Nick Anastasiades - Chief Growth Officer at Nyla

Nick Anastasiades, Chief Growth Officer at Nyla, sits down with Ryan to walk through his career, discuss his approach to growing and exiting businesses, and his perspective on hiring and being hired.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickanastasiades/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Good Fit Careers Podcast where we explore perspectives on work that fits.
I'm Ryan Dickerson, your host.
Today's guest is Nick Anastasiades.
Nick is the Chief Growth Officer of Nyla, the Creative Director at LLOBE and a Serial
Founder.
Nick grew up in Lebanon and moved to the United States in 2008 to attend UC Berkeley.

(00:23):
And in 2009, he started LLOBE Design.
After undergrad, he spent four years at Deloitte before going back for an MBA.
During his MBA, he started Second Kitchen and chose to scale the business instead of
returning to Deloitte.
After a successful exit of Second Kitchen in 2021, he joined Nyla.
Nick, thank you for being here.

(00:44):
Hey Ryan, thank you for having me.
It's a delight to have you on the show.
So to get us started here and to bring the audience along, would you tell us a little
bit about the work that you do today?
Yeah, for sure.
I am currently the Chief Growth Officer at Nyla, which is a Shopify front-end platform.
I'm also a serial entrepreneur.

(01:05):
I founded a few companies at the latest being Second Kitchen.
I'm happy to go through that as well.
I also have an affinity for design, particularly designing with startups.
And I founded a design agency called LLOBE Design in 2009.
So a bit of a few things there, but yeah, that's a quick cliff notes intro.

(01:26):
Very prolific.
And we're going to get into each of those in a little bit to build our frame of reference
and to get us a good understanding of who you are and where you come from.
Would you tell us a little bit about what you were like as a kid?
Yeah, I grew up in Lebanon, the country of Lebanon, for most of my life, all the way
from preschool till I left for college in the US.

(01:49):
As a kid, I was incredibly influenced by my parents.
They were both entrepreneurs.
They were in the travel agency.
And I got to experience the growth that they've really started all their lives.
My dad was a general manager at Air France.
And I saw him make the move to start his own company, a travel agency in Lebanon.

(02:14):
And I got to work there as an intern.
I got to see the expansion of the company.
Back then, there weren't any venture capitalists and investors.
It was all make money, reinvest the money, grow the company.
And then it went from a travel agency to owning hotels, owning rental car companies,
owning transportation and other tourist landmarks in Lebanon.

(02:38):
And that was hugely influential for me.
A lot of our family conversations would be about the company, the business.
And since then, I knew that that's what I wanted to do.
It gave me so much joy.
Even having all these conversations, it was so influential for me.
And I knew that I didn't have any other option out there, really, except for starting businesses,

(03:00):
growing things and really seeing the impact myself.
I love that.
So you knew from very early on that entrepreneurship was the path.
Did you know specifically what sort of business you might start later on?
Not a clue.
No, just anything that is impactful, anything that I can actually make a big difference in.

(03:22):
And anything I can see growing, there is this inherent pleasure in seeing something that
you've started become its own thing.
Grow a team, have other people who believe in the vision that you also have.
And I'm pretty industry agnostic.
So yeah, it's whatever opportunity strikes.

(03:44):
And to help us further understand how you came to be, would you tell us a little bit about
your education?
So in Lebanon, so I went to a Catholic school in Lebanon for most of my life.
And then actually, I would say the hardest decision had to do with education.
So when I was applying for colleges, I had a big decision to make.

(04:08):
I did get a full ride to the most prestigious university in Lebanon, the American University
of Beirut.
And that's where all my friends went.
That's what you're supposed to do in quotes.
And then I had another friend who encouraged me to just take the SAT and just apply to

(04:29):
a couple of colleges in the US.
And so I did that.
I didn't know a lot about the colleges.
I never toured any of the colleges.
I didn't do the whole college hopping thing.
I just went on US News and World Report.
I filtered for a business undergraduate.
And then I applied to the top 10 on that list.

(04:51):
It's the definition of a moonshot.
And I didn't get into any of the colleges except I got waitlisted to University of California
at Berkeley.
And this was the big decision.
Do I take a huge risk and leave my family and just go to a new land, if you will?

(05:12):
Or do I stay in the safe lane?
And I decided to take my chances.
And I would say it's-- from a professional perspective, it's probably the most impactful
decision that I made.
And a lucky one as well.
It just happened that Berkeley was in the Bay Area.
It made me fall in love with tech.

(05:34):
It really created a lot of YM.
And yeah, I owe a lot to that decision.
Beautiful.
And perhaps the first of many big leaps.
Yeah.
Big leaps.
It's a good way to refer it to literally because it's 6,000 miles or so.
But also, it's just impactful big risks that are educated enough that made sense.

(05:58):
So not long after you joined UC Berkeley and started your undergraduate studies, it looks
like you started your very first company.
Would you tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah.
My first company, which I still have, it's the design agency, a low design.
It's a very small studio, fully remote.
It was really just an outlet that allowed me to work with startups.

(06:21):
I started working with college startups.
But then after that, in San Francisco, a lot of Bay Area startups working on their UX,
their UI, working on designing their branding, their digital marketing.
And then this was the entity that I did it.
I guess what made it so lucky is that some of the small projects that I worked on ended

(06:42):
up raising hundreds of millions of dollars.
And it's crazy that I can point and say that I helped create some of the UI from back in
the day.
And that's the power of the Bay Area.
In a way, it just gives you the, you never know the person that you meet in a coffee shop
can be a founder of a huge company.
So yeah, so it's called the low design, LLOBE.

(07:05):
It was a typo initially, and then I was able to get the dot com.
And so we just kept it.
People think it's a Spanish design agency is not.
But yeah, it's weird enough that people remember it, and it's stuck ever since.
And so since then we've had close to 100 clients.
Our clients have raised over $350 million so far.

