfect” now requires complete information, which requires taking action to discover.
Action is the answer because it’s do or die. As Joe says, a startup is flying close to the trees; you can feel the treetops hitting the bottom of your wheels as you hold your breath. (snuck a flight metaphor in here 🛫)
The parallel I see with starting a family is how fast time moves.
Parents know: the days are long and the years short, as Sahil Bloom says.
“Maybe we’ll do that next year,” kind of means never because your infant will be a toddler next year, and your toddler will be a kid. There is no perfect Thursday afternoon to take everyone to the zoo; if you want your kids to see elephants in real life, you just do it. Otherwise, you don’t.
The daily practice of taking action reframes your life from being a spectator to being on the court. Startup speed has transformed my perspective on life, and I’ve found it deeply rewarding (if sometimes scary).
3. “Honesty sets you free”
When I say honesty, I mean the courage to be yourself… and to play the cards in your hand, not the ones you wish were there.
We never planned to move to SoCal. 2020 was a wild year for everyone; for my wife and I, it meant throwing out our carefully laid plans to move to London. And for the longest time I struggled being down here. I realize of course there are worse places to be than southern California, but I felt dislocated; my heart was in San Francisco where my wife and I met. I missed the moss and the trees.
When I’m honest with myself, SoCal is where much of our family is, and it simply makes sense to be here with everything we’ve taken on in life. Perhaps someday that will be different.
I’ve embraced the surfer mentality, another Sahil Bloom lesson. We don’t have to be monolithic in our identity. Things change.
Today, I’m the dad of two baby girls and I’m leading a startup. I’m exactly where I should be. Honesty sets me free to embrace the present.
In the early days of Compa, I used to shy from our size and stage. I wanted us to be a big company right away, to make things feel big, and feel finished. But that wasn’t true.
Rather, the early startup days are frantic, unfinished, and error-prone… and also precious. Only when we invited people into that world with us did we begin to rapidly build on our success, from shipping better product, hiring great people, and partnering with customers who want to be a part of something, to forming lasting relationships with my investors and advisors who want to help.
The same can be said for embracing toddler tantrums.
Honesty with yourself begets intimacy with everyone in your world.
Cheers to the road ahead
Building Compa and family are an inextricably intertwined chapter in my life.
I’m grateful for my wife and daughters, who have transformed me as much as all of you do in the Compa world.
Thanks all, and cheers to the road ahead.
Alright, back to comp next week. 🫡
*PS — Point Break holds up well, worth the rewatch!
Peer Group is a newsletter for comp leaders navigating market volatility in the new era of pay transparency! If you want to share my newsletter, you can forward this email to your colleagues and fellow comp leaders.
Want more polls and insights about today’s volatile talent markets?
Subscribe by hitting the button below.
Hi Charlie, Joe and Taylor, I admire each of you for your innovation, belief in self and for integrating your lives as they happen. I have every confidence in Compa and love the authenticity and talent each of you has brought to the company and ultimately to the customers who need your product.