Effective Communication in a Workplace — with Howie Xu (formerly) of TrustPath

Howie Xu was the founder of TrustPath which he then sold to Z Scaler. It’s since grown from 1,000 to 6,000 employees. He’s also a guest lecturer in Product Market Fit at Stanford University Graduate Business School.

Do you run into discrepancies among your founding team?

This is the problem that Howie and I discuss today.

Howie was the founding VP engineer for a startup…. But he had fundamentally different views from the CEO.

For Howie, the reason behind a company's success is that they believe in what they do — and they go for it.

And at this particular startup, he didn’t have that.

Reflecting on it now, the founding team for this startup could have been more united in this respect.

In this episode, Howie shares how 1 piece of advice resulted in him taking a more tactical approach to his communication.

We discuss the concepts of 

• Contextual communication
• Intellectual honesty
• Awareness

More from James:

Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com

Transcript

James: So welcome to Future Fit Founder podcast. I'm delighted to have as our guest today Howie Xu. He was the founder of Trusts Path, which he sold to Zscaler, which is subsequently grown from one to 6,000 employees. And he's also a guest lecturer in Product Market Fit at Stanford University Graduate Business School.

So welcome.

Howie: Thank you for having me on the.

James: So life is good now, but wh which moment are we going back to in my coaching time machine?

Howie: I can think of a moment that, uh, that's a few startups ago. I was the funding VP of engineer, um, of a startup. And, uh, at a time, you know, I had a, a pretty different, just to say the least view on the strategy and then the direction of the company was the, uh, my founder, CEO.

James: Amazing. This, this, this, this should be interesting. So we're going back to this moment. It sounds like you've, you've got, you've got a very different view. With your ceo, 

Howie: Well, just on the tech for a second. Right. You know, my c e o is a brilliant guy, you know, um, and I respect him a lot, right? He has accomplished it a lot, you know? Both on the academic and also on the, as an entrepreneur. Uh, but you know, for the company at that time we were kind of like discussing and debating internally, Hey, should we go open source or not open source, right?

And, uh, sure open source has a lot of pros and cons and then, Not going open source has its own disadvantage at a time given the competitive landscape, right? But it's more than just the open source or not, right? You know, it's actually, do we have the right D n A, right? What does that mean to the engineering team, right?

You know, certain people, you know, are more motivated, some people are less motivated. How do we handle the people aspect, right? And what is the business model, right? And are we going to make a lot of money or this is a marketing. Right. So what are we getting out of it? So there are way more than just the technical versus as a business, right?

James: how does that play out then? So 

Howie: So I think, the question is, you know, how do we go about it?

Right? I think it was the hindsight, right? You know, I coulda, you know, uh, I think I was able to handle it, but I, I coulda handled it even better or a lot better, for instance. Right? You know, just identifying, hey, you know, Um, Mr. C e o, you and I have very different view. Here's the difference, right. Um, in a more proactive way, right.

You know, hey, instead of, Hey, we have different view, let it play out a little bit, right? Because, you know, as a startup, you cannot afford to have, um, you know, people have different view, right? So, so the, the, the founding team and the key executives. Always, always have the same view is important. Now, having same view doesn't mean, you know, you and I have same view in a way, but, but we have to converge the view.

Right. You know, um, disagree and a commit and then disagree, and a commit in the, in the, in the truthful way. .

You know, the only advantage you have a, as a startup is, people have the same view and then just attack something you know together, right? Because otherwise, you know, you're going to lose out to big companies anyways. If, if you just account a number of people, kind of number of resources, right?

The only reason a stop. Be successful is you kind of are believe in something other people don't believe in, but in the very united and in the very converged, and then more importantly in a very coherent way among this team.

James: Mm, that's really nice. We're looking at just saying like a startup, it's, it's not, it's not funded as well as an established business. It doesn't have the same resources, it doesn't have the same team size. But what it does have to, what, what it ha has is advantages that smaller piece of team, and what you're saying is in this moment, you just didn't, you didn't even have that advantage.

Howie: if a staff needs to be successful, you have to have it right. I was giving you a scenario data for a company at a particular moment. Right. You know, we didn't have enough of that. You know, with all the hindsight we could be, we could have been more coherent, more converged.

