Jeff Raider: So I mean, I think having cofounders and co-CEOs in a company is great if you feel like you've got a great relationship with that other person, and your skills complement each other well. You know, when you're starting a company, early on, you've got so many things you've got to do. I mean, there's all these different functional buckets, and then there's 100 items under each of those that you have to think about, you know? Just to ship product, you have to find a distribution partner. You have to negotiate the right rates. You have to figure out the right protocols and processes. And so, there's just way too much for any one person to do. You've got to build a team that can help. And if you want to be excellent at a lot of those things early on, having amazing people who can, I think, drive different pieces of that is really valuable. And I think, you know, it was helpful for us to be able to kind of divide and conquer in that way; trust each other, in an implicit way, that we were going to execute well on our individual pieces; and then obviously, align on the areas of intersection on sort of the general vision for the business.
Richard Feloni: So, how would the co-CEO model be different from, say, one of you being a CEO, and one being the COO?
Raider: Yeah. I think, you know, for us, we always felt like we were equal partners in this business. That's how we structured the business, economically. That's how we structured our sort of engagement with the team. It's us, doing this together. And so, we felt like creating unnecessary hierarchy would just complicate that dynamic. And it's always been that dynamic. You know, Andy and I kind of joke that we finish each other's sentences. We now, we've known each other for 15 years. We've spent so much time together, and that, sometimes, our email should just be Jeff and Andy at Harrys.com, instead of Jeff at Harry's, or Andy at Harry's. You know, like your grandparents have an email, you know, whatever-
Feloni: Like a shared email, yeah.
Raider: Yeah. And so, you know, we feel like it is a partnership, and that our titles just reflect that partnership. We're also not precious about titles. I've never been like, you know, "Oh, I'm," this title or that tile.
Feloni: If you have equal footing, has there ever been moments where you've butt heads?
Raider: I mean, I think there are times when we disagree, but I think we have a tremendous amount of mutual respect for each other. And so, our disagreements are never personal. It's always just sort of objective, like what is the right answer to this specific question. And then, we usually use logic and reasoning to sort of solve it. The other thing that we've done a lot is, if we have really hard problems that we're not sure of, we talk a lot about the fact that there's not always necessarily a right answer. And so, what we then, often times, do is just get amazing advisors around us, and present those questions as a unified front; together, say, "Listen, we're thinking about this. We're actually not sure. Here are the benefits. Here are the drawbacks. Can you just help us think through this?" And I think, oftentimes, their input is really valuable to our decision making process as well.
Feloni: So, it sounds like the way that you guys have figured it out is a matter of like, setting aside your egos, and just letting someone choose?
Raider: I think that's right. And I think we respected each other's perspectives and ability to sort of drive our parts of the business together. When it came to strategy, where are we taking the company, what do we want to build in the longterm, I think that's where we spent more time together. And I think, you know, one of the things that we always talk about is that strategy is what you don't do, as opposed to what you decide to do, because we have all these opportunities. And so for us, it was about thinking about, "Okay, what are the things that we really want to do, and the things that we're not sure about," and then getting input from our team, and board, and advisors, and other people at the right points in time, to help us where those answers may not be as clear.
Listen to the full episode »