(07:25):
Wow.
That's incredible.
And to get all that started as what a 19 or a 20 year old and to have that persist and
leave on to this day, that is an extraordinary accomplishment.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's just, it's a fun, you know, it's a creative outlet is a great description of
it.
You know, it's always been on the side.
I never took it full time.

(07:47):
It's always, you know, I have 20 extra hours in my week.
What can I do that gives me, you know, creative satiety, but also it's fun and it can help
me professionally.
And so it ended up being, you know, just a little baby that is now a teenager, if you
will.
Right on.

(08:08):
That's awesome.
Shortly after, or I guess immediately after you finished undergrad, you joined Deloitte.
Would you tell us a little bit about what the experience was like, joining Deloitte right
at a school and perhaps with the interview and evaluation process was like?
Yeah.
So, so I'd Berkeley.
I was part of the Haas undergraduate school program.

(08:31):
Structure is the name of the game when it comes to consulting that I've learned, which
was incredibly helpful.
It's interesting that as a serial entrepreneur, I'm kind of all over the place these days.
And I, you know, between investments and, you know, working on different startups, I
don't have a lot of structure, but that the Deloitte experience created the scaffolding

(08:53):
that gave me a lot of my business experience.
Everything from getting the internship to the case, the case interview to how the interviews
are conducted really is great as a first time job.
I actually can't recommend it enough.
It's incredible because it gives you a milestone.
It gives you, you know, the books that you can study to ace that interview.

(09:17):
You can kind of write your own twist on it, but still use best practices when it comes
to business.
So, yeah, it was a great, great experience, a very tough experience.
I know I was super stressed for about a year about the case interviews.
I would do, well, back then Zoom wasn't really a big thing, but, but, you know, coffee,

(09:38):
chats where we go through case interviews and we would, we would do a lot of peer case
studying.
And yeah, it's a great, it's a great feeling to go through the rounds because you, you
know, you had three different rounds.
You have the behavioral, you have the case.
Yeah, but overall it's definitely a tough experience, but I do appreciate the structure

(09:58):
and it gave me a lot, a lot of basics.
Do you have any advice for folks who are just coming out of school who are trying to get
that first job and specifically acing the interview at Deloitte?
Practice for sure.
There's a lot of luck involved in some things.
There's passion in some things.
Case interviews aren't that.
Case interviews are, it's a muscle that you have to exercise.

(10:22):
There's a specific way they want you to think.
I would view it in the same level as the SAT or the GMAT.
You got to practice, go do the homework.
And I think they select for people who can do that.
Because if you're able to quickly read up on something and practice and have that tenacity,
that's the candidate they're selecting for.

(10:43):
So I would just do the work.
Makes sense.
Great advice.
You landed the job.
Looks like you got promoted once along the way.
You spent four years at Deloitte.
What did you learn about yourself during those first four years in a proper corporate
gig?
I learned about the business world.
My previous experience was just startups and hoodies and very casual working, coding things,

(11:11):
designing things.
I learned to shape up and conduct myself in a professional manner.
I didn't have that skill before.
It was very helpful because even any startup that you have, you still have to have business
meetings.
You have board members.
You have to sell to investors, to clients.

(11:31):
Or you can have great code and great product and develop something that's really incredible.
But you are still in the business world.
There are traditions in ways.
There are structures that you have to adhere to.
I was not good at that.
I had to work to shape myself, to belong in the corporate world.

(11:54):
And it served me a lot because a lot of these principles, even though you'll hear some founders
saying that big consulting and big company, we want to stay away from those.
But a lot of those can be very helpful.
The principles of them can be very helpful in implementing it in a startup in general.
So it was a great skill that I learned.

(12:15):
Sure.
That makes a lot of sense.
And do you carry any of those skills beyond just the nuance, assimilating into that environment,
being able to quickly get up to speed and become a near expert on things?
Is there anything that you've carried from that experience into the work that you do
today?
The premise, it's funny if you think about it, consulting and working as an analyst in the

(12:38):
consulting world, you're thrown into a completely new industry with a new client every few months.
It's a completely new environment.
And you have to adapt to it very, very quickly.
You also have to cut through the crap.
At the end of the day, it's a business problem.
And to solve it, you have to dissect it.

(13:00):
You have to think through the strategy.
You have to understand the context and provide recommendations.
I've consulted anything from plane engines to networking and servers to beer manufacturing.
There's such different industries.
And I did all those within the span of a few months.
But at the end of the day, if you strip the fluff and you get to, it's a numbers game.

(13:27):
It's a strategy.
It's going back to basic business principles and marketing and operations.
You can take that same problem solving approach, apply it on a startup, apply it on any product
launch, any go to market.
Those basics are so valuable.
And I advise quite a few sort of founders and even emerging entrepreneurs.

(13:52):
And I do tell folks, consulting is not a bad way to start your career.
It's a great all around generalist launching pad.
Oh, sure.
And, gosh, the opportunity to have a premier recognizable brand, that logo on your resume
early on, I feel like it really does open doors.

(14:15):
It makes a huge difference.
Yeah.
Yeah, I will caution though, it opens doors, but a lot of folks can also be stuck in the
room and stay there a little bit longer than they should.
And this is where I say launching pad.
That is an important distinction because consulting is also a career path.
Some people love it.

(14:36):
It's a great, at some point, if you go to become a partner, these companies, fantastic.
But I do see a lot of people that just stay there because it's a hyping job that they
get used to.
And they don't necessarily love it.
Sometimes it loses its luster.
And they just keep doing it for a long time.
And then they look at their watch and, well, 10, 20 years have passed.

