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Ep 38: Product Counseling at Nest, Apple, and a Climate Change Startup: Vineet Shahani, GC, Mill
91 Plays8 months ago
How do you step into and thrive in the role of product counselor? How does the work of a product counselor change from organization to organization? And how can you recalibrate your legal career to focus on environmental issues and climate change?
Vineet Shahani, General Counsel, Policy and Corporate Development at Mill, gained his product knowledge working on the iPhone at Apple and guiding the groundbreaking internet-of-things product Nest through acquisition and integration at Google. Now he applies those learnings to his legal leadership at Mill, a mission-based environmental product that combats a major climate issue.
Hear Vineet explain the challenges and rewards of jumping from a big organizations to an adaptable startup, lending your legal skills to a political campaign, breaking into environmental work, and more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-38
Annual Compensation Report: https://salary-report.spotdraft.com/
Topics:
Introduction: 0:00
Explaining Mill and its environmentalist mission-oriented concept: 2:22
Considering work in an ESG (environmental social governance)-related company: 8:01
Advice for lawyers who want to work on climate issues: 10:18
Beginning your path to a full-time counsel role as an outside advisor: 14:41
Unpacking the phrase “hitting a single:” 18:16
Defining the responsibilities of a product counselor: 22:25
Lessons about product counseling from Apple: 25:39
Transitioning from Apple to Nest: 27:36
Leading legal at Nest through an acquisition by Google: 31:37
Assisting on a political campaign: 37:42
What you wish you’d known as a young lawyer: 41:28
Connect with us: Vineet Shahani - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vineetshahani Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading CLM platform that solves your end-to-end contract management issues.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
The Role of Product Lawyers in Business
00:00:00
Speaker
You're a lawyer, but like I talked about before, your genuine interest in the business and the product actually shines through. The best product lawyers are actually invited to meetings because people feel like they're going to add value and they're going to speak up. And it isn't just because they're coming with legal work and legal asks and things like that.
00:00:30
Speaker
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00:00:58
Speaker
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Spotdraft Sponsorship and Guest Introduction
00:01:18
Speaker
How do the best lawyers counsel product managers and engineers who are developing products that delight and might actually make the world better? What if you want to focus your efforts on the environment and climate change? Are there proactive steps that you can take to position yourself to take on these issue areas?
00:01:37
Speaker
Today, we're joined by my friend, Vinit Shahani, general counsel at Mill, a very cool company that we're going to chat about today. I even wore a Mill green sweater for this interview. Previously, Vinit spent nearly five years as the deputy GC of Nest prior to their $3.2 billion acquisition by Google.
00:02:00
Speaker
after which he continued to support the Nest team as well as some other cool ventures within Google for another four years. He also spent three years at Apple as a product counsel, another thing we're going to talk about today. And he began his career at Latham and Watkins in DC. Vinit, thanks so much for joining us today on The Abstract. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Tyler.
Innovative Solutions for Food Waste Management
00:02:22
Speaker
Uh, I want to kick off by asking you what mill makes what's the product because it's a pretty cool mission oriented company. Yeah. You know, I, I get to do this daily, so I'm excited to tell everybody about it. Um, basically it starts with the plastic bucket that might be under your sink that you're trying to collect your food scraps in and.
00:02:45
Speaker
trying to do better for the environment or you live in a jurisdiction where, you know, they've kind of told you, hey, this is what you should do with your food scrap, put it in your green bin. The reality is even in the most progressive places, and I'm thinking Seattle and the Bay Area where you've got really socially conscious citizens, the participation rates in those programs are abysmal.
00:03:06
Speaker
I mean, 20%, 30%. And sort of coming off of our Nest experience that we'll get into later, we sort of saw this as a consumer behavior problem, first and foremost, right? And then, obviously, a problem for the environment. And so in 2020, as the pandemic was starting, two early Nest people, Matt Rogers, who founded Nest, co-founded Nest, and then Harry Tannenbaum,
00:03:30
Speaker
other early employee, they got together and wanted to go after this with what we learned from Nest to not only create a better user experience, but hopefully make a difference for the climate. And so what Mill is, is basically a consumer product for your home and it dehydrates food waste. So what it does is you put it into the bin like you would
00:03:50
Speaker
put in this stuff previously to a garbage can. And at night, it just takes the water out. It doesn't do anything else. And it's a filtration system in the product that takes that vapor and runs it through a charcoal filter that takes the stink out of it. And as you can tell, we're thinking through every step of what's broken in the user experience to make this a better experience for people.
