Listen in to the first-ever episode of Found Live. We were joined by the mother-daughter duo Jordan Taylor and Edith Cooper who co-founded Medley—a group coaching platform focusing on personal and professional growth. They talked with Jordan and Darrell about what it’s like to start a business with a family member amidst a pandemic, what it takes to foster community in a virtual space, and the importance of vulnerable, honest communication. Those who joined us live were able to participate in the conversation in real time. If you missed this live episode, don’t worry, we’re going live on Hopin every other Thursday. On March 3, Toyin Ajayi from Cityblock will join the found crew at 10am Pt/ 1pm ET
Listen in to the first-ever episode of Found Live. We were joined by the mother-daughter duo Jordan Taylor and Edith Cooper who co-founded Medley—a group coaching platform focusing on personal and professional growth. They talked with Jordan and Darrell about what it’s like to start a business with a family member amidst a pandemic, what it takes to foster community in a virtual space, and the importance of vulnerable, honest communication. Those who joined us live were able to participate in the conversation in real-time. If you missed this live episode, don’t worry, we’re going live on Hopin every other Thursday. On March 3, Toyin Ajayi from Cityblock will join the found crew at 10am Pt/ 1pm ET
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Unknown Speaker 0:00
found live in 54321. Hi, and
Darrell Etherington 0:05
welcome to the first ever episode of found live. I'm your host Darrell Etherington managing editor at TechCrunch. And I'm joined by the professional to my coaching.
Jordan Crook 0:16
Jordan crook. I'm deputy editor TechCrunch. Thank you for that.
Darrell Etherington 0:19
They're all it's definitely true. You're the professional, I do a lot of coaching of limited value. I do my best. But this is something really exciting we're doing so we're doing live recordings. Typically we record these no audience is present you the audience are obviously present. While we're doing this, just great. And this is gonna happen every other Thursday 10am Pacific 1pm. Eastern, we'd love for you to join us. And on off weeks, it'll be our friends over at equity, which is TechCrunch other podcast. So a regular episode have found, you know, Jordan and I talked to early stage founders about their experience building a company. But today, what's cool is that you can actually ask questions. So it's not just us, you get to jump in. And we encourage you to do so right and hop in. So we're broadcasting on our platforms. But if you go to hop in which you can find through our TechCrunch Twitter profile, you can register for free and join there. And then you can actually submit questions. And we'll be taking a look at those throughout the show. So also, just another thing I wanted to remind people about before we get started with the official show TechCrunch early stage is coming up fast. It's April 14, and that is the ultimate educational event. It's for startups in terms of just getting advice from the people who have done it about operations about fundraising, that tactical advice about everything. And there's q&a there too. So we really encourage audience participation in that it's a great chance to get questions answered by folks that you never would normally be able to. So we also have a special deal for anybody tuning in today, we are offering 25% off a subscription to TechCrunch plus. So if you don't know what TechCrunch plus is yet, I feel bad for you. But you can, you can still turn it around, you can go find it right now. TC plus is our premium product. And what you get there are deep dives into the industries and investors that you're interested in. And you can go subscribe over a TechCrunch plus.com. That's the easiest way to get there. And then just go ahead and enter found at checkout. So the name of this podcast and you'll get 25% off a one year subscription.
Jordan Crook 2:24
That's a big deal.
Darrell Etherington 2:25
Yeah. All right. Let's
Jordan Crook 2:27
get into the fun part.
Darrell Etherington 2:28
Yes, yes, I'm ready.
Jordan Crook 2:30
I'm super excited about our guests. I've covered medley a couple times now. And I always have the most fun talking to these two women, Jordan and Edith. He This is big golfer like I am. So I love that. And I thought maybe the right place to start was if you could just give us a high level there's a reason that they're also the professionals is coaching, I thought one of you could kick us off and kind of just explain to the audience we're madly is for folks who don't know yet.
Unknown Speaker 2:55
Absolutely, I'm happy to kick it off. And thanks again, Jordan and Dale, for having us. It's our very first live podcast too. So who knows what's going to happen, it could get weird. But my wife and I have been building medley for the past three years. And we are creating a membership community of people who are excited to come together and invest in their personal professional lives. And so the way people the way it works is people join medley, we match them to a group of six to eight other people who are there for similar purpose such as navigating a career transition, or looking to level up on their leadership, or just looking to get some perspective on their day to day, honestly, that's a big reason why people end up joining, and the groups meet with one of our certified coaches. And so we take a super holistic approach we have seen, you know, now more than ever, especially over the past couple of years, there's pretty much no boundaries between work and life, at least for Edith and I, it's also my mother, there's definitely no boundaries between work and life. But we really tried to create an open space where people can take a good hard look at what they're trying to get to and their work and their life and everything in between.