(15:00):
I know quite a few people in that scenario.
So, yeah, launching pad, open doors, but also take a hard look at what do you actually
want to do?
Yeah.
And it sounds like after those first four years at Deloitte, you went back for the MBA and
you experienced a bit of your own kind of inflection point, this, both another big risk

(15:23):
or a big leap, but also this very exciting transition away from consulting.
Can you bring us along and tell us a little bit about that transition from Deloitte to
the MBA and then from the MBA through scaling a business?
So even while at Deloitte, I was always starting side hustles, side projects, coming up with
ideas.

(15:43):
Actually, my roommate, while living in San Francisco at Deloitte, our entire living room
was just posted notes of business models and ideas.
So one of the things we did, so I took a sabbatical from Deloitte.
It was a six month sabbatical.
This was before business school.
And we decided to start a company.
It's going to sound very simple in the age of DoorDash and Uber Eats now.

(16:05):
But back then, this was what, 2014, we wanted to do a streamlined pizza delivery company
because it was the highest margin.
It was by far the highest ordered item.
And so we called that company Redpile and we incorporated it, we launched it, we started
it.
It was a low risk way to do it because then we can go back to our jobs if it didn't work

(16:25):
out.
And it didn't work out.
So we launched it.
We realized how expensive it is to operate a delivery fleet.
We got our first slap in the face pretty quickly.
But from that, we had a great insight.
Insight by the way is a word I use a lot, especially in the design thinking world.
And a lot of the things we do, it's always good to reflect and think about what are the

(16:48):
things we learned and what are some really strong observations you're getting from that
experience.
So the insight for this one is that over 50% of the orders we got were people at bars,
at bars and breweries in San Francisco, at bars that don't have their own kitchens.
So they're watching the game, they're ordering a pizza.
And so we had to go into the bar and deliver the pizza to the person there.

(17:13):
I mentioned that because fast forward into business school.
So it's a two year program at Northwestern Kellogg School of Management.
Great program.
I mostly did it because that's also what you are supposed to do at Deloitte after a
few years.
They'll pay for you.
You have a deal.
If you come back, they'll pay for your education.
It'll be a promotion and you get an expensive tuition for free.

(17:40):
So that's what I did.
And then one of the projects at business school was to come up with business ideas, a new
venture launch program.
And the business idea was as follows.
There are a lot of businesses out there, including bars that don't have kitchens.
So they just don't serve food.
They only serve drinks and they tell people you can get food from outside.

(18:02):
They just also happen to be next to restaurants that do have kitchens.
So we said, what if we, through technology and through great operations, what if we linked
those businesses together?
So you're sitting at the bar on the same bill, on the same, you know, you can say, I want
to beer in a burger.
The beer comes from the back of the bar.

(18:22):
The burger comes to the restaurant across the street and then it's delivered right to
your table.
Back then, we didn't know it, but we created the first virtual kitchen, B2B virtual kitchen,
which did not exist.
So we started, we called it second kitchen as in, you know, the kitchen across the street.
So we started testing it out.
So alongside school, which business school, you don't really, you know, focus too much

(18:44):
on studies, but we would spend pretty much all the time going to breweries in Evanston,
Illinois, selling this product to them.
You know, you have a brewery, we can bring you burgers and pizzas and wings and you're
going to make a, you know, more money, people are going to stay longer.
It's going to be great for everyone.
And we did it.
We built that program, that system, we built the program.
We got breweries interested and we started getting revenue from day one.

(19:06):
It was quite incredible.
At graduation, we applied to the Techstars program in Chicago, which is an accelerator
for startups.
That's the other big leap that also I would say defined my career is that I had to make
within a few days a decision between going back to Deloitte, getting my entire business
school paid for, which is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in value.

(19:29):
Or do I chase this nugget of a company that, you know, is generating revenue and there's
a, you know, there is a path there, but it's still a big risk.
And, you know, took the leap.
It wasn't easy.
This was a hard one.
But we took the leap and committed and went for it.

(19:50):
Yeah.
So we grew the company, we spent the next three, some years growing the company.
We've raised about four and a half million in two rounds, grew to 300 plus locations
in 40 cities, a team of about 30 people.
Yeah.
And so that was monumental for sure.
If there's someone out there who is in a similar position, they've got two different

(20:15):
paths in front of them, you know, they can go back, take the safe play, get their tuition
reimburse, get a promotion, have a nice salary, or take a big leap and be risky.
Can you walk us through how you actually made that decision on such a compressed timeframe?
It's a tough decision to, it'll vary per person.

(20:36):
So people have different risk appetites, for sure.
I actually like, I recently used one of the like, like, RoboAdvisor services or robot investment
services, and they ask you, you know, what's your risk appetite from one to 10?
Ten being, if you lose a bunch of money, would you buy more?
You know, versus one, if you lose a bunch of money, would you like, just quit and just,
oh, no, no, I can't handle this.

(20:58):
So understand your risk appetite.
Back then, my risk appetite was high.
I wanted to do something that is big.
I wanted to go through the journey of entrepreneurship.
And then I, really the biggest question that at the end of the day determined it is, which
decision will I regret less?
You know, let's say I went the Deloitte path.

(21:21):
It's safe.
I know for a fact I would have gotten my education reimbursed.
But then I would have always thought, what would have happened if we grew this company?
What would have happened if, you know, if it became a big thing?
And, you know, the timing was great.
The team was fantastic.
We had two incredible co-founders, John and Arik, were still Michael's friends, and we're
looking to start a new company together at some point.

(21:43):
Those things don't just happen.
You know, there are some opportunities that you just can't pass up.
Versus if, let's say, you know, I said no to Deloitte and I grew second kitchen and it
didn't work out, would I regret not taking the Deloitte offer?
I would say maybe a little bit, but definitely a lot less because I learned so much.