00:04:12
Speaker
And then ultimately in the morning you wake up and this food is just like, we call it food grounds, but it looks like coffee grounds and it doesn't have any odor in it. And the cool thing in, again, that's sort of not on the market yet with anywhere else is you just do that every day. And because of the capacity of this thing, it takes like three weeks to fill up for the average family.
00:04:30
Speaker
And this is a task that you no longer have to do, which is like take your trash out as much. Kitchen doesn't smell. And then at the end of that, if you have a green bin or a garden, you could put that stuff in there and use it that way. Or we offer a way to send it back to us where we can turn it into chicken feed. And we've done a whole bunch of regulatory work to make that pathway possible. And I could talk about that later too.
00:04:52
Speaker
That's it. And at the end of the day, we are moving hundreds of thousands of pounds of food waste out of the landfill.
Impact of Food Waste on Climate Change
00:05:00
Speaker
And what that means is, and I think a lot of very bright people like don't even appreciate this, is that food in landfills is a major contributor to climate change.
00:05:09
Speaker
it went when food breaks down underground without oxygen, it breaks down anaerobically. And what happens is that releases methane. And methane is a really powerful short term greenhouse gas that has, you know, in a sort of shorter term period, 80 times the impact on warming the planet than CO2. And it's on the top of the list of many, the EPA and other many organizations around the world to like reduce methane.
00:05:39
Speaker
And to do that, we need solutions like this. So I'll get into it more, but that's kind of Mill and the product in a nutshell.
00:05:46
Speaker
I'm even just thinking, I mean, I'm in Lake Tahoe right now. I'm reading a book on bears in California and how they go after food waste in garbage cans. I mean, this is something that I should probably have in our house here too, just to keep the bit right. It's pretty amazing. Why is this the product that mill is building? Why did you decide to start with food and also this sort of direct to consumer model, as opposed to probably a number of other ways that you could tackle climate change through a product?
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. So look, let's start with food. So we talked about the consumer behavior angle and the fact that the infrastructure for cities and all of that isn't where it needs to be. But I think another thing people don't realize is food is about a quarter, food and other organic matters, about a quarter of the average landfill, which is a tremendous amount. And it's not like it's easy to permit new landfills, and it's not like landfills are something anybody wants in their backyard.
00:06:38
Speaker
That's that's one problem. And like I said, that part of the landfill that has food in it is what emits methane and it contributes to climate change. The other thing is, if you break down that quarter of the landfill that's food, over half of it comes from homes, because homes, again, have never really had a great pathway in the plastic bucket, is it right? Yeah. And so it's a major problem and contributor. So that's food. And that's why we wanted to attack that first in terms of why direct to consumer
00:07:05
Speaker
Look, I mean, obviously, it's something we're very kind of uniquely experienced at with our kind of work at Nest and sort of creating the smart home category and creating Internet of Things and connected devices and all these things. We have a sort of special point of view and experience on consumer. But more than that, I mean, our thesis is that, look, we're not just going to be a direct to consumer company.
00:07:26
Speaker
I mean, ultimately we want to partner with cities and with the waste industry and with parties that today is how traditionally waste services are given to people. And we want our offering to be part of that because it is a superior way to deal with organics. And so eventually our goal is to get into different form factors, get into commercial applications, multifamily,
00:07:50
Speaker
all of these other ways that we need to get into to really address the waste problem at scale and to have systems change, which is really what the whole company is about. It's why we go to work every day.
Mill's Approach to ESG and Environmental Law
00:08:02
Speaker
Do you consider some of the work that you do as being ESG-related and
00:08:08
Speaker
I asked the question because I'm curious for your take on what's happening in ESG. I think it's unfairly become a little bit of a hot button issue or a hot button term when I think actually maybe the legal practice or work around ESG is headed in pretty interesting and important directions. Talk to us about how Mill fits into and your work fits into ESG as a practice.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, let me start by just like the word ESG, right? Environmental, social, governance, like there's a lot in there. So like a lot of times when it's being characterized, I think there's probably maybe not an appreciation for just how many different things make up that word. You know, ultimately, there is a there has been a politicalization of
00:08:54
Speaker
it because sometimes it's sort of conflated with this idea of wokeness and being too paternalistic about our you know like sort of leave me alone I should be you know able to like make my own choices and I don't want the government telling me about that and all that so not denying that there's it gets conflated into that and that that's a challenge for us too right to like pick the right language to sort of
00:09:18
Speaker
Position it the right way. I mean these are all things you have to do when you're trying to have impact and break through the noise I would say though that like when it comes to the idea of climate change Right and like we talked about like the fact that what we're one of the big things we're solving for is improving the climate Reducing the number of landfills. There isn't as much Disconnect on that as one might think I don't I don't think
00:09:43
Speaker
At the end of the day, you can go to farms in the middle of America and bright red states. You can go to the cities where food is kind of rotting on the streets of New York City. And for different reasons, everybody understands the problem. And the thing about the climate and how different things are getting, like you're losing days on the ski hill, on the ski mountain, on the mountains, out in Tahoe, right?
