What’s the difference between a good idea and a bad one? And what’s the best way to develop new ideas quickly?
is one of the most imaginative and successful innovators of his generation. He cofounded several companies, including Kayak, before starting Boston Venture Studio, where he is currently a partner. This multimedia case, “
FRANCES FREI: I think because it is systematic in the process, so it makes no sense that Paul is as successful as he is. It couldn’t be luck. It has to be by a system. And as an operations professor, I have reverence for processes and systems and even things like good ideas, which we often think, oh, it came to me in the shower, and you just like a bolt of lightning. Actually, it’s much more systematic than that.
PAUL ENGLISH: Sure. So, I grew up in West Roxbury. I’m number six of seven kids and went to school in Boston, bumped around quite a bit. Ended up going to Boston Latin School and then almost didn’t go to college, but ended up just by chance going to UMass Boston where I studied music and computers and that was incredibly fun. After I graduated with my master’s at UMass, I worked for one company in Cambridge for five or six years. And since then, I’m doing my own startups.
FRANCES FREI: And my mom was 25 when she had me, and she recounts that she would say at the end of the day, “Did I feed her?” And I think there is something to that, the scrappiness you learn and the benefit of learning by example. Now often the example of what you didn’t want to do. I would say one of them is that I think Paul has a fixer mentality. He’s very rigorous but also very optimistic. And I think those two things are really magical together.
PAUL ENGLISH: Most of my career is in software, and specifically consumer software – so building websites and apps. It’s getting easier and easier as years go on to build websites and apps with these AI tools that have come out in the last year, it’s really shocking how quick it is to put something together. My studio is a design shop, and we have an idea. We’ll look at the market, what are the other solutions out there? We see if we like them or not.
PAUL ENGLISH: It’s innovation, but more important than innovation, this might sound funny to some of your listeners, but it’s recruiting. And when we first pitched VCs and a bunch of VCs turned us down, some that would say things like, “You’re five guys with a PowerPoint deck. Why would we give you money? Because Expedia spends a billion a year on brand alone, not even on traffic acquisition.
PAUL ENGLISH: I think that speed is misunderstood. Some people think speed is recklessness. It’s not necessarily that. Sometimes speed means you have the process fine-tuned. The example I always give, if you watch Formula One racing and you watch the pit crew how fast they can change tires-PAUL ENGLISH: They make a mistake, someone dies. So, they’re really, really good at changing tires. They’re incredibly fast and they’re perfect at it.
BRIAN KENNY: Paul, I’m going to assume that it’s not always been successful for you. Can you tell us something you’ve learned about failure along the way? BRIAN KENNY: Tell us what the week looks like if you are listening to this podcast and you’ve got a problem that you’ve just not been able to fix. How do you do it?
BRIAN KENNY: Paul, how do you think your team would describe – whichever team you want to pick – how would they describe you as a leader? BRIAN KENNY: And all of this, I would imagine, takes some vulnerability. You’ve got to be vulnerable enough to know that that’s probably not an idea worth pursuing. And that helps to build the trust. Is that a fair way to link those things?
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