Darrell Etherington 4:02
That's great. Yeah, the blended approach is something that I think is unique, right? Because like you hear a lot of professional coaching, especially in like a startup context. And it's like, often something that investors will tell, you know, new founders are like, you need to do this now and do it early. And, you know, tech companies large and small, big focus on professional coaching, but you don't hear about it in this holistic kind of integrated way so much. And also this approach that sounds like I have a friend who has run MBA programs for professionals that like a couple of different tools. And like it has that aspect to it to where it's like a group of people who are in similar situations, perhaps vastly different in a number of ways, but similar in some ways, right? And they get together and they go on trips, and they do like case studies and stuff and learn from people in the business but also from each other. So you have that element too. So it sounds like it's a really like comprehensive approach but like what led you to come up with that kind of way to to go about,
Unknown Speaker 5:00
I can start and then Edith can chime in. And we can share about how we ended up doing this together. But you know, it's funny, you mentioned the MBA experience is something that I had experienced in my early 20s. Now I'm in my early 30s, about 10 years ago. Now, when you transition from school, whether it's high school, college into the real world, you really have to be intentional about crafting your community. And you really have to create support systems for yourself. When I was navigating that transition, I found it incredibly, incredibly challenging. And I had been used to having all these people around me with so much shared desire to grow and to learn, at least, that's what I found in my college environment, that I didn't have a space where I could take a step back, and where I could really take a look at what I was dealing with and the decisions I was making and be really vulnerable with other people. And so I actually ended up going to business school. And one of the most impactful classes there was this class called authentic leadership development, I signed up for the class, I thought, okay, leadership development, you know, I'm going to learn how to manage people, I'm going to learn how to, you know, inspire others. And we spent two hours a week in small groups, the content and the focus was really not anything that I was expecting. It was all about digging into people's personal journeys, the challenges, they've overcome their unique set of values, how they wanted to impact others. And that just sort of sparked an instinct of like, wait a second life is so much more than just this career ladder, that everybody's not everybody that many people are on because many people also aren't on that ladder. And now you see a lot of people crafting different paths for themselves, which we love and support, but space for real authenticity, real openness that's really hard to come by. And so I had graduated, and it was sort of this Kismet moment of timing with Edith and I. And I've been calling her EDA for the past two years now. And she's still sometimes winces. And it's weird.
Unknown Speaker 6:56
To me, and I'm not,
Jordan Crook 6:59
like so many times, and every time you do it, I'm like, she's your mom, you call her mind? No.
Unknown Speaker 7:03
Let's just do it. Let's just do it for fun. Jordan. Call me ma. Thank you, Jordan.
Unknown Speaker 7:17
Better Jordan, on the better. You know, but but so I was talking to my mom, I was talking to my mom at the time. And I'm telling her. And I was telling her, I was like, Mom, I really see something here. There's something in groups, like a lot of people have these groups in their lives, whether they're formal or are informal, structured, unstructured. And they're existing in these different spaces. And I feel like some more people could benefit from this, but I don't know what the business is. I just know there's something here. And after one of those conversations, you know, she had left Goldman Sachs in six months prior. And she had heard me, you know, I think there's something here, I don't know what it is, I'm not going to get a job. I'm going to work on this after graduation. And you know, she called me back after one of those conversations, and I thought she was gonna say, okay, so you really need to get a job. And instead, instead, she said, you know, what, Jordan, this ideation that you're going through with medley, this instinct that you have around how important it is, for people to have space to connect, to be open. And to just get some perspective on their lives is really in line with what I care about, and what I what I've done in my career. And, you know, when I, I've gotten to know many people who have worked with my mom in the past, and they describe her as her superpower as being able to create space for people. And more formally, if you know, she was running HR Goldman, and she was responsible for the coaching org there. And we thought, okay, like, what, there's a sort of this perfect mix of skill sets and mom, keep Correct. Yeah, wow. Another podcast on this topic. But, you know, it's, it'll be a Saturday night, I'm out to dinner with my parents. And I'm like, So Robert, and Edith. Were telling me and, you know, people are like, Robert. So we'll go ahead, and why don't you share your side of how it all began? And what drew you to, you know, dive into the startup world after a 30 year career?
Darrell Etherington 9:17
Because Jordan, you're coming from the perspective of like, Oh, I was in school, and like, this is what I saw there. And, and yeah, either if you're coming to the perspective of like, oh, I live this for decades, right? Like, I've seen this firsthand. And I've seen how it is right now. Where it's deficient, I guess, right.
Unknown Speaker 9:33
As mentioned, I spent quite a long time ie I'm pretty old in large corporate environments, finance in the last 10 years, I read HR Goleman. And, and it's really upon reflection that some things were just staring at me. First of all, you know, human interaction is really powerful. If it is, if you're working with it, if it's positive, if it's geared towards the same thing, you know, great things can happen, but often, it's just okay for some. And the reason that I've experienced that is because culture and people tend to net to sort of center around the common denominator. And if you're not part of that culture, you have to work extra hard at that. Coaching has always been applied in a corporate context to fix typically, things that are not great, or people who have been x, and we want them to be x plus y. And that's why you mentioned Daryl earlier that people apply coaching to startup founders, especially as they go from startup to growth phase, etc. And there is really significant opportunities there. But the thing that most people, as leaders, as humans have to figure out is, how do you actually connect with other human beings in a variety of different contexts. And I found personally that, you know, my open door policy, which I've always had, my whole career was limiting, right, because like, I couldn't just spend my whole day on one on one meetings. So I started experimenting with, you know, welcoming people into conversations and suggesting that they bring four or five people. And in that context, I was able to meet with these small groups on a more frequent basis. But there are requirements, don't bring other people who are in your same job. Don't try to find people that you don't particularly know, but you want to learn and grow with and from, and be real, because that's what this is going to be about, this isn't going to be about how to get that next job. Because in my role, people would often want to talk about that, right? And what happened over time. Darrell and Jordan is that like, over, you know, two or three meetings, people, like, didn't even really focus on me, and there was a moment of like, wait a minute, like, you know, like our to hear that? No, actually, they were here for each other. And so as Jordan was formulating this idea of medley, which is different people, because we're all different, by definition, coming together in a curated way with a coach to meet on a frequent basis to learn and grow with each other. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's what I deeply care about, it's what has always driven my thinking, how do we really create these more powerful connections with people and and medley has done that now, we started out with a belief, because it's been three, maybe four years now, Jordan, since our first conversations, that it needed to be live in person, because that's what was lacking. We were all trafficking on, you know, different social sites. Well, you know, that didn't really actually work out because we were going to launch just as the pandemic. But it's been incredible. Because what we've realized is yes, in person in Live is wonderful, is really cool that you guys are returning to live in your conferences as soon. But really, what it what is most important is like, what is happening in the way people are actually connecting, or not? And what does it feel like when you're having that real, authentic conversation in a trusting environment? And how do you then take that from a narrow lens of your reality, your personal and professional priorities, and take it back to the broader scope of your life? So yeah, that's what we've been up to. It's been quite a journey, but really pretty exciting.
