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Insights from an entrepreneur – Virta Health Sami Inkinen is a serial entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Trulia, an online real estate listing service which made an initial public offering in 2012 and was acquired a few years later. After that, he founded Virta Health, a company aiming to reverse type 2 diabetes without medication. Sami shares with us why he thinks entrepreneurial people are also better employees for growing companies and why we need more entrepreneurs. Can you elaborate a bit why you think entrepreneurial people are better employees for a growth company? “There is a fundamental difference between running something and building something. In a growth company, you’re growing and building so you need to have builders on your team. The skills required of these builders are very similar to the ones you need if you are an entrepreneur. So, in order to build a successful growth company, you need a lot of people who can operate like an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial people never get stuck – they overcome obstacles like lack of money or resources, and are skilled at finding creative solutions to the most difficult problems.” What is the Virta Health entrepreneur factory? “We at Virta Health have the ‘Entrepreneur Factory’ concept. I have watched more and more companies being established by my old employees from Trulia. It has become clear that a company is like a tree that spreads thousands of seeds. The seeds start to grow and become new trees. Given my experiences and learnings, I wanted to cultivate this phenomena even more. “Why are we doing this? First of all, even though it sounds fluffy, it is important to inspire people and make them realize that anything is possible. Second, I want my employees to learn new things. The third reason is that I believe that this is a retention tool for entrepreneurial-minded employees. Finally, as a CEO and co-founder myself, this is an opportunity for me to connect with people who don’t normally work directly with me on a daily basis.” How would you advise other scale-ups to create an entrepreneurial atmosphere and how do you do it? “As a scale-up, you have ways to create an entrepreneurial atmosphere. You can inspire people, tell stories and set an example of what it is like to start this crazy obstacle course of entrepreneurship. “Another critical thing to do is to reward risk-taking and not punish failures. If you don’t reward risk-taking, no one is going to try to shake things up, take risks or go above and beyond what you asked them to do. Do you promote the person who takes a risk with a wild idea that might add a lot of value, get a big customer, or launch a new product – or do you promote the person who week after week grows something a little bit?” Why do we need entrepreneurs? “If you think about the value society produces as a pie, we have to focus on making the pie bigger rather instead of just thinking about how to share the pie. The bigger the pie is, the easier it is to share as well. I see entrepreneurship as the only way to do this: when we have more companies, we have more jobs and more people to pay taxes. I would say that entrepreneurs are the drivers of the economy.” What is the purpose of a company? “I think one of the most important things is to define the purpose of the company: this is why we exist. You can’t bullshit it, and it isn’t something that can just be made up. Building a company is a long journey and if you have no idea of your purpose and the company’s greater meaning, it’s very easy to lose interest – even as a founder. “That’s also one of the reasons I left Trulia. I was excited about the process of hiring people, building a product and making something that people use. But then I realized that I couldn’t spell out our mission. Yes, I founded the company, but I could no longer tell why it existed – I literally ran out of meaning. “One of my big career realizations was that if I ever end up starting something else, I should define the purpose for myself very concretely. Something that is inspiring and big, but also very practical. At Virta Health, our mission is to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025.” How do you take the first step? “When you know your purpose, you often get the kind of feeling that cannot be analytically calculated. You just have to go make it happen and take the first step. You can study, research and think about it as much as you want, but nothing will happen unless you make it happen. You simply have to try – even if you might fail. “Often, one of the first steps is quitting your job. At the same time when we were getting Trulia off the ground, I was supposed to start working in consulting after graduating from Stanford, but I felt a calling to work on Trulia. I called the consulting company and told them ‘I’m building something new, so I’m not coming back. Here’s the signing bonus, I have to go.’ “What was the worst thing that could have happened? I run out of money and have to move back to Finland to live with my mom? I went through the worst-case scenario in my head and realized that I had nothing to lose and that this was a once in a lifetime chance. The sooner I do it, the easier it will be.”