00:10:04
Speaker
Like everybody confronts it it like it's in their face They see the changing of the climate and how it's different from when they were growing up And so I think there's more in common there than there is apart and and and we've definitely seen that in our experience
00:10:18
Speaker
I think there's a lot of people who want to break into young lawyers, even lawyers with 10, 15 years of experience who want to break into the type of work that you're doing. They want to support a business that has combating climate change as a part of its mission. Do you have advice for folks who want to start working on climate issues?
00:10:40
Speaker
Recently, I've actually had an opportunity to speak at a number of law schools about this and talk to my daughter's high school class about this. I've said this, and I think sometimes it takes a second to get your head around this, but I really do think environmental work in the legal and compliance area is what privacy was.
00:11:02
Speaker
12 years ago, when I was coming into Nest. When I got to Nest, this whole idea of internet of things and connecting devices, connecting a thermostat, connecting a smoke alarm, all sounded kind of ridiculous. And also just the kinds of data, the sensor data, and all the stuff that was being picked up. And so it created this, that compounded on top of the fact that the social media industry and how much more e-commerce we were doing online created all these new categories of data.
00:11:30
Speaker
It created all this uncertainty of how to share it and get permission as a company to use it. And that created an industry for lawyers to jump in and have quite a bit of work. And I spent, there was a lot of time where I talked to over the years litigators and other people that wanted to break into privacy. And I think now, if I'm thinking about where if you want to escape to where the puck is going and you want to
00:11:55
Speaker
work on something that has that type of ambiguity and that type of urgency and necessity, I think environmental is one of those things. And so I say that because the parallels really are stark. Europe has been pacing the US on environmental issues for a long time, just as they were with privacy.
00:12:13
Speaker
There's a ton of government investment coming into this area. If you look at the Inflation Reduction Act, if you look at a number of other bills coming out of USDA and DOE and other places, and that's true also around the world. There's a lot of government investigations. There's a lot of confusion about talking to consumers, a lot of greenwashing, which is a term that means in marketing labeling things just to get people to buy it, but not really having substance under your claims. There's a lot of parallels.
00:12:43
Speaker
And I guess the last thing I would say is there's a true generational divide between how young people see climate and environmental issues and how older people see it. And that was kind of like privacy, right? Like young people were totally cool having their stuff up on social networks, whereas older people were like more discreet and worried about their presence. Like this is true of climate too. You talk to anybody in high school right now, they inherently understand that we're not living in a future where there's a ton of abundance and resources are unlimited.
00:13:12
Speaker
But you talk to somebody much older, and they haven't experienced that. So they aren't going to feel that way. Kind of back to your original question, I think the way to get into this field is to, number one, be genuinely and authentically passionate about it. Because then you'll read about it on your own. You'll talk to people on your own. You'll reach out to people. There are burgeoning networks of people, just like there were with privacy 10 years ago.
00:13:37
Speaker
that you can easily become a part of online meetups. And you'd be amazed how quickly you can be an expert in an area that's not formed. You can be an expert pretty quickly because it hasn't been that long that we've been working on this. This isn't, you know, this isn't
00:13:54
Speaker
like some sort of thing that has this long history that you have to like catch up to. So that really resonates. I mean, I, you know, I, my background was in privacy before joining spot draft. And of course there were folks who had been working on privacy issues and data security issues for 10, 20, 25 years, right? Who, you know, I had word practicing when the e-privacy directive first came into being, but
00:14:20
Speaker
That being said, everyone was making up their interpretation of the CCPA at the same time. That idea of it's a space that's still forming, and so you can spin up quickly on it. If you're willing to read everything that's happening in real time, the history of it may be less important.
Career Advancement and Networking for Lawyers
00:14:39
Speaker
That really resonates.
00:14:42
Speaker
I know you'd worked, you said, with the co-founders at Nest previously when you were DGC there, and then you ultimately started serving as an outside advisor to them as they were starting Mill. I think that that path of advisor or consultant is a really interesting way to transition into a full-time role. Can you talk to us about how you went about that?
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. Look, I think one of the things, particularly as lawyers, that we don't do enough of is we don't develop networks outside of the legal community. I'm all in for bar associations and developing your professional community around your law firm colleagues or what have you. I think those are important things. I think I still participate in a lot of those things.