Jordan Crook 13:10
I love like, how you guys make clear decisions on what would be really rigid, right? Like, they will be groups, they will be live, they don't necessarily have to be in person, because the pandemic spoiled that but like, we're not gonna do anything asynchronously, we're gonna have certified coaches. And then like, kind of, obviously, you can fall into it sort of track or you can come for x or come for y. But like, there's a lot of fluidity it feels like and flexibility about when you come what you might share, or what you might want to learn. And I think that that piece is really interesting. And I also something that always resonated in my mind when I was talking to you guys. And covering medley was the idea that, like, we're gonna make sure this group is curated specifically to be diverse, because I think that what can end up happening in the group setting is like, we're all coming to learn leadership, we're all coming from this company, right? We all like look the same, because we're all hired by the same hiring manager, we all think the same, because we were all hired by the same hiring manager, we're gonna come in and like, what are we going to actually learn from one another? Like, what perspective are we actually going to take away? Because we're all you know, in some way similar because we're curated together, and we're in this group for a reason, right? And so I think that that piece is really interesting. And I'm just curious, like, what on the product side that you've kind of like, learned from how that works, right? And like how you go about that, whether it's from the application process or like how you think about that kind of piece of it, making sure that that group of eight is our people that are going to help one another learn about differences and diversity and and teach one another and share perspective.
Unknown Speaker 14:48
Yeah, happy to hear more details there and just want to also comment on something you made the start up your observations really around. We have set some bounds around what we're doing and where we're focusing particularly for focusing on groups, particularly focusing on not targeting just one demographic of, you know, 25 year old people working in tech, that was a very decisive and important thing for us from an experience point of view. And ultimately, we believe it's going to be support and drive one of our differentiators. Because there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff out there right now, like, there's a lot of there are several coaches, you know, 1000s, and 1000s, of coaches who have their own practices, there are a lot of different types of apps, there's a new social network, I feel like every week, and what we've seen is there's a lot of space for people who are interested in low commitment, engagement and low commitment, sort of social interactions. But for somebody who is actually excited to form deeper relationships, which is one of the reasons why people join mentally, they're like, I want to meet new people and actually get to know them. And there's not a lot there. But Jan,
Unknown Speaker 15:55
can I just interject for a second? It's not because people are looking for friends, right? It's because they're looking for that experience expense, interacting and connecting with someone outside of their day to day and I think the environment that we've been in, in the last two years I'm and in reality, we'll probably be here forever, has brought to the forefront and a desire to really know that. I got to understand things from other people's perspective. Yeah, I want to make sure that I'm living in a broader universe. And the feedback that we've gotten from our members is that participation medley group has helped them do that.
Jordan Crook 16:30
New in this pandemic world has essentially met not authentic, because if something someone new is coming into your world, it's probably via zoom, and it's probably for 30 minutes, right? Like, it's not like we're going out and meeting people. And like being like, oh, let's hang out again, tomorrow, right? And or let's talk more like it's very rare that we're creating authentic relationships. So we have what we have that's authentic, everything new is surface. So combining those two seems like really critical.
