PBTO Season 2: EP01: Future of Work with Andy Tryba

Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed

Opening music credits goes to Riju Mukhopadhyay & Pavan Cherukumilli

Who is he on the show:

In the first episode of the new season, we host Andy Tryba. He is the CEO of Ride Austin, EngineYard and Crossover.com.

Why is he on the show:

Andy has spent the last 15 years as CEO of multiple successful startups and is currently running three startups. One of them is a very interesting social experiment and has a very interesting approach to running his other two startups as well. He has built a product that already provides glimpses of how the future of work might unfold.

What do we talk about:

In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about:

– How he transitioned from the corporate world to getting a job at the Whitehouse and then to become an entrepreneur

– Having some corporate experience vs becoming an entrepreneur right off of our college

– His learning from being part of a large corporate and the White House.

– Creating a local ride sharing app and competing with the cash rich Uber/Lyft and what he is learning from that experience

– Running a business as a non-profit (so they can pay their drivers much more), open data (sharing all kinds of data to allow people to find insights around mobility services) & engage with the community (by enabling their customers to contribute to charities)

– How economic theory & reality are not really congruent with each other

– Dynamics of competition (Uber and Ola) and throwing money at customer acquisition & what to do when you can’t compete against the money

– Changing the competitive landscape (hyper-local, community driven)

– Books from Dan and Chip Heath (Made to Stick & The Power of Moments) and some of the learnings from these books and how he has integrated them in his business.

– Why it is difficult to gain customer attention

– Crossover.com and the thinking behind the business (All high skill jobs will go to the cloud)

– Why he thinks that “There is no such thing as a talent shortage!”

– Going International doesn’t mean going cheap

– How it is possible to hire the Best 1% of people in the world (doing rigorous testing to finding the best of the best)

– Why Format of the resume is almost 500 years old and why resume + interview is not the best way to recruit people.

– Future of work is about Awesome teams on the cloud, great playbooks, create a platform to provide regular feedback so the teams can get better

– Crossover.com is like a Fitbit for work

– The importance of doing Deep Work (as advocated by Cal Newport)

– The importance of coaching to get to our peak performance & the data that provides the insight for this level of coaching

– The thinking that went behind building Crossover.com.

– What can we learn from professional athletes and bring them into our work environment

– The effect of cognitive residue on our performance

– How does he balance his time and focus among the three startups that he runs?

– Where do you bleed time?

– What would he do differently, if he were to start off again

– What is so obvious to him now, that people miss all the time.

Resources mentioned in the conversation:

– The Art of The Start by Guy Kawasaki,

– Deep Work by Cal Newport,

– Peak by Anders Ericsson,

– Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath

– The Power of Moments by Dan and Chip Heath

– Crossover platform (www.crossover.com)

How to connect with him:

You can connect with via twitter (@AndyTryba or email [e-mail])