(22:06):
I'd have connections in the space.
I would have started a company and learned everything from, you know, operations and
running a team and building a culture and scaling.
Those are incredible lessons that even in the worst case scenario, I'll keep with me forever.
So yeah, that was really the main decision.
It makes a lot of sense and a great time to take a risk, to bet on yourself, to be, you

(22:32):
know, to take the opportunity to jump in with both feet on all these different areas that
you may have been exposed to.
But boy, when it's your own company, when it's your own money, when it's your own future
on the line, it really changes the stakes, you know?
It really does.
Yeah.
As they say, the highs are high, the lows are low.
You feel it's a gut punch every time something happens.

(22:53):
You just get used to it.
You know, you just develop like an armor against it in some way and you surround yourself with
a team that energizes you and a team that you feel can, you can go through it together.
This is the most important thing by far.
It's having the right team that you're able to go through the journey with.

(23:14):
So you've had a business that you started that didn't go so hot.
You now have a business that is going much better and you were beginning to take the
leap, you're beginning the journey to scale.
Can you bring us from that moment to the big precipice where you exited the business?
Yeah.
And between those two points, there was this small thing called a pandemic that is the

(23:39):
in a situation where it shut down our business pretty much.
So we lost 98% of our revenue because all of the bars.
So we started with bars, then we went to hotels.
So we powered the room service for hotels and then apartments, powered the food experience
at apartments.
All of those were heavily affected by the pandemic.

(24:00):
So we had a couple of near-death experiences.
I credit the team that was able to really band together and go through it and innovate
and find ways to get revenue and build back the company.
So we build it back twice as big and twice as profitable as well, which was incredible.
So we raised $4.5 million in two rounds and then we went for our Series A raise and we

(24:27):
were able to get a term sheet which is a promise to start a fundraising round essentially.
We were all excited about it and then one interesting thing happened is one of our suppliers,
which is the largest player in the Go Skitch in Space, SoftBank funded company, give us
an acquisition offer.
So then we had yet another one of those career-defining decisions to make, which is take the term

(24:51):
sheet and continue growing the company or do you take the exit, which was at the time,
I mean, it was an all cash offer.
It was a good outcome, but it's not like, oh my God, life-changing outcome.
So we had a lot of very tough conversations.
We had a great investor panel that walked us through it.

(25:11):
But at the end of the day, we had to be realistic about where the company can go.
And while the term sheet would have given us a huge valuation, on paper, we would have
been just absolutely raking it in, if you will.
But we had to look three, five years down the line, where is this company going to go?
What is the eventual valuation of it?

(25:33):
Will it be a unicorn company?
Does it have the fundamentals to be that?
This was also around the time where the Ukraine war started happening and the startup scene
started to cool.
This was after the COVID boom.
We saw a lot of headwinds.
So we decided to take the exit.

(25:56):
Yeah, some call it selling out under quotes.
We call it just being a little, being realistic and cautious.
So yeah, we took that route.
And I believe it was the right thing to do, especially now in hindsight, when we see the
environment and you can see that ghost kitchens aren't, it's not the hottest space anymore.
So yeah, it ended up being a great outcome for me.

(26:19):
To repeat the cycle a little bit here, in terms of making that decision in reality and
being forced to, man, the pandemic was upon us.
You had a growing business and all of a sudden revenue evaporated overnight.
I think the first thing that I'd want to inquire about is what were the adjustments

(26:40):
that you made that allowed you to double the previous business and be twice as profitable?
And then I'd love to talk a little bit about making the decision to exit versus to grow.
What were the innovations?
It's never easy to talk about this, but we did have to do a significant layoff of the
team, including some of the founding employees.

(27:04):
This was by far the hardest thing I had to do in my career, but it just had to be done
because the numbers just simply did not add up.
So if we didn't do that, then the company would have, I don't know, months to live,
essentially.
And we had to have the flexibility to ramp back up.
So we had a lot of conversations with investors.

(27:25):
We decreased all the cost as much as possible, but we had to do some of the layoffs.
So that was one very, very tough thing.
And this is when I started to realize we used to call ourselves the second-gitchin family.
I'm actually now, I'm against calling startups families now since that, because they were

(27:45):
friends and they were very close friends, but families don't fire each other when things
get a little bit rough.
I mean, I personally learned that at the end of the day, it's a group of people who
have a vision, who respect each other professionally, who will do what it takes to win and to win
together.
But I did realize that I kind of sold the whole family thing.

(28:08):
And then I felt a little bit disingenuous to go and lay off some of the already folks.
But anyways, we did the layoffs.
And then the second thing we had to do is grow from nothing again, which we asked ourselves.
If we had, I think back then we had a million or so in the bank, if we had a million dollars

(28:31):
in the bank, starting a new company, given the product we have, given the incredible
people left in the company, what would we do?
Forget about everything else's sunk cost.
What would we do right now to create innovation in the world of the pandemic?
This is when we launched our third vertical, which was multifamily and residential food

(28:52):
service, essentially, so we'd work with very large 200 plus unit apartments.
People already cooped up in their apartments.
And so we use our same technology that will give you the burger and in the bar to directly
into your building, no delivery fee, significantly discounted because you can bundle a lot of
the orders.

(29:13):
And yeah, that created enough growth.
And we had a huge market that's ready for innovation there.
And everyone was looking for something like that in this space.
And we built all of that within a matter of weeks.
We spent the nights and weekends working on it.
It felt like the early days again.
And we had the team that's ready to do that.
Because at the end of the day, if we had a team that said, no, let's just wait it out.

(29:38):
Let's just coast until things get back up and running.
A lot of startups did that.
A lot of them didn't make it.
We instead had a team that said, okay, well, here we are.
What can we do about it?
How can we succumb this?
And yeah, the team worked nights, weekends.
I've never seen the team work this hard in a situation where we had no revenue, no prospects.