Unknown Speaker 16:59
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And eat it. Mom, thank you for calling out that piece. It's not a desire for oh, I'm lonely. And I need new people. It's really very different. It's very much new relationships and new perspectives, expand my horizons, they help me think differently, they help me understand myself better, they help me understand people better. And, you know, going back to how we've evolved our products, and how we're thinking about investing and building product going forward, in order to continue to enable this, we think about it across various stages of the member experience, it definitely does start with how we match groups of people together, we have learned a ton. You know, we started with an algorithm, we tested that with a pilot, we use that for our first cohort, we evolved it to be a mix of the algorithm, and then the manual adjustments, and we're constantly tweaking and iterating, we see a world where imagine you were matching 500 groups in a month, or 1000 groups in a month, how incredible we could eventually match how well and effectively we can match people together. And the biggest driver of success and matching a group is having a shared sense of purpose and intent. But what people want to get out of the experience. And so we understand that and we get a sense of that from people from the the application questionnaire itself. And we also have conversations with people we hop on a short call to answer their questions, but also to understand like, why are you here? Who are who are you? And what what are you hoping to get out of this. Additionally, you know, as we think about the future, for mentally and where we've really been investing, ultimately, we're in the business of trying to create deep impact in people's lives. As I said before, a ton of low commitment experiences exist a ton of ways to easily in an app, five minutes a day work on your growth, I already exist. But for somebody who's like, I really want to make some sort of big change, I really want to get more sustained perspective. Again, there's not a ton for them. And so we're thinking of how in the digital product that we're building, we can incorporate our insights around the importance of matching the importance of the small group, while also driving connection in a deeper way in a more vulnerable way across the broader medical community. And that's where it gets really interesting and really exciting. And we actually are, you know, our team now is 13 people. In October, we were four or five people, we've really been focused on investing in building out product and engineering. And, you know, it's just been a real, certainly different set of challenges. But also exciting piece for both of us. You bring
Darrell Etherington 19:25
it up, I think that there's this space, that is like a demand that people didn't even identify existed, that you're clearly like exists. And like, clearly to Jordan's point, both Jordans points at this point, like, people do want those connections. They're harder to come by now. Right? There's this gap between I don't want to equate it with I'm not equating it with therapy but like on a continuum like therapy at the very far end or whatever, right of like, oh, like I need this kind of help. And then there's like, oh, I need tips and tricks to like, be a better manager in the day to day Long there's like it's unaddressed essentially. Right. And this is also what I think is interesting about your model. And I want to ask you about this, it seems very to me easy to take something like this and go, okay, like, Let's do enterprise sales and sale sell into organizations. And then they can do modules with their teams. But like by design, that's not what you've done. Right? And I think you get at a lot of those reasons. But is it something you considered? Like, do you consider it as something to explore in future? But how would you do it while maintaining? Or could it even possible to maintain them?
Unknown Speaker 20:32
That yeah, and I'm gonna give myself a minute, cuz I get this is like, you want to get me go. And this is the topic. And the topic, really, I have to say, I look back long ago, I eat five to seven years ago in the corporate enterprise world. And I think at that time, and still people spent a lot of time leaders and I was one of them talking about culture, and how important it is. And at the same time, you know, to Jordan point earlier, you know, we were hiring based upon a predefined set of criteria. And once you got in the door, often your success was dependent upon your ability to meet some of the cultural norms of that organization, which historically, to be quite frank requires you to like show up, his would show up into the building and become Edith in this sort of arena of, you know, work, Edith, etc. But what was happening, and which has gotten turbocharged over the course of the last few years, is that people really don't have an interest in NASCAR anymore. They're like, Yo, I am one person. Do I talk now? Like, I don't talk I'd like it's the new age, I am one person. And I'm not really interested, as an employee, oh, sorry, as a human working in organizations where I really can one be authentic. And I remember the first time someone asked me that question, can you bring your true self to work? And I had a wonderful colleague at the time, I kind of came up with some mumbo jumbo, but it was like, you know, we need to really like think about this, why are people asking those questions. And so what we see happening now is that there is this incredible opportunity, where people are coming to work and wanting to be, you know, humans at work, which means they're really interested in organizations that understand them, and the fact that they are living in a personal and professional identity. And for so many organizations in it, whether people were working remotely, or had to work in person, you know, we all prove that we can do that. And we can get it done and actually get it done far beyond our expectations going into it. And so, you know, from an enterprise leadership perspective, we've been really excited about the conversations we've had with companies who are saying, hey, you know, we've got to figure this thing out, we have to understand what it means to wit, lead people, you know, we get it, but we're not really schooled at it. And it sounds like people have been interested in heavily more their employees, because it's an opportunity for them to show their people that they actually care about them as people. And in doing that, they're meeting them where they are, they're showing that they understand that if you, you know, give people places where they can be authentic and trusting and, and engage with people outside of the day to day, they in turn, will have more confidence and more Mojo in the way that they think about their work and the way that they think about their employer. So that's been a huge, I'd say acceleration point for us, we always thought that there would be an enterprise offering, but we see it, and we're experiencing now. And you might say, Well, isn't that a conflict to go into direct to consumer? Well think about it, we want individuals who are part of mentally to go to think about, you know, their companies as being really important places to work when their companies paid for badly. And so we see a lot of momentum in that area.
Unknown Speaker 23:56
There's one thing I just wanted to clarify is that, you know, you mentioned okay, we could go and implement medley within companies, companies are actually more excited about sponsoring medley memberships for our broader community, because they recognize that in order for people to really feel comfortable, to really be open, and to really do some of the growth in the work that they want to, it's helpful to not be sitting next to your boss when you're sharing about something that you're working on. And so that's been really interesting for us, you know, we're really focused on creating connectivity of all these incredibly growth minded, eager to learn people across various industries across various companies so that you know, they can get that perspective. Yeah, I think that's the
Darrell Etherington 24:37
most exciting thing to me is because it's not like Yeah, it's like web 2.0 or whatever. There was this effort to include the identity of people I would say in the organizations, but it was not that it was like a false flag version of that where it was like, come to our thing and become like that person. Bring your identity here but we're going to subsume your identity to the larger identity right like you You're going to become a Googler, or whatever. And that has a certain set of connotations and meanings as opposed to like, bring your whole self to it. And then we will adapt to your whole self, which is what it sounds like. It's moving towards Yeah. Nice. Right?
