Howard Kaplan

Background

About Howard Kaplan

Currently building Foundery, because I can't stand living in a world where Day 0 founding teams are left in the cold, lonely wilderness of Startupland, searching for a playbook when they have all the answers they need inside themselves already. Eat, sleep & breath the messy middle journey from day 0 to PMF. Coach to 88 amazing early stage founders. 20+ year veteran of early stage, software first startups (which is code for "I've made a lot of mistakes") I mean,*a lot*. And yet, without mistakes, without failure, there can be no growth. So I've dedicated myself to the search for truth, within startup teams & startups alike. Open to failing, curious about what's really being said by our actions, and unafraid to take risks needed to change the world- I like to say I've done everything you can do in an early stage startup except finance. I've written code. I've driven revenue. I've trained marketers how to think like (data) scientists, and scientists how to persuade like marketers (without lying :scream:). I've created strategy and products and strategies to move product. I've led teams & I've learned through it all, all startups fail for the same reason. People. Not bad people, just people. Humans are complicated, communication is far harder than it seems, though simple it remains. So much of tech companies success comes down to the leadership teams ability to understand the one thing that's stayed the same for 100s of years, people. I didn't realize it at the time, but every stop I've made in my career- at PwC where I first started, at my first failed venture backed startup in the sock puppet days of the internet, to being the first hire at what today would be described as the first growth hacking agency, with clients who were darlings of the Valley, to my time leading the team at Harvard innovation labs, was all in service of the same thing. A deep understanding, and appreciation for the complexities of the human condition, and how effective, empowered teams are always worth 10x more than the sum of their parts. Foundery, the last job I ever intend to have, is the canvas on which I get to stamp my collective years of experience, of failure turned into growth, to give back to the next generation of founders who will be the change they need to see in the world.