#127 Michael Stocks: Sydney to New York, Harvard MBA, Early Linktree hire, Demystifying operations in a high growth startup!

The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal

Michael Stocks is Head of Strategy & Operations at "FL0", previously he joined the global success story Linktree as one of their earliest hires, scaling the startup to a billion dollar business. He was born and lives in Sydney, Australia.

In this episode #127 w Michael Stocks, learn about:

Michael’s sunrise, a mix of the Blue Mountains in Sydney and Malaysia — his parents met bush walking (how good), and mum was a speech pathologist and dad in the navy followed by working in Oil & Gas.

We connect over our shared love for quality storytelling and advertising, especially in today’s closed loop world with Netflix and Spotify where ads aren’t like live TV.

We spend the majority of this episode on Michael’s career journey from starting in advertising to joining Google first in Sydney and then New York when they were slightly smaller than they are today, how this led to his MBA study at Harvard and then the big moment!

How did he join Linktree when they were a dozen people and had not raised much external funding. Today they’re valued at over a billion dollars — what exactly is operations in a startup and why the perceptions can be wrong, using the vision to values framework to set team and company vision, how to strategise pricing for a global product launch, sequencing ambition and impact in a fast growing company, world class investor relations and successful off boarding and on boarding.

And that’s not all — Michael has decided to go back to early stage company building, joining Flo (that’s Fl0) — the platform that empowers back end engineers to deploy code, and how he’s using his link tree experiences to see around corners, especially being the first non engineer hire.

It’s now time to explore your curiosity. Please enjoy!

(Timestamps below)

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02:48 - Where were you born and live now?

03:20 - What was your first job and now?

05:04- High Flyer in Michael’s life

06:18 - Malaysia and the Blue Mountains

07:46 - Introverted and shy

09:02 - Advertising love from day dot

13:15 - Mad Men

15:02 - Young Wisdom

17:08 - Rationale to work at Google

19:30 - Corporate vs startups

22:39 - Google in America vs Australia

26:35 - Harvard MBA

28:30 - Joining Linktree (when it was < 20 employees)

34:10 - Setting up for success in early startup

38:06 - Unpacking what “operations” means in a startup

42:05 - The vision to values framework

44:32 - Setting pricing for a viral global company

46:57 - Executive Coach

49:33 - Sequencing ambition and impact

53:06 - World class investor relations

56:00 - How can investors be most helpful

58:10 - Team management being a sharp curve

59:33 - Joining the startup, FL0

01:00:31 - Successful off boarding and onboarding

01:02:25 - Most formative experience in his career

01:03:39 - Final sprint

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