Jordan Crook 25:12
I think that the idea of like, I love the fact that it's more popular among enterprise clients or, or within that world to offer your employees medley as a benefit outside of like some sort of corporate training, I actually think there's so much leverage right now in the hands of human employees, right, where it's like, we have the great resignation. And we have this talent shortage. And I think there's also we've talked about this several times, Darrell, across different podcasts with different people, but like, there's so much desire from people to say, like, I don't want my company to miss align with my values, like, this is what I spend at least eight hours a day, five days a week, at the very minimum, doing this is what pays for everything else that I do that is a representation of my values. And how could I let that percentage, that massive proportion of my life be dedicated to something or people that I don't align with, and that aren't a good representation of my identity? And so those things combined means that like, you know, workplaces are having to change the way that they think about it, right. And I think medley is swooping in and saying like Hello, you know, the time's right? Here we are, which is cool and very exciting. I'm curious if you guys are ever take like go to be be in a group be in a medley group. Like I mean, not just like, as, you know, like, Oh, we're dropping in for quality assurance, like the boss is here, right? But like go and actually be a part of a group and like do it regularly for yourselves.
Unknown Speaker 26:55
So we neither of us have been in a formal mentally group, but I have two groups I'm a part of that are unassociated with mentally. So I have my own medleys in my life, I have a group of women that meets every month, actually was affiliated through my business school, we've stuck together for four years, our current head of enterprise as the General Manager of our enterprise offering, she's working on contacting it, I met her through that group, which is pretty crazy. She graduated from business school about 10 years ahead of me, named Sabrina, she's wonderful. I also am in a group of eight founders, actually. Um, so I have a group of founders and you know, I was at first Radisson because I thought, Okay, I have a lot of different pieces of my own identity versus just, you know, being a founder. And that obviously, you know, takes and consumes a lot of my energy, but I was uncertain about it. But the, it's led by a coach, people very much bring their whole selves to the table and a wide range of industries, ages lived experiences. And it's just dedicated time for me to get perspective and eat it. Also, I'll let you share about sort of the medleys that you have in your life. But yeah, it's, it's like a really important part for me of how I think about investing in myself and sort of self care in some way. I'd like really prioritize that time.
Unknown Speaker 28:15
So we interact with our mentally members in a number of ways. You know, you're you pointed out, Jordan, in your question that for us, as founders to participate in a medley group is is tough to navigate.
Darrell Etherington 28:27
Yeah, you'd be putting your finger on the scale a bit, probably. Yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 28:31
And so, you know, despite my sort of ways to twist and turn is like, Okay, I'll be my own people to my medley. Like, find people who
Darrell Etherington 28:39
come and disguise?
Unknown Speaker 28:43
Me, I'll figure it out, you know, what's the part of the medley experiences is that we have opportunities to engage with our members. And so I've had a number of conversations with our members around things you can imagine I, I'd be focused on, you know, how do you navigate change? How do you think about the balance or lack thereof, in your lives, etc, but to Jordan's point, and the reason that she highlighted that she has found other forms to experience the benefit of groups is that we don't believe that you should have one mentally in your life. And, you know, what building mentally has really cemented for me and shown me is that, you know, when you bring that lens to other memories that you're a part of, you get more, you contribute more, you're more open, and you're more deliberate and intentional, about respecting the time that you have with, you know, other business leaders and friends and family. You know, these are all my medleys and instead of them just being random acquaintances, I'm using the things that we're implementing in and learning from our medley groups and other aspects of my life and that is ultimately the point.
Jordan Crook 29:48
It's interesting. You guys are obviously your mom and daughter duo. You're both leaders of the company. Either if you have a career and leadership Right. And then Jordan, you know, you're learning, you know how to be on top? And I'm just curious, like, how you feed that for yourself? Alright,
Darrell Etherington 30:11
a simpler question, which was like, how did you make the call? Initially? Did you toss a coin? Or how did you make the CEO? First?
Jordan Crook 30:21
That is a simpler question.
Darrell Etherington 30:23
I wanted to lead into the
Jordan Crook 30:25
nuancing it, you know,
Unknown Speaker 30:27
hey, there was no joint cost, it was hers to begin with. It was hers. We didn't even talk about it. Because, yeah, because I deeply believe that medley is a brainchild of Jordans experiences. And, you know, I think the most important thing is to really make sure that we're not building something that's a reflection of, you know, the 30 years have passed, but we're really positioning for the future. And so, you know, whose best to do that me or Jordan, I mean, like, please, but but I would say that, it has been very important in that role that and with Jordan as the CEO, for me to make sure that I'm leveraging the experiences that I've had, particularly as we started to build our team, you know, which is really exciting. You know, you think, immediately, okay, instead of four people, we have 13. So we're going to do 13 times as much stuff, but only if you read the organization. Well. And, you know, I've been really excited to see how Jordan has, you know, taken that on, but I'm also working very closely with Jordan and the other leaders in the team to contribute my perspective, and the learnings that I have. So, you know, it was it, that wasn't a tough one who gets to decide, you know, listen, you know, listen, think of the roles that Jordan and I are I've had, and I've been a mom, and at least for a while you think you get to decide whether you really ever do another podcast or somebody like offshoots of this conversation. But you know, literally until a certain point, you know, you that's, that's apparent is parents job. And in the workplace, even though I like to project myself as a person of the people, you know, people who have worked with me think that I'm delusional, and I was a decision maker, and I often was, and in the construct of being a co founder with Jordan, I'm not a mom, I don't get to say you do this, maybe sometimes I might want to, but I don't. And, you know, I'm not, you know, the ultimate decision maker as a co founder of coke got a co not, you know, person in charge. And I think that that really has been really critical and what we've been able to build in a relatively short period of time.