00:15:34
Speaker
But the reality is a lot of times some of the most interesting career moves come out of being connected to creative people, entrepreneurs, designers, engineers. You really have to maintain those networks and build those networks and go to events where they've never heard of
00:15:54
Speaker
any of your legal credentials, you have to kind of decredential yourself a bit and find common ground on tech or on product or on things that like, you know, really make you kind of force you to like be, you know, genuinely kind of have a conversation that's absolutely outside of the legal realm. So for me, I always developed those strong relationships at Nest. I was obviously a lawyer and had to do lawyer things. But like,
00:16:17
Speaker
I would hope people would say that, hey, I didn't really think of him. He snuck up on me with the lawyer stuff. I actually really saw him as a colleague and someone that was just someone we could trade ideas about everything on together. For me, I maintain that relationship with Matt and Harry, the two founders of
00:16:38
Speaker
mill. And when they were coming around to doing it, I was there for them. And we were talking about all the different ranges of things that we could do. And so, yeah, of course, I did some of the legal stuff. And I did all that. But I think I had the relationship. And then I think the other thing more broadly was, and I now do this for other companies. I'm sort of an advisor for a number of startups. I make the ask.
00:17:01
Speaker
Like, I think sometimes like lawyers are a little demure and they sort of they feel like they're just counseling and they're just giving advice. And it's weird. The law firm lawyers have no problem asking for like twelve hundred dollars an hour and sort of and sort of that's the business model. But, you know, you're in the in-house world and you just kind of feel like from there on out, you just you don't have a value to your hour. And I mean, in theory, maybe you don't at a company because we don't record things that way.
00:17:28
Speaker
But in the real world, you continue to be somebody I think that should think about your time as valuable. You should make an ask. And then I guess the thing I would say is like, you shouldn't just collect these things like merit badges. Like I very often consider opportunities where people want me to help them.
00:17:45
Speaker
and I help, but I don't make the ask because if I'm going to be signed up to be an advisor for somebody, I got to really know I can deliver and be there consistently or I'm just not going to do it because you have your reputation, your integrity, and you just got to startups are constrained. They don't have the resources like you can't take their resources and not deliver. Yeah.
00:18:06
Speaker
It's not just your headshot and your name on their website. You really want to have a sort of relationship with the founders or other folks on their team. Exactly. This isn't what you did when you moved to Mill, but as we were talking through sort of some of your past experiences, job searching or finding the next thing, including in times when the economic environment is maybe a little bit of a downturn or not so hot.
00:18:32
Speaker
some advice that you had that really resonated, I thought is hit a single. What do you mean by that? And where do you think that that's the right place to act on that advice? Yeah, you know, I sort of say that a lot and it comes from, actually it comes from the last downturn. I don't know if we're in a downturn now, but clearly in 0809 we were in what I guess was called the Great Recession and
00:19:01
Speaker
I was at Latham, which is like a shiny law firm and you got shiny credentials and you think the market should embrace that. It was really hard. I was getting the door slammed in my face more often than not. And I ended up taking a job at a
00:19:16
Speaker
kind of no name. I mean, they wouldn't say that. I mean, it was kind of not a well-known, we call it today a fintech company, but it was basically like a credit kind of company, consumer credit company. And it was not something that like you would look at and say, oh, you know, from Latham, you should go to like one of these big brand names. They weren't
00:19:38
Speaker
Hiring me right and I and I think what it what I mean by hit a single is like not to disparage a place you would go but like a lot of people just sit there especially when they're at a law firm or they're at a big company with a brand and they just keep waiting on pitches and they're not swinging and they're not getting on base and Years go by and they're not building their resume and they're not building new skills. They're not meeting new people and
00:20:03
Speaker
And what would happen, what would be a better way to do to go about it is to take the other take the opportunity that isn't exactly everything you want, you know, or do the advisor thing that we just talked about and just get on base. And you'd be amazed at how quickly you can create a narrative for yourself that's more appealing to those places you want to get to. And so that's kind of I mean, that's kind of like when I say that, that's kind of what I mean.
00:20:26
Speaker
Do you think there's an opportunity cost? Just a follow up on that. Is there an opportunity cost to not moving forward at all, right? To sort of staying in the same place for a long time, especially if it's comfortable or there isn't growth? Man. I mean, like I said, especially in my last move from Google to Mel, it was something that just
00:20:45
Speaker
sat with me. I think there is a ton of inertia to stay where you are when it comes down to compensation and predictability and you like your colleagues. But I would say I don't know that everybody would agree with this. There's plenty of people that have long careers at the same place and have dynamic things happen to them and they move around in the org chart.
