Acclimatize to fear: How to be a successful startup founder

In a recent episode of the First Person podcast we met Chris Fuller. UK-born Chris now runs a startup in the US. Once a reluctant student with dyslexia, Chris was hand-picked to do a paid PHD and then worked in the UK intelligence community before emerging to work in cyber security startups.

In an engaging and thoughtful conversation Chris told us that learning a skill and working as hard as you can are key to success in any career. And he said that his experience of working in startup organizations has taught him to address as many risks as possible, and then lead with confidence.

You can view our interview here, listen to it here, or watch in the box below:

Eliminate risks, live with fear

“How do you know if something’s a rocket ship? You put rocket fuel in it and see if it takes off.”

So said Chris Fuller in our recent conversation. He was sharing the wisdom of one of his backers. I asked him to explain.

“Most startups fail,” he said. “We’re incredibly lucky to have the team that we have on staff. The other two founders are the most brilliant people I’ve ever worked with. I couldn’t be happier. We’ve got an amazing crew of advisors. Great, great VC backing. We’ve got all the things to be successful.”

But still, Chris said, failure is more than possible. How does he manage that? He told us he starts by trying to capture an eliminate all the risks he can.

“I went and asked every person in the company. It’s two years time. We’ve run out of money. Why did the company fail? Once you accept that the biggest risk is you build something people don’t want, you need to understand what are the other big risks.”

It sounds terrifying. But to Chris’ point, addressing and eliminating risks helps his team live with the fear of failure.

“It helped us because we can address the risks that we think are most existential or at least understand them better,” Chris said.

“Let’s take a clear eyed look in the mirror and really understand what the risks are. De-risk them and just be honest with people about trying to understand their problems,” Chris told us. “It can be terrifying, but at some point you acclimatize to that. And that allows you a wonderful freedom to think clearly about the problem and dismiss mental biases and all those sorts of things.”

“You can’t control the outcome of things,” he said. “You just have to enjoy what you’re doing and make good and wise decisions. If I had to always be a success, then I just wouldn’t be. I’m going to do everything I can to make this startup a success. I’m going to think through and talk honestly to all the people.”

Or to go back to where we started: “It’s my job to make sure that rocket fuel does work.” (See also: How to be a great Chief Product Officer.)

Learning a skill, working hard

How does one get to this point in their career? For Chris the journey has been long and not entirely straightforward. He struggled in school and initially in university, only thriving with the support of a mentor professor who ultimately offered him the opportunity to complete a PHD. From their Chris worked in the UK intelligence community.

What did he learn from this experience?

“Work is harder than you think it is,” Chris said. “But you should work harder than you think you should.”

“Careers are longer than most people think,” Chris explained. “It’s something around a hundred thousand hours that most of us are to work through our lives. You come out of school and everything’s been created for you to be very easy to digest. And then suddenly you get into the workplace and work’s not like that. But actually you look at people that are doing, you know, got 20, 30 years of experience. You look at them, they do an amazing job, but it’s because they’ve spent 20, 30 years getting good at it.”

He feels this combination of academia and working with smart people in a high-pressure government role gave him an excellent grounding of core skills and attitude. He wouldn’t recommend only working in the startup space.

“The training was amazing,” Chris told us, referring to his time working in intelligence. “I always say to people, especially early in their careers. Startups are really exciting. I love startups. But big companies are a great place to go. They’ll give you some of the best training in the world. And then if you want to go and do something else, you can. If you want to stay, you can.”

So what caused Chris to go an do something else? In the end he found his metier in building solutions to problems. But it wasn’t always straightforward.

Learning from failure, solving problems

“Being able to deal with failure is one of the most important career skills,” Chris told us. “If you’re not failing at stuff, you are not trying.”

He recounted one of his first attempts at product development, back when he was working for UK intelligence.

“I had a slightly bizarre idea. And my boss helped me to go into what was then known as the incubator program,” Chris said.

The project went well in all but one, critical, way. No-one used the product he built.

“We executed really well,” Chris told us. “But at the end of it the idea just didn’t work out because I didn’t understand how large organizations worked. I didn’t know how to bring this thing back into the business. It was frustrating for me at the time.”

“It’d been a success doing this incubator, but then it just failed to actually deliver any real value because I didn’t understand the non-technical elements.”

It was this ultimate failure that pushed Chris into the world of cybersecurity startups. He joined Obsidian in 2018 and learnt the critical lesson that products work only when they solve customer problems.

“I watched it grow from a company that was struggling to find what it wanted to build,” Chris recalled. “I was there to help build something that really worked. It created the whole new category of products.”

Startups don’t need to do that. But they do need to provide solutions, according to Chris.

“Most startups fail because they build a product people don’t want,” he said. “You’re there to build something people want. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do.”

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