Right. You know, we would've be, you know, more dangerous to our competi. Right. That, that's one way to look at it. I mean, even today, I mean we all know chat g p T, right? Everyone was asking the question, Hey, how come a company called OpenAI is able to do it? But Google, right. Published, you know, 10 x a hundred x of the, you know, paper in this area didn't do it right.

You know, the only way, the only reason, I mean, there are lots of reason, but the, but the fundamental, fundamental reason is open AI believes in something and then they, you know, a hundred, 200 people just to, you know, go for, went for a single. Right.

James: I mean, you're, you're, you're a, you're a guest lecturer in product market. Do. Do you think that that beats product market fit that team connection, single belief.

Howie: there are more than that. Actually, you know what I, the example I give to you is, you know, very fundamental to a team to be successful. Like, I, like I emphasized, it's not a. Unique to startup, right? A Zscaler, we have 6,000 people. Right? You know, we have a founder, CEO E Jay Ry.

Right? You know, everyone listened to him. He points to the direction people follow, right? That's kind of very important, right? It's not like 6,000 people going off different directions. I was simply saying that for startup, this is a kind of a, you know, even more obvious. Why this has to be the case. So that's number one.

Number two, you ask the, Hey, how is that related to product market fit? Right. Um, it's a, it's a different angle, right? The first one is about how you kind of, uh, uh, have a coherent team. But the second thing is once you have a coherent team, what do you do? Right? And the product market fit to me is kind of, Almost, uh, uh, a milestone right before product market fit.

What kind of behavior do you have? Do you need to have, what kind of work do you need to do? Um, and after product market fit, you do something different. You know, more specific right before the product market fit, you are trying out, right? You, you actually have certain assumptions. People would love to buy your product, but that's assumption.

It's not a, it's not a, a, a. Right. It's a hypothesis. Um, and how to turn, uh, you know, a hypothesis into effect. It takes a lot of the hard work, right? You try different things. You, you know, product iterations, you know, market segmentation, iterations, right? But once you fig you figure out, hey, this is a product market fit, right?

At that point, it's a scaling, right? Because you hire you. as many as salespeople you can afford to Right. You know, have the right, you know, training materials. Right. Have the, you know, a machine that's going to, uh, multiply this. Right. It's two different things. So, so when I think about product market fit, it's kind of a, before, you know, a company needs to have certain behavior and then after that it's, you know, the company will have a different, Now that being said, this is applicable even to a big company like Z Scale or even, you know, a much larger company like Google.

Uh, why is that? Because, you know, you, you may have a product that reached the product market fit, um, But for another product, second product or third product that's not yet. Right. And then you know, your behavior will be, will be different. And then that's actually a very interesting part because then you are saying that, hey, within the company, I'm just making up for a second, you have 200 people, right?

You know, a hundred people working on something that already has a. Product market fit. That's about scary. The other 100 people is about still exploring. Well, guess what? Right. You know, it's easy setter than them because they all, you all live on the same roof. Right. And how to have a coherent team at that point is actually more difficult.

Um, so, so, so my, my, my, my point and about the direction right. You know, um, the, the founding team, the key executives need to have the. Coherent strategy. When we disagree something we need to identify, hey, there is a subtle difference. Let's actually, let's debate, discuss, you know, maybe you know, even a pound on the table.

But when we get out of the room, we have a very coherent view. When you have one product, right, or initial product, that's easier, right? When you have five products, or in the case of Google, I don't know how many, right? You have a coherent view. That's a very, very difficult, that's one of the reasons why Google didn't have the.

Chat the G P T yet. Um, so, so that's kind of a, yep.

James: But so what it sounds like is that if we accept that the race to product market fit is what every new business is, is driving towards, if you've got your two key people who are not aligned about the vision or how it's done, it's gonna be very hard to test one hypothesis and get everyone together, cuz the company's gonna be back going backwards and forwards between.

Two. So it's gonna be getting the Google problem of multiple tests, but with the, with the resources of a startup, which, which needs to focus on one survive.