00:21:06
Speaker
But I mean, my experience was that, yeah, there is an opportunity cost in the sense that I could be a leader at a well-known company, but there's a lot of skills I'm not developing. Like, for example, at Google, I didn't know how to run a board meeting. I'd never actually been in a board meeting. I didn't know how to counsel a CEO. Like, I wasn't counseling Sundar at Google. Like, I mean, this is not too much. Thank you.
00:21:31
Speaker
Well, this is not to diminish the work. It's just to say that, especially at bigger places, you're part of a big system. You work on a lot of process that's part of making the place work. And so for me, I felt like I needed to leave to go develop skills that I just could not develop at Google.
00:21:50
Speaker
get an opportunity to go speak externally for the company and do things that I can do without as much constraint because part of the goal of a small emerging company is to just have everybody do as much as they can in whatever area. There's no four corners of your job is not something that limits you the way it does at a bigger company because it has to, because everybody has to play kind of a role in a big system.
00:22:15
Speaker
I would say, yeah, I mean, I would say you have to there's a point where you've got to feel like, hey, if you're not learning enough and it's really hard to move around, you got to find a different environment.
00:22:25
Speaker
We're going to continue to talk a little bit about the environment because it's relevant to your role today, but I do want to transition in a sense to focus in on product counseling.
Product Counseling in Tech Companies
00:22:36
Speaker
It's something that I think you're pretty passionate about, that you have deep experience in across Apple, Nest, Google, and now you're still doing it today at Mill. Tell us in your own words what you think product counseling is and how you think the best product counselors out there do their jobs.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing how many like the word product counsels out there. And then if you really try to look at a definition for it, it'll be variable in a lot of different areas. And some of it is the fact that inherently every company's product is different. They're regulated differently. They have different competitors. They have different challenges to them.
00:23:16
Speaker
It's just not easy to say a product counseling role is necessarily transferable among different companies, but at its core,
00:23:27
Speaker
I think the term product counsel came out of Google in the 2004 or 2005 timeframe, out of this idea that, hey, we really need to embed lawyers into the development process of products. We can't wait until the product's done being developed and then get lawyers to react to it.
00:23:47
Speaker
These are decisions that you can't just change. At that point, you're kind of stuck with how it's done. It'd be a tremendous amount of investment to unwind it. So I think that's sort of the history of product counseling and where it came from. I mean, for me personally, at Apple, we didn't use that term back when I was there, but I did a lot of it. It started with the iPhone. At that point, it was iPhone 4 that generation so long ago. But it was basically being embedded with the product teams, the marketing teams, even the engineering teams.
00:24:16
Speaker
and being in those documents that create these products, that kind of create the plans for how we're going to develop and market and talk about the product, and commenting on that along the way. And I think there are aspects of privacy, competition, marketing compliance, product safety, and
00:24:37
Speaker
You sort of inherently, you're a lawyer, but like I talked about before, your genuine interest in the business and the product actually shines through. The best product lawyers are actually invited to meetings because people feel like they're going to add value and they're going to speak up. And it isn't just because they're coming with legal work and legal asks and things like that. So I mean, that's product counseling. And at Apple, it was a wonderful time when I was there.
00:25:03
Speaker
When I got to Apple, I had a Blackberry, if that tells you anything about how not inevitable Apple was at the time. And I really was there during this golden era of building up the supply chain, doing some really cool acquisitions that were foundational to the roadmap of the company.
00:25:20
Speaker
And then ultimately really just having input on this product that obviously today is everywhere, but at the time was still fighting to break through the noise of like smartphone generally and then specifically, you know, the category of like a premium kind of phone that people should rely on.
00:25:39
Speaker
Let's talk a little more about Apple. I'm sure that that was a pretty incredible training ground. Can you tell us a sort of lesson about being a good or great product counselor that you learned while you were there?
00:25:53
Speaker
Look, I think the cool thing about Apple and being a product counsel, and I guess I should step back. I think a lot of people are probably doing product counseling and they're just not called one. Product counsel is this hyper kind of tech forward term in a way that came out of Google and obviously started at Google and other companies picked it up and now it's like a thing. But at the end of the day, it's just somebody that's really providing counsel on a product at a company or a business or a service line or whatever.
00:26:23
Speaker
And they're issue spotting and they're like calling out risks before they become risks. And then ultimately when the product, this is in the development stage, they're doing all this. And then when the product hits the market and you have questions about the safety of the product or do we need to, when we update the app, do we need to do different things to tell the consumer about changes that have happened in regulation or et cetera. You're like a keeper of the precedent. You understand how to counsel that at that time.