(30:03):
Yeah, looking back at it, it was such a really magical moment that really shows me what startups
are about.
Yeah, and what a valuable proving ground from a leadership standpoint to really understand
the brutal truth of business, to have to execute on and make the decision on who stays and who

(30:25):
goes are beloved team members, to open a new vertical, to become a startup again, to ramp
it up and to have the resilience to see that through.
Bring us along to closer to that 2021 exit and what it was like to actually think through,
we have this term sheet.
It's not $100 billion.

(30:46):
It's not going to be the end of my income for the next six generations, but it's going
to be something that's going to be extraordinary nonetheless.
How did you go about making that decision?
And perhaps how would you advise folks who find themselves in similar positions to think
through it?
Yeah, it was a tough time.
We also didn't fully agree.

(31:08):
As a founder group, we had to have a lot of conversations as to where we stand.
It goes back to that risk appetite again.
Take a pulse.
Where do you stand in your life?
With your family?
Or maybe some health things?
Or maybe it's mentally.
At that point, I was mentally after the COVID stuff that happened, a lot of the ups and downs.

(31:32):
Part of me just needed a second.
I saw some of the headwinds.
It was just given the offer on the table.
It just happened that the scale tipped towards taking exit and lifting to fight another day.
The second thing this does is it gives you a chip on your shoulder because we're not

(31:53):
done yet.
It is a journey.
This is not the end all be all startup.
I don't think we looked at it and this is not going to be the IPO.
It's not going to be the big one.
This was a great company that really took advantage of uneven resources and created an
arbitrage between who has kitchen and who doesn't.

(32:16):
It had limits as to how much it can grow.
We make that decision and it wasn't unanimous.
We got there eventually.
We had to be coached a lot with investors.
By the way, their goal is to definitely take the term sheet and continue growing.
They were very understanding.
They helped us think through it.

(32:37):
I'm incredibly grateful for the cap table that we had.
That's that.
The regrets thing is another framework we can apply to this one, except this one is not
as clear cut.
On one hand, you think what happened if we just continued thinking we had all this
kind of growth and this valuation and then it sank to nothing and we're like, "Oh, wow,

(32:59):
we could have had a significant sum personally."
On the other hand, if we had taken the money and given the team we had, who knows where
we would have been right now.
I love the application.
I think this is attributed to Jeff Bezos, the regret minimization framework.

(33:19):
I love that application through these major life decisions on not necessarily just what's
going to be the pure upside, but what will I regret the least?
Tremendous advice.
I love that.
I'd like to spend a moment talking through what happened after the exit.
It sounds like you joined Nyla and I'd like to understand why you joined and what you

(33:40):
do.
I'd also like to bring us through to where you fit within the company and what your team
is like and what your work is actually like today.
Would you bring us along then?
Absolutely.
Nyla was an incredible opportunity that literally landed on my lap.
This is the reason.
People say the best jobs are found when you network and you know people and your name

(34:05):
is mentioned out there.
This is it.
My job was not posted online searching for chief growth officer.
It just happened that it's a company that had a problem.
They wanted people who can solve that problem.
We actually shared an investor between second kitchen and Nyla.

(34:27):
This was the week after the left the company that acquired us.
They said, Nick, we need you in this company.
This is the current situation.
They built an incredible product.
They've been working on it for the last three years, raised about the same amount as second
kitchen and they're looking to be post revenue and grow to the series A level.

(34:50):
They brought me and I had a conversation with Michael, our CEO.
Great team, vibed right away.
I saw how passionate the founding team was and how capable and tons of experience.
I was sold from day one.
One thing that I offered is don't hire me.

(35:12):
Let's do a two week trial run.
Let's sign the NDA.
I'll sign an independent contractor agreement.
Let's discuss what are some other problems.
Let's go through it.
Let's create a workshop.
Let's build a plan.
If you like my work style, if I like your work style, great, then we can solidify it.
It's a big deal.
They have to give equity and salary and stuff.

(35:35):
It's a big deal and you bring in a new C-suite.
We did that.
Everything was fantastic.
Love the team had great mutual conversation, very constructive conversations.
And yeah, the role, which is that growth is an interesting vague term these days.
It can be a lot of things.

(35:55):
In our case, I lead the sales and marketing of the company.
From a sales perspective, any outbound pitching and closing deals, marketing is our digital
footprint as well as our content and our other marketing efforts.
So that's the transition and that's why I tell everyone looking for breaking into startups

(36:20):
is just figure out what industry you're interested in or field.
You're interested in customer success, products.
Just go out there and just talk to people and opportunities will typically emerge.
Great advice.
We'll get back to the conversation shortly, but I wanted to tell you about how I can help
you find your fit.

(36:41):
I offer one-on-one career coaching services for experienced professionals who are preparing
to find and land their next role.
If you're a director, vice president, or C-suite executive and you're ready to explore new
opportunities, please go to goodfitcareers.com to apply for a free consultation.
I also occasionally send a newsletter which includes stories from professionals who have

(37:01):
found their fit, strategies and insights that might be helpful in your job search and content
that I found particularly useful or interesting.
If you'd like to learn more, check out goodfitcareers.com and follow me on LinkedIn.
Now back to the conversation.
To build our foundation, would you tell us a little bit about what Nyla does, how many

(37:22):
people roughly work there, and then where you fit within the team?
So Nyla is a front-end platform for Shopify.
So in the e-commerce space, the founder, Michael, had an agency that built stores on top of Shopify
and he realized that he's doing the same thing over and over again for a lot of the brands.

