S07E10: Drivers of Startup Success with VIP Guest William Santana Li

Secrets to Win Big With Arjun Sen

William Santana Li is the co-founder and CEO of Knightscope, a company focused on reducing crime in America with robots. He is a veteran entrepreneur and former executive at Ford Motor Company. He is also the founder of GreenLeaf, a company that grew to become the world’s second-largest automotive recycler.

Here are some key insights from this week’s show:

- Founders are laser focused on one objective and their message never changes.

- Always pick something you are deeply behind and support it irrationally.

- The key to making it is having single minded focus to get up and keep going after what you want, knowing there is no going back.

- It is important to think of every problem cross functionally and see the company as a whole.

- The world of startups works on three things: People, cash, and relationships.

- The ability to say “No” starts from scope clarity.

- Failure to say no can be a BTE (Business Terminating Event).

- Use attitude, stamina and grit to brush off every setback.

- A company’s success relies upon its employee’s willingness to achieve whatever needs to get done.

- Raising capital from the right set of investors is important to blossom in the long run.

- Deciding on board members solely based on who wrote the largest check, without having the long-term interest of the company in mind, is a poor way of setting up a governance structure.

- The Founder’s diet is comprised of getting punched in the face for breakfast, kicked in the stomach for lunch, body slammed for dinner, and then you got to wake up the next morning with the big smile on your face, get on the camera, and go back at it again.

Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/a_EnOWmduZw