00:26:50
Speaker
I would say I worked on several generations of iPhone at Apple, and I saw different acquisitions that I worked on. I did mostly what I would consider commercial work, like I was doing mostly deal work at the core. But all of that was additive, seeing multiple generations of phones working on a lot of different contracts in the supply chain and then M&A.
00:27:10
Speaker
That was helpful in being in meetings where we had to make decisions on how we talk about the phone, how that fine little print that people usually click through really quickly, like what it says and what kinds of disclaimers we might have to make in marketing. All of that was just part of being part of this ride of seeing everything from development to execution. And then once you see that once, you're so much better the next time the product comes out and you have to do it again.
00:27:37
Speaker
When you were making the transition from Apple to, to nest nest, you know, startup ish at the time, it ends up being acquired by Google, which we'll talk about, um, in a very large acquisition.
Transitioning from Corporates to Startups
00:27:48
Speaker
I'm curious if there are things, anything in particular that you felt like you did to unlearn from your time at Apple stepping into what I would expect was a somewhat different sort of, uh, work environment at nest.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, look, the first thing is like, and I had a great GC at Nest. He was former Apple and like, to this day, one of the great mentors, and I had a great mentors at Apple too. But, you know, there's a loneliness to a small company.
00:28:17
Speaker
You just lose all that camaraderie that's there in a big legal department and the idea sharing and the ability to be like, oh, we have a European issue. Oh, we have a European legal team. So we should talk to them. And you have a big fat budget for outside counsel. And you have just all these resources. I mean, for me, luckily, the move from Latham to the small fintech company I talked about was another place where I had to
00:28:43
Speaker
kind of just pull up my bootstraps and just sort of like do it all myself. And I think that's kind of the way when you walk into a nest or to any startup.
00:28:53
Speaker
There may not even be an NDA template. You gotta go create all those. And you can't go ask a law firm for everything because the spend is very real and visceral when you get the bill and you have to think about it in the context of everything else you're spending on and how hard it is to raise money. So I think the environment was really about needing to get creative, needing to be resourceful and find resources efficiently and inexpensively.
00:29:20
Speaker
And the last thing I guess I'd say is I don't know. In big organizations, there's just the drive to be perfect at something and do something 100% correct. I think more often than not, if you're at a startup and you're doing something 100% correct, you're not doing it well.
00:29:35
Speaker
Because you've over sharpened the pencil. And you don't have enough time to do that. You could do 80%. You could let that term go in the contract. You can be a little bit looser with your language and marketing. You could not have buttoned up all of the different policies and things that you need to have done to run the company. And you're probably fine because
00:30:02
Speaker
There's just nobody's really paying attention. I think you just have to be mindful of what the gives and takes you're making because there comes a point where some of that stuff needs to be cleaned up and needs to be brought up to us.
00:30:15
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I think that's right. Think about the consumer. Think about real harms potentially or risks you need to mitigate around the consumer as opposed to dotting every I and crossing every T. In the event a regulator comes and asks for lots and lots and lots of documentation.
00:30:33
Speaker
And look, the parallels to how you practice law and how the product team and the marketing team is thinking about the evolution of their work is, again, here starkly apparent to you in a startup environment. Like our first generation product at Mill, just like the first generation product at Nest.
00:30:56
Speaker
not where we want it to be. The point is get it out there. The cost structure of it behind the scenes isn't where we want it to be. The product feature set is not where we want it to be. We aren't marketing it as sharply as we want to, but these are all things that you do so much better in the next generation of a product. You need to take that approach in practicing law in a startup because
00:31:21
Speaker
There's a wave one of what work you need to do. And then there is necessarily a wave two and a wave three. And if you take that view, I think you're doing things, you're efficient. And you're doing things the way that the other functions in the startup are doing.
00:31:37
Speaker
I do want to make sure that our listeners have an opportunity to hear about your time at Google. You entered with a pretty cool way to enter Google. When Nest was acquired, it was Google's second largest acquisition ever. Is there a story or a lesson that you think encapsulates your experience working at Google, your time there?
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, look, what was cool about our acquisition, when we were acquired, it was called Google. The whole thing was called Google. Yeah. Very soon after we were acquired, a new corporate structure was overlaid on top of Google. And it's what we know today as Alphabet.
00:32:16
Speaker
And what was really cool was, in a lot of ways, Nest was the first bet. And in a lot of ways, in my mind, it was kind of one of the inspirations for the Alphabet structure in the sense that Google has a core business, right? And they're diversifying into cloud and other things. But at its core, it's an ad-supported business, right? That's how the revenue comes in.