(37:45):
So building the theme, customizing the theme, optimizing it, installing all the apps.
And typically with time, they're going to get bloated, they're going to get slow, they're
going to be hard to manage, they're going to need the agency to continuously update it
and it just ends up being a very expensive cycle.
So he created Nyla, which is a platform that will, first of all, with one click, without

(38:07):
code, gives you best-in-class Shopify front-end.
So an incredibly fast site that's about three times faster than a Shopify theme, it comes
preloaded with industry-specific templates.
So for example, if you have a beauty brand, you can activate incredible layouts that are
inspired by the top brands, you can install subscriptions, the shade finder, an incredible

(38:30):
cart, all of those are going to be available out of the box without spending tens of thousands
of dollars and doing it custom every single time.
So yeah, it's been a business for about five years.
I've been with the company for the last two years, gone from zero revenue to a Series A
level, now and about across the million ARR this year, which is super exciting.

(38:55):
And yeah, it's a great journey, great company.
Beautiful.
Tell me about your team.
Yeah, so interestingly, it's the first time I've worked with an all-remote team.
It's controversial.
People do not always subscribe to this, but I've actually not, I've only met two people,
the entire company.
It's great after two years of being in the company.

(39:17):
And I let takes remote seriously, because there's people in Argentina, people in Canada, people
in Europe, all across the different time zones.
Yeah, so it's about, honestly mid-20s, in terms of 25, 26 people.
Yeah, it's fully remote.
It really prioritizes doing incredible work, working your ass off, but also taking weekends,

(39:41):
for example, taking, you know, don't overwork yourself essentially, and you can work for
anywhere.
That's a huge plus of the...
How cool is that?
We had a guest on recently who works for GitLab, and not only are they fully remote, they are
fully asynchronous and then fully open core.
So what they're building, they build in public.

(40:03):
And for a time, even all their meetings were publicly available.
Anybody could pop in and watch the recordings.
That's crazy.
Yeah, it's wild how that's changing.
And it sounds like it actually works.
You know, I just, I mean, it's quite a paradigm shift.
Yeah, yeah, it's...
I mean, I think every culture is different, every company is different.

(40:25):
Some hybrid models are also evolved.
I still would obviously like to meet people on the team.
So we definitely took it to the extreme in this situation.
But when we put, I remember we put a customer success role, remote, and we had a thousand
applications within two days, it was nuts.
So it allows us to pick, you know, the best talent out there.

(40:51):
It really, like it makes a talent pool infinitely bigger than just saying, okay, I want someone
in Chicago or someone in New York.
So yeah, there's pluses and negatives in all of these decisions.
But yeah, it works for Nyla.
It's been a great to see the company grow and really a great culture that's all remote.
It's quite incredible.

(41:13):
Right on.
So Nick, would you tell us a little bit about how you think about a good year and, you know,
managing that for yourself?
A good year for me is one that is, first of all, defined well in advance.
So growth goals, realistic, but also aggressive goals set in the beginning to the standard

(41:38):
okay, our framework, knowing this is the milestone we want to hit and stating it to
the team.
For example, in it, so we have our business reviews with the team and, you know, I always
have a slide that has exactly what we are planning to do this quarter and this year
with, we sometimes go up with full names of, you know, themes and stuff like that.

(41:59):
So defining the goals is really that once you've defined the goals correctly and have
a clear plan, you've already won.
It's already there because it's just a matter of fact, if you have good people that can
execute and can go through the plan, essentially, you're going to hit the goals.

(42:20):
It's always been the case.
The times where I haven't hit goals in the past are the times where the goals haven't
been defined properly in advance and communicated well to the entire team.
So for me, the times where a good year is a year that's well defined in terms of the
plan.
So Nick, in perhaps more of a philosophical sense, would you tell us a little bit about,

(42:43):
you know, what your work means to you?
When I think about work, purpose, hope and meaning, it are the, what come to mind.
It's actually, in some cases, it's not very healthy.
You know, I wouldn't, this particular subject is where I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't

(43:04):
be an expert in just because I do over index on the meaning of work to my life.
It's something that I'm actively working with professional therapists to decouple that from
who I am.
So it goes back to what, when I was just growing up, because work has been a big part of the

(43:29):
family of our conversations, I tend to gravitate towards making work my life.
You know, it's also why I, you know, I have to start a design agency on the side and fill
a lot of my time with work and, you know, find meaning to work.
So I personally ascribe a lot of impact and meaning to work.

(43:51):
I don't think it's the healthiest thing to do though.
I'm working on, you know, waste it to spend more time with my family to get meaning outside
of work.
I'm expecting our first kid, by the way, in August.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
That changes my perspective on things a little bit.

(44:11):
You know, while the drive is fantastic and it really helps start a company because you
need so much willpower to get a company off the ground.
There's also a bit, you know, too much of a good thing sometimes.
And yeah, so that's my view on this.
Makes a lot of sense.
And thank you for sharing.
You are a serial founder and entrepreneur.

(44:35):
You've exited your business.
You've had something that didn't go so hot.
You're now in multiple fascinating roles in a C-suite kind of position there.
How do you believe the world sees, you know, your work or sees people in a similar category
to you?
I got to ask that.
It's a great question.
So this is what someone else told me.

(44:57):
So it's not necessarily my answer to it, but someone mentioned this to me a few weeks
ago and he said, "Your superpower is building passionate teams.
Building a team that believes in what they're doing and are excited to go to work because
things aren't going to be easy.
You know, things are going to be hard.
We will get a lot of blockers.