Darrell Etherington 32:43
times be like, you just like, please, please don't? Like, are there ever times where you're like, Look, I know this user, please, please don't because I just know, it's not gonna happen, right?
Jordan Crook 32:54
Yes, yes. Yes. I want to hear your, your perspective, because like, I'm just imagining being the CEO of a business that my mom and I co founded. And even if my mom was, like, Edith, and was like, I can avoid doing this or kind of like, momming my way through this.
Unknown Speaker 33:16
Oh, that's my way through it. Yeah, I still
Jordan Crook 33:20
like 1am, desperate to please and make my mother proud. And to I'm just used to listening to her and used to asking her advice on things. So I can't imagine I mean, I'm not saying that you don't ask your mom advice. But like, if you did, and hers was directly against something that you think would be the best call. It would be almost impossible for me to be like, I trust Jordan, over my mom, I would always be like, okay, mom thinks, and she'll be happy when I you know, like, I maybe I'm just like a mama's girl. I am a mama's girl. I'm not gonna say I'm definitely a girl. But like,
Unknown Speaker 33:56
Is it hard for you on? hard I mean, I, you said at your core, you just want to make your mother proud. All I want to do is make my mom proud. And when she's, you know, if something's wrong related to me or not, I feel it, you know, just as you would with any person who you love very dearly. I think something that's been really amazing about our relationship is just how much trust we've add and had to build in each other. And there are moments when we disagree. And there's moments when we have a different point of view on a decision. I really trust her. So when there's, you know, when there's certain types of decisions, especially related to people, I very much am like, okay, like you have a lot of reps, you know, you you have seen this before you understand how to navigate this. I also am not delusional, where I am in my own leadership. I view the fact that I get to work with my mom, someone who I look up to and have looked up to my full life but who always So is truly one of the best people in the world at just influencing and connecting with others like, well, I have some meetings sometimes and I'm in the meeting, and I'm just like, where did that even come from? She comes up with this stuff, she pushes things across the line, and I am just soaking it all in. And so I very much view my sort of learning trajectory, as you know, I hope to continue to learn, but I'm not, I'm pretty humble, I think about you know, where I shine and where I still have have to invest. And I actually think my biggest learning of working with Edith and my mom so far is that she is has been in the professional world for, you know, 35 years, she has three kids, she has friends, she's a family member, she's
Unknown Speaker 35:50
got a few things going on, she
Unknown Speaker 35:54
she is constantly learning. She's constantly like, How can I continue to learn? How can I get myself in this uncomfortable situation? How can I show up better for the people I love? I've watched her shift her goals from to be much more intrinsically motivated. She's like, How can I find time for myself today, and she's constantly you know, whatever it is, it's this just like desire to keep learning to keep strengthening her relationships keep showing up for people. And that has been for me, it's sort of, it's almost comforting, because I see her and I'm like, You know what, this, this learning is never going to end. And so I'm constantly trying to push myself and put myself in challenging situations to be way more vulnerable than I want to be with my team to take risks that I'm scared off and try things and ask for things that I don't want to ask for. And I'm attracted, like my main takeaway. And in
Unknown Speaker 36:47
the truth is sometimes I'm not right. And and I think it's really important to have enough humility, or quite frankly, honesty with myself that I may be 150% Certain, and I don't want to be working with Jordan in a way that if I say go, she goes, because then what are we? What are like, what are we doing here? I mean, and so because we're in a new, we're building a new category, and in a time that's so different than some of my experiences. And so, you know, there are times that actually turn out to be right. But it's learning for both of us. And that's great. Yeah,
Jordan Crook 37:23
I think I like my partner has a 14 year old. And one of the things that I've learned, and being in the house and trying to like pseudo parent is, Danny, my partner always says, I really want to say when I'm wrong, as much as possible, because if I'm never wrong, then how she going to feel about being wrong. Yes, right. Or making a mistake. And I was like, it's like, never even occurred to me, with my mom. She's just got to be right. Even when she's wrong. She's right. Right. Like that is just how I grew up. And it was such an eye opener to me, but I think that what you said he did, it's so important, because like, when you're wrong, and Jordan gets to see that it's like, okay, but it's okay. Right, like, people are wrong, and that's okay, you're gonna be wrong, too. Which I think is like a really, really important thing.
Darrell Etherington 38:09
I think for like, one thing you said during that I was like, very impressed by but also kind of like, oh, yeah, I guess so. To me, it would go the other way is like you see your mom constantly learning and adapting and you're like, encouraged by that? Whereas I think I would be more
Jordan Crook 38:24
Yeah, maybe not done yet. Like, sweet. I know what I'm doing. Everything's great. That looks good. You know,
Unknown Speaker 38:40
I think her priorities certainly have shifted like to be clear, you know, she's not like, oh, my gosh, I need to be burning the midnight oil responding to email and be as productive as I can be like, let me read this productivity hacking blog post, like that is not how she's striving and learning. For her. It might just be a conversation with someone unexpected, where she learned a very, like nuanced story about someone's life, and it makes her think about something for her it might be constantly just like blocking off time for herself because she's such a giver, and watching her continue to just like work on setting boundaries. And so it's like, yes, the like, are we on this rat race that never ends? I think what I've seen is that she's not on the rat race. She's actually just be still being thoughtful around creating a path that's nourishing for her and nurturing people around her and just remains. She like, still has this deep curiosity about people and believes that she has something to learn. That's something that I also really, I like treating people with respect, showing up to conversations with openness, understanding that everybody has a story. You know, those are things that me my siblings, I have two brothers and a dad it's funny people it's like yeah, we have to feel the rest of the family do they? Oh, lucked out.
