A SoftBank-backed founder says startups and public companies need 'fundamentally different people'

Business Insider

4 days ago

Johannes Reck, the founder and CEO of the SoftBank -backed travel startup GetYourGuide, says a different type of person will flourish in a startup versus a public company.
"I think you need fundamentally different people for a Series A to Series C, D stage company than for a pre-IPO or public company with billions in revenue," Reck told the 20VC podcast host Harry Stebbings in an interview that aired Monday.
"People who are incredibly effective at Netflix or Meta or Google or even GetYourGuide today are not the type of people who really thrive with a 30 or 50 people company, where you still need to continue to refine that core product market fit," Reck added.
Reck founded GetYourGuide in 2009 while he was in college. Today, the company offers curated experiences for travelers in 12,000 cities.
The company has raised over $1 billion from investors, including KKR and Softbank, according to Pitchbook.
The company, which is headquartered in Berlin, employs more than 500 people, per LinkedIn. A representative for Reck did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The nature of the work is different
The type of work you'll encounter in startups is also different from the type of work at established companies, Reck said.
"You need to ship stuff. You need to be really opinionated about what's going on," Reck said of running a startup in its early stages.
In contrast, working at a mature company is about "managing multiple teams, managing organizations, doing roadmaps and creating more structure in the organization," Reck said.
"Those are just fundamentally different skill sets and typically, also different types of people," he said.
"You need to have these very entrepreneurial people in the early days, who often times by the way, don't work out in the late days," Reck added.
Reck's take on the type of talent companies need to hire at various growth stages echoes a point Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, previously told the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
"You don't have to hire the former head of growth at Instagram to be the head of growth or head of product at Perplexity. That's a trap that a lot of people fall into," Srinivas said.
Srinivas said he thinks this is because "it's very hard to be extremely motivated to do gruelling hours when you've already had big success in your life."