(45:19):
And if you have this, you know, inherent belief in what you're doing and passionate about
what you're doing, you know, that's a team I would bet on.
So yeah, how the world views me as a person that builds passionate teams.
That's great.
And perhaps what are some misconceptions?
Other people tend to get wrong.
So because of my design background, one thing to mention, not only started a design agency,

(45:43):
but also my business school education was a dual degree.
It was both a business degree and a master's in design innovation.
So design is always added into my, you know, resume and I love design.
It's like I absolutely love design thinking and I embed design into everything I do.
But some people view me as a designer and someone who, you know, appreciates aesthetics

(46:09):
over function and results in some cases.
You know, there is this stereotype that you know, you think of a designer like once, likes
pretty things, but not necessarily, you know, actual results.
And this is something I always tell people.
Actual really good design is one that takes the customer into play, understands the insights

(46:30):
by talking to people and improving the product and getting better results, not just a very
pretty UI and UX and nice buttons.
I'll say this is a big, not just more myself, but just a general misconception about design
that I see a lot.
That's great.
As we transition over into the discussions around hiring and being hired, can you teach

(46:53):
us a little bit about your philosophy when you have the opportunity to hire for your own
team?
The goal when I'm hiring someone is to minimize risk.
By definition, the process is flawed.
You have a short amount of time to assess someone's character, personality, values, skill,

(47:16):
using a piece of paper.
It's just a resume and a short video, you know, interview, maybe a few.
Where is the risk involved when you're making a lot of these assumptions?
So I like to decrease the risk by creating these many tests in some ways.
So a lot of my interview questions are, what would you do in this particular situation?

(47:40):
I write down three problems I currently have and see how they tackle it.
I link every question to values in the company so that we're able to assess their fit with
the values of the company.
I always ask for references.
Sometimes I go into, like if it's final round, I actually go to there, LinkedIn and see any

(48:03):
common connections and I will reach out to these connections to tell me how this person
is.
There's almost always one or two common connections.
The goal is to minimize risk because it's such an important decision.
Everyone says this.
I cannot mention this enough.
The team that you hire will make or break your company and they will hire another class of

(48:27):
people who will make or break your company.
I take this decision as the highest of importance.
In some cases, I even try.
It's not always possible, but I even try to do some sort of a test, you know, like a paid
three hour workshop.
Are you okay working, you know, on a weekend just to kind of, you know, especially if it's

(48:51):
a very impactful role, can you work on the side a little bit?
Well, we contract you.
So just to kind of see your experience.
I want to get as much information before that decision is made because some people just
know how to interview and they can create an incredible impression in an hour that you
talk with them.
You may think they're just, oh my God, incredible.

(49:13):
And then day one happens and oh man, you know, it was all snake oil.
It's fascinating.
And I think looking at how you assessed your own role at Nyla, I mean, you gave yourself
that really generous, you know, seven days between a big exit and starting your new gig.
And you took a two week, you know, trial run, like I wouldn't call it necessarily contract

(49:36):
to hire, but that kind of, you know, given it a shot and seeing the feeling each other
out, you know, I think that is more and more proving to be a very powerful way to really
assess a fit since there is no perfect interview or hiring process.
There is no perfect way to evaluate someone over a 30, 45 minute or an hour long video
call, you know, when you are looking for those new hires and you're trying to find someone

(50:03):
to come on board, but don't quite see that perfect profile.
What might compel you to take a chance on somebody?
Taking a chance and I've done that multiple times.
Sometimes works great.
Sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes where it has worked, it's to bet on the growth mindset that I see in the person

(50:25):
I'm hiring.
There was a, so I'm reading a lot of parenting books just because I'm expecting a new kid
and so there's a chapter that is seared into my mind.
If you tell your kids that they're super smart and you praise them and they actually
believe it, they believe that they're smart.

(50:46):
What that also does is it creates almost a fixed mindset where they, in their mind,
they're smart.
So they'll go through life thinking, okay, I'm smart and they don't take a lot of risks
and they don't take a lot of opportunities to test their intellect because they don't
want to disprove the fact that they know that they're smart.

(51:09):
They even did an experiment where they would give them a test of different questions and
then the ones who have been told they're smart will actually tackle the easier questions,
not the harder ones because they don't want to be proven that they're not smart.
On the other hand, parents that tell their kids, you may not know the answer, but we're

(51:30):
going to find out together, we're going to keep learning, we're going to be curious,
we're going to, we're just, let's just find out what the right answer is and continuously
experiment.
That is the growth mindset way of parenting.
And they found that those kids are the ones that are like, yeah, I'll take a challenging
question.
I want to, let's see, let's figure it out.
If I may not know it, no problem, I'll know it next time.

(51:52):
Interestingly, that is how I like to take a chance on people, people who may not know
the answer, but you just know that they're going to not stop until they figure out the
answer and they're going to be curious, they're going to be humble in the fact that they don't
know the answer and just continuously move forward and learn from there.

(52:14):
That's great.
I love that.
As we think through performance management and accountability, you've led in a bunch
of different capacities, you lead now, what's your favorite way to measure performance?
Yeah.
In terms of performance, I find myself gravitating towards more numeric as much as possible.

(52:38):
Data heavy.
Because sometimes if you just like to work with someone, it can influence your performance
evaluation.
So just like I mentioned before, a good year is a well-measured, well-defined year.
I think a good performance review is a well-measured, well-defined one in advance.

(52:59):
One that you're setting it with the person in advance as well.
So the first thing I do after doing a lot of the initial training is we have a conversation
about what is a great year look like for you?
What are things you want to accomplish?
What are things that are both business-specific but also growth and learning-specific that

(53:20):
you want to personally have?
So we'll write that down.
We'll document it.
We'll use it as a pulse as we go.
A lot of times, I mean, as much as possible, link it to the OKRs and to the actual numbers.
And that is a great basis of a performance review.

(53:40):
And then after that, sometimes numbers don't always tell the full picture.
So in some cases, if there was some hardships or some learning curves or this is where the
behavioral stuff comes into play, what did they do to face some of the issues?
What are the circumstances and contexts that led to that?
But yeah, definitely start with numbers and start with real hard facts.

(54:01):
Well, son, how do you think about accountability?
Yeah, accountability.
It's a big one and it's an important one.
I've had both experiences with people that I define as not accountable where they're
presenting a problem and just a full stop after that problem.

