Season Two Kickoff - David vs Goliath: How Small Teams Win Big

In this season opener of the Unicorn Leaders podcast, Fahd Alhattab sets the stage for a new narrative—one centered around the underdogs. Drawing inspiration from the classic David vs. Goliath story, Fahd explores why small, scrappy teams often outperform their larger, better-resourced competitors. Using Google's historic win over Overture as a launch point, he teases a season packed with modern business stories—from tech startups to industry disruptors—showcasing how trust, speed, culture, and strategic clarity help small teams punch far above their weight.

With upcoming guest interviews and deep dives into companies like Slack, Pixar, Netflix, and Shopify, this season is designed to unpack what really makes high-performing teams succeed. Whether you're a founder, people leader, or just team-curious, this season promises to deliver the tools and insights to help your team win—no matter the odds.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:05):
Hello and welcome back to the Unicorn Leaders
Podcast.
My name is Fahad Al-Hattab.
I am your host and I'm thefounder and CEO of Unicorn Labs.
And for this season, I'mexcited.
I'm excited because we're goingto dive into the David versus
Goliath stories of teams.
Of how these small but mightyteams overcome the competition.

(00:26):
You know, for years, I've beenpersonally obsessed with this
idea.
Why is it that small teams, theunderdogs, they so often find a
way to beat out the bigger, moreresource competitors.
What is it about them?
It shouldn't make sense, right?
The bigger companies, they'vegot bigger budgets and they've
got more people.
They've got more resources.
They've got the best technology.
They've got the most intelligentpeople.
They're the big guys.

(00:47):
You'd think they'd win everytime, but they don't.
Why?
What is it about their teams?
That's exactly what we're goingto explore in this podcast.
I mean, think about the ancientstory of David versus Goliath.
Everyone sort of knows it, andeveryone at first expects
Goliath to win.
He was bigger, he was stronger,he was more experienced, but
David had something that Goliathdidn't.
It was his agility, hisprecision, his willingness to

(01:10):
fight differently.
That's the same in business.
That's perhaps the same in someof our small tech companies.
They don't win because they'retrying to be big.
They win because they're willingto work smarter, they're They
win because they lean into theirsize, their speed, and they
trust each other.
Actually, they win because theyexploit a certain part of the
market that everyone else wasn'texpecting.

(01:30):
Let's look at a more modern dayversus Goliath, right?
One of the classic stories.
Back in the early 2000s, some ofthe brightest minds were in a
tech race, and they were tryingto essentially invent the
pay-per-click model for search.
And you had a lot of differentcompetitors going after it.
And one of the biggestcompetitors was Overture.

(01:50):
Overture was the favorite.
They were a company thatessentially invented the
pay-per-click model and theywere winning in the search
advertising and onlineadvertising.
This was worth billions ofdollars.
Actually, in fact, Overture hadIPO'd and they had IPO'd for
over a billion dollars.
And their CEO, one of theirfounders, Bill Gross, out of LA,
was known as the go-toentrepreneur of his time.

(02:15):
They had a head start.
They had more money.
They had more infrastructure.
They had better engineers.
Everyone and the market includedthought that they would win
search and advertising andsearch we all know that's not
how the story ended up actuallyif you're listening to this you
very much know that Google wonthis Google this little small
scrappy company that was stillfiguring itself out in 2000

(02:37):
during this month they won therace they won this moment and
they were able to actually Now Ijust go from a$6 million a year
company to$880 million a daycompany just from AdWords.
And so we want to unpack what isit that Google did?

(02:58):
What is it?
What were the different elementsof the team, of the strategy, of
the culture, of the leadership,the organization, of the talent
that was able to allow Google,the smaller upstart to win in
this modern day David versusGoliath.
And in fact, I'm not going totell you the full story and why

(03:21):
they did it just yet.
I'm going to make sure you cometo some of our episodes, listen
to some of the next ones wherewe will explore the story of
Larry Page and one of his starengineers, Jeff Dean, and just
how they figured out a way tomake the pay per click model
work for Google ads so muchsignificantly better than any

(03:41):
other company, allowing them toessentially win.
And so in the next episodes,we're going to explore many of
these David versus Goliathstories and we're going to
explore them and we're going toalso try and pull out some
lessons.
What is it that they did from apsychological safety perspective
and how they create highperforming teams?
What is it that they did from anempowerment perspective and how

(04:01):
they give people freedom to makedecisions and drive innovation?
What do they do from acommunication perspective to
have really good feedback anddebate and clarity on where
things are going?
What do they do from a cultureof leadership, allowing
different leaders to lead, asense of purpose, a shared
mission, and ultimately thevision.
And we don't want it to be justtheory.
We want the stories.

(04:22):
And we're going to beinterviewing some phenomenal
guests.
And we're going to look atstories from Slack and stories
from Pixar all the way toNetflix, but also some more
homegrown stories, like perhapssome of our founders at
Fullscript and founders ofShopify or smaller teams that we
have in our regions.
We want to look at the entiregambit because it's not just

(04:43):
another leadership podcast.
It is a podcast around teams andwhat creates high performing
teams.
So if you're ready to learn onhow to unlock this potential of
your team, what you can do as afounder, what the David versus
Goliath did so that we can learnfrom them, don't miss an
episode.
When the next episode drops,check it out.
Send us a message.

(05:03):
Let's learn together and let'sexplore how small but mighty
teams outperform the odds towin.