Howie: Yes. Yes. it's easy said than done because, you know, at a, at a hand waving level, right, everyone has the same opinion. Uh, sorry. You know, every company seem to have the converged view, right? For instance, right? You go to Google, Facebook, you know, No one would to tell you, Hey, our executive teams have different view, right?

You know, we, we are AI first, right? We are kind of a, um, you know, the, in the, in the case of, uh, Facebook, right? Uh, Metasphere, right? Metaverse. So, so we are all on the same page. But, but the, but, but the key thing is actually at the next level, next, next level, oftentimes there are sufficient, uh, discrepancy among key executives.

And how do you proactively approach. .

James: Mm. So let's, so let's say in this specific example, we're going back to this moment. What are some of the behaviors or ex things that you would see do it indicate that there is a fundamental problem that needs to be on?

Howie: Yeah, this is actually with a lot of the, you know, hindsight and then also, you know, I, I don't think I kind of realized that necessary in the moment, but with a lot of the hindsight, with a lot of the reflections, I think one key thing is the contextual, Thoughts or contextual behavior, what does that mean?

Right. Cause you know, you and I have this conversation, you know, you have a convoy. You kind of, uh, you know, being thoughtful. you know, when we, you and I have different opinion, you know, it sounds like you know, at least on the surface, uh, you are not like a pony on the table. Right. You know, you're kind of a, Hey Howe, you know what, what?

But you know, the, the key thing is, Uh, for different people, you need to do things differently. What, what I, what I meant by that is some people, right? You, you have a convoy, you just say one thing. The person would say, oh, you know, that's what, how it meant they take it, right? There are other people who you wouldn't, they wouldn't listen to you.

They wouldn't even hear your voice unless you actually pound on the table. Literally, that doesn't mean. The person you know is, has less and then more listening skill, not necessary. Right. people are sensitive to different things, right? You know, you need to figure out, hey, in order for me, my language to resonate with the ceo, with the vp, with my peer, with people reporting to me, what language, what behavior do you need to have in order to resonate, uh, with the person?

The reason I'm saying that is, you know, I remember, you know, my CEO and I have had a different view and I, you know, later on, you know, probably two months later or whatnot, I had a conversation with one of my board members. Right. You know, I was saying, Hey, you know, obviously I have, I, I thought about this very differently and he was looking at me.

He said, Howie, right, you know, I don't think, you know, uh, your CEO e o really heard it. I said, what do you mean I, I said it five times or 10 times. Right? What do you mean by that? He said, no, no, no, no, no. Different people would've taken a very different, right. You know, that's exactly what I said, and I realized that, yeah.

You know, as much as I said in the e staff meeting or whatnot, you know, again, when I say pounding, pounding on the table, I, I didn't really mean that literally, right? I just meant that you have to have certain. Of communication, uh, you can't assume that, hey, you know, I sent an email telling, Joe and John, right?

You know, I view it differently. Here's what I mean, different people just to what I take at the same email, same words, very, very differently. So you have to be very, very thoughtful in coming up with how you disagree with.

James: So you're saying it's like, If you are gonna disagree fundamentally, sometimes you need to be very clear that you are disagreeing fundamentally.

Howie: And then, and then what language do you use? Right. You know, some people don't even take strong language. Some people wouldn't take, you know, language until it's very strong. Right. And then you have to fig, you have to be thoughtful in, you know, um, on this topic.

James: Cause I think we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can communicate thoughtfully and often that means more gently. But I think if I correct me correctly, you're saying sometimes we actually need to dial it up and communicate more

Howie: Adding up, adding down, right. Depending on the, this is what I meant by contextual. Maybe you know, that, that the word you, you, you helped me to come up with is the phrase right. Contextual, dotting up and or dotting down kind of things. Yes, exactly.

James: Hmm. Okay. So that's kind of. step realization. One, with sort of reflection what is something else that you've, you see looking back in that moment that you would do differently or, or, or flag for the future?

Howie: Right. I think, you know, having that coherent team, right. You know, via this contextual communication skills, right? That's kind of the one thing. And then we also talked about, you know, product market fit, right? and then when it comes to product market fit or not, right?