(54:23):
Like, this is what happened.
OK, now what?
The ones that are more accountable, I've found that they're more likely to come in
and have reasoning behind what happened and opportunities to improve what happened
and take responsibility for it.
But necessarily it's responsible.
It's thinking through it and understanding that there's another layer to that onion,

(54:49):
you know, versus just passing the onion to your manager or to your leader.
And, you know, what do you want to do with it?
I found the folks that are able to think through it and present different approaches,
different solutions.
Here's what happened, here's what I did, here's what I think we should do.
Yeah, that's always my preference.

(55:12):
Right on.
As we begin to land the plane here and bring the conversation to a close,
I'd like to start from a macro perspective.
What are you excited about for the future?
Yeah, it's a bit of a generic answer,
because everyone's talking about it right now, but I'm going to go for it.
I think, I mean, everyone's talking about AI and everyone's talking about all the applications

(55:37):
of AI and how it's, you know, just being used and overused and over overused.
But man, I think it's going to change every single thing about everything we do in the
professional space.
And I think for the good, because I just elevated the standard of what a productive person is.

(55:59):
Because before, there are jobs out there where, you know, you are doing a very simple, you
know, moving, pushing paper, you know, doing a few things and things that just don't add
a lot of value.
And I think this movement is going to force people to be more productive, use AI as a

(56:21):
weapon, just become incredibly more impactful and productive people.
Some won't.
It won't look good for them.
But hopefully most do.
And I think society is better for that.
That's the same thing as, you know, when the industrial revolution happened and the mobile
revolution and the social revolution, this is just another one that just happening in

(56:42):
a much more compact timeframe.
And I'm here for it.
Yeah.
Likewise, it is an exciting time to be here.
Your field, I might say, is pretty broad.
So e-commerce and the Shopify side of things, design, advising startups, I mean, you know,
even the world of kind of consulting more broadly, what do you think, and you can take

(57:05):
a stab at any of these that you're excited about?
But what do you think any of those fields are going to look like six years from now in
2030?
And it's May of 2024 when we're recording this.
Yeah.
The world is going to look very, very different.
I think people are just going to learn to live with a baseline of the basics are going to

(57:26):
be taken care of in terms of AI.
So let's take an example, building a page, building a store just because I'm very close
to that field right now.
Today you essentially have to think about, you know, how do I put the page together?
What do I want to feature?
What are the images I want to use?
You know, you have to do this over and over again, and you have to do stuff from scratch,

(57:51):
essentially, very soon.
I mean, you know, in the next year or two, that page, you're going to start with a page
that's done, that's completed.
And from there, you're going to inject your point of view.
So the page is going to be there, the image is going to be there, the text is going to
be generated for you, the, you know, it's going to give you all the conversion metrics,

(58:16):
but here's the thing, everyone else has access to that same technology.
So now everyone has that same page.
How do you win in a situation where everyone has the same technology and the same baseline?
This is where adding differentiation, adding character, adding, you know, value and impact
beyond what AI can typically do.

(58:37):
This is where, you know, it's going to determine the next generation of winners.
And it's going to happen in the consulting space.
It's going to happen in the e-commerce space and the design space.
How can you innovate beyond what is just the basic automated AI stuff?
Great answer.
I'll check back in a few years.
We'll see where we end up.
Are there any books or podcasts or other content that you'd like to recommend to our audience?

(59:03):
I am in so many parenting books, which honestly, podcasts, it's interesting because it makes
you think about just being human and forming, you know, the human experience, you know,
because yeah, sure, there's a tons of business books like, you know, like the Lean Startup
and like the VC handbook and all the typical business books.

(59:28):
Oh, yeah, I've been reading a lot of parenting books.
The Danish way of parenting is the one that I just read for getting the author.
And they do experiments on how Danish parents, for some reason, can inject more happiness
into their kids versus the typical American parents.
Yeah, but it's interesting.

(59:48):
It makes you think about by going back into how you raise a human being.
It makes you just, it's the biggest macro lens of all, you know, examining life and how
you can form another human being to be a certain way.
I mean, it's fascinating to me.
So yeah, that's my advice.
Just pick up the hottest parenting book right now and, you know, use it for perspectives.

(01:00:10):
Yeah.
And wonderful perspective it is.
Is there anything that you'd like to revisit that we perhaps skimmed over during the conversation
so far?
The biggest thing, and you've used the word big leap a lot, which I like that, you know,
there's a few big leaps that I've done that whether it's moving across the globe to get

(01:00:33):
an indication, start a life or, you know, not take the safe route in some cases and in
some cases taking the safe route with an exit.
It's important to, you know, as you do the grind of the day to day and as you're thinking
about your next career and your next moves, just to be thoughtful and think about where

(01:00:54):
are you right now?
What is your risk appetite?
What do you want to do in the next few years?
What brings you meaning?
What brings you happiness?
And in some cases, take big leaps that will change your career because it, you know, more
often than not, that's the option you regret less.
What a beautiful way to close.

(01:01:14):
Nick, thank you so very much for being so generous with your insights, your wisdom and
your time.
I'm so grateful to have you on the show.
Thank you, Ryan.
This was great.
That really fantastic questions.
I had a blast.
Thank you so much.
Right on.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Cheers.
Our next episode is with Warren Hearnes, former chief data scientist with Best Buy.

(01:01:39):
More connections you have in your network, those connections are only going to help you
make a better fit for everything that you're doing.
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe for new episodes, leave a review,
and tell a friend.
GoodFit Careers is hosted by me, Ryan Dickerson, and is produced and edited by Melo-Vox Productions.

(01:02:00):
Marketing is by StoryAngled, and our theme music is by Surftronica with additional music
from Andrew Espronceda.
I'd like to express my gratitude to all of our guests for sharing their time, stories,
and perspectives with us.
And finally, thank you to all of our listeners.
If you have any recommendations on future guests, questions, or comments, please send

(01:02:20):
us an email at [e-mail].
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