Ep101 – Didier Elzinga (Co-founder & CEO – Culture Amp) on the key traits of successful founders

The Startup Playbook Podcast

My guest for Episode 101 of The Startup Playbook Podcast is the Co-founder & CEO of Culture Amp, Didier Elzinga.

For those of you unfamiliar with Didier and his story, at the age of 25, he was promoted to the CEO role at Rising Sun Pictures, a Hollywood Post Production Studio that worked on films such as Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings and the Batman and Superman franchises.

During his time as the CEO, the company grew from 30 to 130 employees.

However, after meeting with Atlassian Founders, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar at an event, Didier realised that he wanted to move out of the film industry and into technology.

Since starting Culture Amp in mid-2009, the company has raised over $75M in funding, has over 2,000 clients and has become one of the world’s fastest growing technology companies.

Didier and his team truly are helping build culture first organisations all over the world

In this live podcast interview we spoke about:
– How he became the CEO of a Hollywood studio at 25
– How to Founders can deal with and overcome adversity
– The key trait of successful founders
– How to get customers without a product
– How to grow from 10 to 2000 customers
– Culture Amp’s process for raising $75M in funding
– The importance of storytelling in amplifying people performance

The questions from our audience were:

1. What business challenges keeps Didier up at night?
2. As Culture Amp has grown, how does Didier approach building out the leadership team
3. Which order does Didier prioritise the key business stakeholders (Employees, Customers & investors)
4. What Didier has applied from his background in Hollywood to building out Culture Amp

This podcast was produced by the awesome team at Playbook Media. If you would like to launch your own personal or business podcast, say hello to [e-mail].

Show notes:
– Mike Cannon-Brookes
– Scott Farquhar
– Atlassian
– Rising Sun Pictures
– Tony Clark (Rising Sun Pictures)
– Wayne Lewis (Rising Sun Pictures)
– Gail Fuller (Rising Sun Pictures)
– Rising Sun Research
– Cospective
– Baraka (Film)
– Ron Frike
– How Great I Am – 50th anniversary for Anthony Robbins (Youtube video)
– The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)
– Jon Williams (Co-founder – Culture Amp)
– Jason McPherson (podcast interview)
– Eric Yuan (Zoom)
– Felicis Ventures
– Matt Cohler (Benchmark VC)
– Benchmark VC
– JD Peterson (Culture Amp)
– Jacqueline Purcell (Culture Amp)
– Sunrise Conference
– Golbie Kamerai (Culture Amp)
– The Management Theory of Peter Drucker

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Feedback/connect/say hello:
[e-mail]
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Credits:
Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams

Other channels:
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