They often time key challenge of product market fit is actually mentor. The reason I said it's mentor is, if you ask, uh, 99% of the founders out there, They all, they're all optimistic bullish about their idea and them product, right? You know, not 99% of people would say, I already reached the product market fit, but 99% of people would think their product is closer to the product market fit than.

The reality is that's, you know, that's, that's kind of true. Um, maybe a hundred percent. Um, and, um, and given that, what do you do, right? You know, you have to be intellectually honest with yourself. Uh, you, you need to have the intellectual honesty, when customer telling you that, Hey, I love your product, you have to step back, right?

You. Why would a customer not say, I don't, I I love your product because you know, they're in a meeting with it. They're nice with you. That doesn't mean they're going to point up money budget tomorrow to buy your product. Right. So, and uh, when they say, Hey, I'm going to buy your product, you need to figure out when.

Right. You know, of course. You know, is that now or three months later? Or three years from now? Right. If it's now, where's the budget line? Right. The budget, his budget. Settled half a year ago, a year ago, and suddenly you want him to pay for, you know, 200 k, which line of the budget does it come from, right?

So it's a lot of time when you double click, triple click, you realize, you know, what people say, you know, on the surface is kind of away from the reality, right? Not, not because they're evil, it's just human nature for those kind of their conversations. So we kind of, uh, need to have the intellectual honesty, uh, to figure out, uh, what's going.

James: Okay, so we've got contextual communication, we've got intellectual honesty, and from we had before, it felt like there was something around understanding different person's perspectives and how you can both be right in that situation.

Howie: Yeah, I think, you know, even before the contextual, dotting up, dialing down the communication and also intellectual honesty. You, I think there, there is also a, a kind of a mental state. You need to be in, you need to have the courage, to. Admit, you are vulnerable and admit you. There, there are differences, you know, cuz human beings, I mean, not everywhere, but most of the human beings, they try to avoid a conflict, right?

They try to be more optimistic because, you know, they heard, you know, uh, I hear what I wanted to hear, right? So you need to have the courage to, to sort of be in the mental state that, hey, you know, when there are different opinions, I need to have the courage to, to identify. Proactively address that, uh, get out of my comfort zone, right?

Rather than, you know, as long as people are not kind of yelling at you, just, you know, you go one direction, another person go off. Maybe not vastly different, but you know, even slightly different direction that can be, you know, suboptimal, uh, for the team, right? So,

James: And so then when you started Trusts path, do you feel that those le you've carried those lessons with you?

Howie: I'm pretty sure that I made lots of mistakes still on those fronts and I will continue to make for the next 10 years. Right. But at a minimum, I think I'm more, Aware of, uh, those kind of issues then before, because you know, the example I give to you, it was a real example, right?

You know, I started, you know, Hey, hey, you know, Mr. C e O, right? You know, we have different view on this, and then we sh you know, I think we should go X and here are the four reasons and are five reasons. From my point of view, it was so long and clear, right. You know, four times, five times. And then not until the board member told me that, Hey, Howie, you know, did you pun at the table, right?

If not, why do you think, um, the, the, the, the recipient actually, you know, got it. Right. Did you get a acknowledged that acknowledgement that, you know, he got it, the idea? Right. At that point I realized, wow, you know, he's. I, I don't, I don't think, you know, uh, again, nothing is a black and a white, right? But I don't think that the person got nearly, you know, as much as I, I thought, you know, oh, I hoped the person would've got right.

Not to say my opinion is a right, my opinion oftentimes is not right. But however, you know, to start with, you have to present your idea in a full fashion. When I say full fashion, how much conviction do, do you have on it? Right? do you really believe this is a do or die situation? If. Do X or not do X.

Right. That needs to be presented fully. Right. I don't think, you know, I did a sufficient job myself. Um, you know, this is not, to, not to discuss whether my idea is good or bad. It's about the way, uh, how much I even. Surface the difference. So I realized, you know, this was like two months after that, that that happened and I talked to a board member and I was like, wow, you know, I didn't think about it, but you are right.

You know, uh, the fact I didn't pound the table, that means, you know, 50% of the information was lost already, but,

James: Hmm. this isn't really what we, we've, we prepped for, but I'm just quite curious on your thoughts around this recent. Letter round chat, G B T and AI on this idea of pausing that feels like it sort of connects us intellectual honesty, like taking a moment to really, really look at where we are and go.

