Dylan Richard has, according to the President of the United States (and probably the general population), a "fierce" beard. Before leading the Obama re-election campaign to victory in 2012, Dylan worked on commerce platforms with some of the country's top countries. Now, Dylan is working on Modest - a startup hailed as one of the most anticipated of 2014 that strives to "make commerce easy."
From Crate & Barrel to President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, you've earned diverse experience in engineering. Why are you focusing on e-commerce now?
Between Crate, threadless and to an extent the 2012 campaign - I've been playing with commerce for quite some time. We're in an interesting place with commerce right now - where people have changed pretty dramatically how they use technology, but commerce technology hasn't caught up. We think we can help.
Modest is hailed as one of Chicago's most anticipated startup of 2014. Tell us some lessons you learned at OFA that are helping you lead this charge.
There are a bunch of great lessons that we learned on the campaign - but the one that's most important that we're really working with most right now is how important the team is to success. If you invest in building your team - not just the individual people, but really building the team to work as well as possible as a team you'll be able to move faster, do more, and sow a seed of teamwork that continues to grow as your team does. No other investment pays off as well.
Chicago is known for having a large talent pool of thirsty, young workers. What are the top characteristics you look for in a potential hire?
- Communication - We have a partially distributed team, and we're building a lot and moving fast; it's vitally important that everyone on the team be able to communicate the good and the bad, both about what they are working on and what others are.
- Ability - for an engineer this would be looking at how they code, how they think about problem solving, etc.
- Culture - building tools for the internet and the world is always easier if you're working with a team that brings the varied views and experiences to solving those problems.
- Passion - let's be honest, a startup doesn't work if the people aren't passionate about solving the problem.
Let's talk about the tech scene in Chicago - what is working? What else needs to happen?
It seems to directionally be going pretty well, honestly. There are a lot of great small companies run by passionate people building impressive products and viable businesses, and there are a lot of very established companies that help power our economy that have massive and smart teams working on big problems. The only innovation that I think needs to happen is to mix those two worlds a little bit more.
When you're not tied up disrupting the world of commerce and engineering the President's re-election campaign, what do you do for fun?
Hanging out with my wife and sons, taking the long way to hit my Fitbit goals, growing my beard or working on my oddball collection of diesel volkswagens.