00:32:39
Speaker
And Nest came to the board with actually a definitively non ads driven thesis. We were pretty clear about not wanting to run ads on people's thermostats and not use the data from camera footage to serve you ads. We knew that that wouldn't work for
00:33:00
Speaker
The business like that's just not consumers wouldn't take it. And so we had a different thesis on product We had a different business plan and and sort of how we degenerated revenue and then we had a mature team, right like tony fidel and matt rogers, you know We're both experienced people from apple. A lot of us had come from places like apple and We were hardware people and and and at its core. Google is more of a software centric Company, so for me, what was really cool was getting there
00:33:29
Speaker
And then we were actually left alone for a while. And that's sort of what the point of Alphabet is. Whether it's through an acquisition or through something that's been ingrown and incubated, these businesses that are not
00:33:44
Speaker
necessarily core to Google's business, they need to figure out a way to stand on their own. They need to maybe seek outside investment, which you can't do if you're a subsidiary of Google, right? You have to create a different structure. So the auto industry can invest in Waymo, and the health care industry can invest in Verily, and whatever. Now, again, ultimately, the decision was made to roll a nest back into Google.
00:34:11
Speaker
which, you know, is like, which was kind of where the winds were going with how hardware businesses were going and the smart home is going. But for me, that was there was so many product issues and commercial legal issues and regulatory issues and just the full suite of issues that I got to experience through that old journey. Meanwhile, just working with incredible talented colleagues, right, which which Google has plenty of.
00:34:36
Speaker
I had another guest on and one of the things that we talked about was perhaps that in the startup world, there's a little bit of a bias against people who come from large companies. The idea being they might not have that sort of 80-20 rule ingrained. There might be some adaptation that's needed. I just want to highlight that sounds like your experience at Google actually
00:34:59
Speaker
turned you into a little bit of a generalist or prepared you very well for taking down the GC role at Mill. Not everyone who comes out of a big company, I guess is what I'm saying, is a specialist.
00:35:13
Speaker
Yeah, look, I think that there was absolutely a lot of skills that you get at Google in terms of like being comfortable with complexity, being comfortable with working through a process, getting obviously just challenged by super smart
00:35:34
Speaker
people. But I was able, it was not easy to like, well, we talked about like the inertia and like walking away separately. Yeah. I think there was a part of me that was like, wow, can I go like create my own forms again and not have a sounding board for every decision and have some really perfect management structure that like supports me and develops me like
00:36:01
Speaker
Am I capable of practicing law like that again? You know, like I did at Nest in the early days, like I did at, you know, the FinTech company after Latham. And that's one of the reasons I left. And that was like, I felt like I needed to prove to myself I could do that. We talked about also just like the fact that like there were just things and skills that I could not develop at Google. It wasn't possible. I think to your question of like, is there like a bias or some sort of like, you know, against
00:36:30
Speaker
coming from a big company to a smaller company.
Political Engagement and Its Influence on Business Strategy
00:36:32
Speaker
I think there is. I think there is and I think that in addition to a bias from big company to small company, there's also a bias towards tenure and age and all of these things about when you come into a small environment often with
00:36:48
Speaker
a lot of young people like can you are you open-minded enough like are you hungry enough are you you know like scrappy enough to like kind of do things with the efficiency and the lack of cost and um
00:37:03
Speaker
I think it's something that if those are part of your goals, it's not part of everybody's goals to go off and work at an early stage company. You should be thinking about, and you can develop those. I mean, obviously, it's harder to develop in a big company. You could do them by doing the advisor thing that I was talking about, or just networking with those people. Make sure you're in compliance with all your whatever agreements you've signed at your company job. But there's ways to accumulate those skills
00:37:31
Speaker
while at the big company. But ultimately, if that's really where your heart is and you want to have that kind of impact, you got to take the plunge at some point.
00:37:39
Speaker
I've got just a few more questions for you and focused on something that I haven't talked about with anybody really on the abstract, which is politics. Early on in your career, you worked on an election campaign for a gentleman named Raja Krishnamurthy. He didn't win the race that you worked on, which was for Illinois State Controller, but now he is a congressman. I'm curious just sort of how you got involved in politics and decided to
00:38:08
Speaker
spend some time working on a campaign. Kind of like we were talking about advising companies and making networks outside of your comfort zone that are not legal. For me, in addition to the fact that politics is just interesting, I like to read about it. Me too. I think we all do. I think there's an element of it being part of all of our lives. But for me, strategically and really deliberately, I also see it as this
00:38:38
Speaker
incredible way to connect and be with people that you really otherwise have no business being connected to.
00:38:45
Speaker
Right. Like on that on Raja's campaign that didn't work out, you know, because of the need to fundraise and the need to like get the word out, which we'll talk about in a second. It's very reminiscent, very similar to like startups and like all that. But like but because of all that, you know, I developed these relationships as like a fourth year, fifth year associate with CEOs and with like, you know, people that were kind of really influential in the political world.