Unknown Speaker 39:59
But you know Can I tell you, I, this isn't a real talk here, I have to tell you, there are times where I feel like I'm still on a rat race, because the path is not defined. You know, and so, you know, when you have a significant role at a large organization, I mean, I with my colleagues, you know, in HR responsible for the hiring, investment, etc, etc, for 34,000 people all over the world. And you might define that as the ultimate rat race, but you know, there's a cadence to it, right? You work within the boundaries of culture, you work to change the culture, you work to innovate, etc. But there's guardrails. With respect to things, you know, now, I have an opportunity to really change and create a conversation around what it means to have a medley in your life, and touch people's lives in a very different way that I deeply care about, but it's still pretty amorphous. And, you know, it's fueled by early conversations that we had with Jordan and shout out to Jordan for like, you know, really like saying, what are these two women doing? And let me like, it's not an app, but I'm going to talk to them anyway. So I think why I'm sharing this is because I think it's really important to note that, you know, the startup world is and building a movement and organization is a rat race. And it's really important to figure out how you define things so that you can feel like you're being productive. And it's taken a little bit of time for me to figure out how to do that.
Darrell Etherington 41:26
I think Case in point, you mentioned this, the shift to remote, right, like because pandemic, it does strike me though, like after hearing about everything else about how you think about the business like it makes, it's perfect is perfect for it, right? Like it's it fits so perfectly with remote, but you would have had to learn that the hard way, essentially, right, because like, it wasn't something you chose to go into. But like, I don't know if Jordan feels this way, like TechCrunch journey. But for us, we've worked a long time remote like for for TechCrunch. And the big danger that I've identified in it and like something that I've had a lot of difficulty getting over is that it can very quickly start to feel like a single player game. And you can lose perspective on like, the people in Slack, the people in on email, whatever else are real people, all people with full existences. And you need that perspective. And it's very hard to get that perspective just strictly from work and working relationships. So that's why it seems so apt, right, that you would that you would like, be addressing remote by necessity. But like that must have been such a hard pivot to go into and like especially your backgrounds weren't necessarily in remote. Previously, how was that adaptation process? And like, how did you personally, both of you come to grips with that
Unknown Speaker 42:50
there was hard the pandemic, and you know, the first few months, from March to June 2020, I believe, are one of the most dramatic periods of consumer behavior change that we'll see probably in our lifetime. I mean, who knows, there might be another pandemic, but honestly, the people went from spending time outside their homes every single day to, you know, their whole lives being within the four walls, right. And so we saw just a huge shift in the willingness that people had to engage openly, authentically, online, actually. So beforehand, people had association with online experiences as being inferior as being lower quality. And as soon as you know, the ability for people to gather was just taken away, people had no choice but to be open to really showing up online. And so you know, that was the first thing that we thought of when you know, everything started to shut down. Our first worry was, but wait, are people going to be real? Are people going to be vulnerable? Is this even going to work? And so we had some free sessions that we put on with some of our coaches, because we you know, we're a month from launch. And, you know, people were opening up with strangers, sharing parts of their lives, learning so much from the coaches. And that was a really strong staple for us. And then we quickly realized that the ability for us to bring together people from different locations actually enhanced our ability to bring together people from literally different places and different perspectives. And so, you know, I think that was the bright side from like, a business model point of view. And from an experience point of view, you know, there's things you can do when people are on their computers ways you can integrate technology in a much more seamless way that you can't actually do when you're in person because if someone has a device, it's very invasive. Yeah. So I think that was a positive, I would say on the more personal and more challenging side, I found the year 2020 to be very, very challenging. I really struggled from I became very depressed towards the end of 2020. And I would say that was probably a hard part for Edith and my mom and my relationship because I was really really suffering. And I still honestly hard to describe what serious depression is like, it's symptoms that I didn't even know were related to depression. I didn't want to have no motivation. I couldn't think I couldn't any going for a five minute walk felt impossible. Yeah. Oh, guess I couldn't physical symptoms
Darrell Etherington 45:15
are things people don't know. It also, can
Unknown Speaker 45:18
I just try just highlight, like, this is the world that we live in. I mean, they the reality that Jordan is so forthcoming with, you know, the mental stresses and realities, I have to say, you know, I don't think that that was as comfortable for people to be so open about the realities of life. And and I think that that made it even more challenging. And so the fact that we've all worked to figure out how to turn this very one dimensional, narrow join, when we were chatting before we got started, I think he said that, you know, new means not authentic, because, you know, what do you do, like you meet someone, first time you get busy, you don't like chat with them about, you know, that weekend for 25 minutes of the 30 minutes. And that actually, is very hard. Because as human beings, you know, we really need that realness. And so we've pivoted, but we work really hard to virtual, but we've worked, and we've benefited from having people from all over the world, but we work really hard to create these moments of trust and authenticity. And we talk about and people share what it's like to take that back to real person. I just came back from London yesterday, the first international board meeting that I've attended. And you know, I have to say, I don't know how many trips I've made, you know, and, but I, when I was walking into the building for the meeting, I was like, like, uncomfortable, like, I was feeling unsteady. Like, I don't know that like, hey, how, you know, like, like, what's the chit chat gonna feel like I don't even know to to other people. But like, I don't even know, like, you don't have anything interesting to share? Like, oh, my gosh, I have like on a full set of clothing, not just
Jordan Crook 47:09
the weather is great. Yeah, well, it's not so
Unknown Speaker 47:11
great. What time was your flight? But we got through that. Like real? Well, we'll figure it out. Because as human beings, you know, you for me that that that fuels my soul. Right, like going past that and getting into real stuff.