Is it, do we need to pause? Is it David or not? What's your, what's your view?

Howie: Yeah, you know, we can talk about open ai, um, large language model, generative AI for hours and hours. This is, um, a topic. I'm super passionate and, uh, you know, the, at the end of the day, AI is a tool and uh, the tool can do a lot of the benefits for us humans, right? Professionals, but can also cause damages, right?

It's like for instance, iPhone, right? You know, or pc right? You know, um, increased our productivity tremendously over the last few. You can also argue that phone or pc right? You know, hurt, you know, the youth, you know, playing games or doing X and doing what. There are a lot of the, you know, to certain people it's tremendous damage, right?

You know, de depending on who, who you're talking about. I think AI is the same thing. Um, I'm a, I'm a, uh, I actually wrote up in the, uh, on the LinkedIn blog yesterday. I'm a forever opt optimist, uh, such that I believe. New technology is going to do a lot of benefits, uh, for human mankind. Uh, as a result, uh, I'm a big believer and I'm big advocate of it.

So at the same time, I totally see this technology, uh, open AI chat, G P t generative ai, um, are potentially having, um, certain. What do you call it? Uh, less effective or less constructive, uh, value to humans, to professionals, or to, to a lot of people. And, uh, we need to be very careful, right? So responsible AI is a very important, so let me give you one example.

In the case of the, um, cybersecurity world, right? So bad guys now can leverage. G p t to come up with a phishing email, target phishing email a lot easier, right? You know, in, in general you can do some phishing email. People wouldn't click because, you know, this is look ridiculous. The email looks re ridiculous, right?

However, you can have chat, g p t write a very, very, uh, interesting email. Right, knowing a lot of the nuances that you say, oh, this email must be written by, you know, the real gems, right? Because you how, how otherwise, you know, he gave me this level of details, right? And you will be very impressed. It's easier for you to click a link, right?

So, so those kind of technology can be, Leverage the by the bad guys and then we, our life is more miserable, right? You click a a, a phishing email, your, I don't know, your user credential is leaked out. You know, you have to call the credit card company all day long. Hey, you know, I got. Uh, my, my identity got sort of the, uh, leaked or the compromised or whatnot, right?

So, so there is a lot of the potential damages, no question about it, right? There's more than that. Way more than that. I'm just giving you an example, uh, in the cybersecurity world, right? And, um, but just because that, you know, Should a pause and we should forget about it. I don't necessarily think so. Right.

Just like pc, iPhone. Um, do you want to pause the development of it? I don't know. Right. Um, but on the other hand, should we, uh, put a lot more emphasis on the responsible AI so that we kind of, uh, put a more guardrail on how the technology can be leveraged, that we are never going to be, you know, bulletproof in, you know, guard.

You know, putting the guard on it, but do the, do our best. Uh, so that minimize the damage. I think this is absolutely important. Uh, I think it's even beyond the industry. Uh, this is actually a global thing. It may be a government thing, it may be a standard body thing. It's more than just a one company called a Google or open AI thing, or Tesla or whatnot, right?

Uh, so I think it's, it's kind of a very good initiative for people to have the awareness that responsible AI is important. , but at the same time, , I'm not a big believer that, you know, um, slowing down the technology for, you know, , because, you know, we feel like it can be dangerous. , there's another thing.

I mean, it's not very pr pragmatic to even, I mean, you can get, you can get, uh, fire everyone at open ai, right? But that's the, in the, in the extreme case. But so what does that mean on the planet? And no one else is going to do the large language model research and, um, training. I don't think so.

James: Well, Harry, that has been it's been a pleasure to take, take advantage of all your knowledge around sort of these very different areas like product market fit. The wealth of experience on, startups and your AI machine learning to give us quite a nuanced view of how it all fits together.

So thank you very much.

Howie: Thank you James, for inviting me. You know, it gave me a chance to, you know, talk about exciting technology, uh, open ai, generative AI on this show. I didn't expect that either. Right? So thank you for giving me a chance

James: My pleasure.