00:39:14
Speaker
And it was because I was associated with a candidate that they wanted to get to know better and they were excited about. And I think this is kind of, for me, both a way to scratch a itch in terms of how much I enjoy politics, but also a way to expand a network and a skill set and think about things that map to startup life, actually. And it has been hugely additive for me in being comfortable taking risks and doing things in the startup world.
00:39:43
Speaker
Do you still do any volunteering or fundraising for any candidates? I'd say there are people I've met along the way in the political world that I still want to support, and I do. And a core part of the job I do right now is policy and influencing policy because
00:40:03
Speaker
The world of waste is highly regulated. And there's things we've had to do in that arena. There's things we've had to do in the sort of ag arena around creating this feed ingredient. And so I'd say I get involved politically, sometimes for the sake of the company, sometimes because of personal relationships. But in general, I think the startup stuff just occupies enough time. There's not a lot left over.
00:40:28
Speaker
I've never asked this question on the podcast before. Would we ever see you run for anything like local school board or even something more? I mean, never say never, but I will tell you one of the things you learn if you've done a few campaigns is just how much campaign finance.
00:40:49
Speaker
is part of it. To see people, I know we're doing it for the right reasons, but they have no choice. They'll go take a vote on the Hill and then in the same hour, they'll run across the street to dingy call center because you got to separate the political work from the campaign work. They'll go and be dialing for dollars and just filling up their chest. If we got some form of public financing, I'd be more likely to run.
00:41:18
Speaker
For now, I think I'm more likely to be in the sort of guy behind the guy, guy behind the gal kind of situation.
Building Resilience and Adaptability in Careers
00:41:28
Speaker
As we start to wrap up, Vinit, I've just got one more question for you, something that I like to ask pretty much all of our guests. If you could look back on your days as a younger lawyer or maybe at Latham just getting started, what's something that you wish you'd known then that you know now?
00:41:48
Speaker
I think the thing about being young and enjoying success when you're young, whether it's getting into a school you want to get into or getting a job you want to get into, you feel like things are always going to be linear. There's going to be this trajectory that you're going to follow and you're going to spend X amount of time doing one thing and that's going to lead to the next thing and then the next thing. What you can't account for and you can't appreciate until you live it is that
00:42:16
Speaker
The market, life, all these things that are not really out of your control, they intervene. You'll have lows like I've talked about. I've been laid off from jobs. I've had struggles finding jobs. I've jumped into things that are at a stage where it's very unclear whether it's going to go anywhere.
00:42:38
Speaker
Um a lot of times like you know only in like hindsight Do you do you reflect on the fact that this is all part of like a journey and holistic and all that in the moment? It's hard to do that So again, if we're like doing a hypothetical where it's like what could you tell your younger self? Yeah, like I would say that those those things are going to happen because they happen to everybody I think the the ways to deal with it is to a lot one thing I did wish I did more is like verbalize it more talk through it more with people use like at different points in my career we didn't have things like
00:43:07
Speaker
LinkedIn or other outlets to be able to vent or Talk about your point of view to more people like use those things. I think learn from The like things that didn't go the way you want and do your best to not have those things happen to you again Take advice from people that have
00:43:25
Speaker
been there reach out to people like cold i mean on linkedin just be right a thoughtful message people will apply. And then i guess last thing is just sounds really corny but like just ultimately like kinda have this deep belief that like you're a good communicator especially if you're a lawyer i mean you're generally a better communicator than most people in the room.
00:43:43
Speaker
You have foundational skills that you can rely on and will lead you to good things. You can have that as a North star. And it sounds a little hokey, but I think you just have to have that faith. And that's like sort of what I think is impossible to really have at a junior part of your career. But a person that's been through it will tell you that that's really going to happen. And it's really important that you kind of keep your head up and keep moving forward.
00:44:10
Speaker
What a fantastic way to conclude our conversation. Thanks so much for joining us today, Vinit. Hey, I appreciate it. It was a great opportunity. And to all of our listeners out there, thanks so much for joining us for this episode of The Abstract. And we hope to see you next time. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd recommend that you give my interview from earlier in the season with Nguyen Vu, Deputy GC of OKX, a listen.
00:44:39
Speaker
He offers a different perspective on what it means to be a great product counselor. You can also subscribe so you get notified as soon as we post a new episode. And if you liked this one, I'd really love to hear your thoughts, so leave a rating or a comment. If you'd like to reach out to us, our LinkedIn profiles are in the description. See you all next week.