Jordan Crook 47:27
I do think, Jordan, it's awesome for you to share what you were going through, I think it's very clear that you're not alone. I know, I never really suffered from anxiety in my life, and was really struggling things that I like, didn't really understand when people said, Oh, I have anxiety. Like, why? For what, right? And that just like hit me. How was not empathetic I was being I don't want to change tax too quickly. But we do have an audience question. That's pretty good, actually. And I want to make sure we get it in before out of time. My audio is cutting out. Darrell, can you take this one?
Darrell Etherington 47:57
Yep. So Alexa Murray asks, given that this is a community based business, how did you tackle the cold start problem? So getting from zero to a critical mass of users to give the network value? And is there anything you would have done differently to solve that problem?
Unknown Speaker 48:12
Yes. So that's a that's a wonderful question. And, you know, the big thing for us, that was been critical from the very beginning, is really investing in forming relationships with our very, very first members and customers. And so, you know, obviously, with any new business, especially with it being community based, we were very transparent, that I think, really, really helped. It's like, we're only gonna have a couple 101st members in this cohort of people, you know, how to align expectations. That being said, we're really invested in getting as much feedback from you as possible, and getting to know you as much as possible, and really making this a meaningful experience. And so I think that being incredibly upfront with our initial customers, and really investing in forming a two way relationship with them, and and signaling that through actions, whether it was open houses, one on one conversation, small group conversations really helped to start to spearhead, you know, the ambassador relationship of our first few members. And so, you know, it's something that I think, for us has also been, we've also approached that using some of our bigger partnerships as a way for us to, you know, start to generate critical mass, but it's so hard, you know, you're, you're convincing people that they should engage and not only commit their money, but commit their time. And what we found is just being so critical as everyone who has participated in a medley is excited about what we're doing. They want to they want to contribute to us at an early stage, they view that as actually a benefit. And we return that to them by being super responsive. And if somebody wants to an event, if somebody is excited about a certain topic, a guest speaker, we will respond and do it for them. And so that's sort of what we get back in return.
Darrell Etherington 49:54
Yeah, I think I saw I want to Jordan's articles, like early on you had PS like 99% or something thing which is like,
Jordan Crook 50:01
Yeah, great. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 50:04
Yeah, we did a pilot actually on the b2b side with them, LinkedIn. And it went tremendously well. Interestingly, you know, we were curating medleys amongst part of their, their population. And, you know, it's been interesting for us, as we've gotten to know our customer identify who they are what they care about, you know, we do cross demographics. It's very much a psychographic of this person who's already engaging and some of the materials that we described earlier, like the podcasts and the blogs, and insulators and things like that they care about their development, they're excited about the future. And if you made the sort of big, bigger commitment, and wait, invest in that, and so you know, it's constant. For us, we're in a discovery phase. And we hope that in 510 years, we're still in that phase, because, you know, as I've seen in working with EDA, as much as you can embrace learning is one of the biggest accelerators and catalysts for continued growth. So,
Jordan Crook 50:55
well, whenever you're ready to talk to your enterprise team about selling Yahoo, or we're ready
Unknown Speaker 51:01
to Yes. To pay for.
Unknown Speaker 51:05
Yeah. Yeah. That is really a big part of it, you know, that, that, you know, you do have to create momentum you do, you know, we appreciative of opportunities like this, that you, Darryl, enjoy, have created for us to talk about it. Because when we talk about medley, you hear why it's really important. And so yes, an intro to Yahoo would be great. Yes, everyone who's, you know, listening in now live or later in the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. And we'd love to have you considered mentally and your companies that are mentally because that's when we turn from an important series of, of number of members to something that is really going to really change the way people interact. And in broader scale.
Jordan Crook 51:49
I was such a classy plug. I'm all about it. I wish I could say things like that. Was it was it was it all right. I mean, you're you are special ed, I can't wait. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Man. All right. Well, I think that's the time on the podcast. We really appreciate it hanging out with you guys. Those really fun as thanks to the audience for being here. Thank you to both of you for for making the time. It was a special one. I'm glad you guys were the first thing that worked out really well.
Darrell Etherington 52:21
It's great that you were very open about just your experiences and the startup.
Jordan Crook 52:28
Alright, well, thanks, guys. And I guess that's it for the audience, too. Thank you, audience for hanging with us and see us in two weeks
Darrell Etherington 52:38
for equity and Thursday after that for us, our regular TechCrunch Live episodes on Wednesday. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 52:45
Thanks a lot guys. We appreciate you having Bye. Bye.
Darrell Etherington 52:52
Found is hosted by myself. TechCrunch news editor Dale Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. We are produced by shad Kulkarni and edited produced by Maggie Stamets TechCrunch is audio products are managed by Henry pic of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever get your podcast and on Twitter at twitter.com/found. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us at 510-936-1618 and leave us a voicemail. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/bound listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai