I’m a War Correspondent and Trint Founder Jeff Kofman, and This Is How I Work
Emmy-winning journalist Jeff Kofman has covered some of the world’s biggest news stories for ABC, CBS and CBC, including the Arab Spring, the Libyan Revolution, the invasion of Iraq, trapped Chilean miners and the international war on the drug trade. … He now runs Trint , an artificial intelligence- powered automated transcription service that relieves reporters and many others from hours of tedious work. He told us how to get into the world of business and find out how it works.
Location: London, England Current place of work: CEO and founder of Trint One word that best describes how you work: All-in Current mobile device: iPhone 6S Current computer: MacBook Pro 15 “
First of all, tell us a little about your past and how you got where you are now.
I have worked for 30 years as a TV presenter, foreign correspondent and war correspondent for ABC, CBS and CBC News. My career has taken me to over 40 countries and marked all the boundaries of my dreams.
I like being a journalist. If you had told me 10 years ago that I was going to be the CEO and founder of a startup, I would have said, “No way, I’ll kick off first.” But life knows how to surprise us in a wonderful way. I didn’t plan on starting a startup, it was just a chance meeting with some really smart developers that gave birth to the idea for Trint. I saw the potential to work together to create an AI solution to every journalist’s biggest pain on the workday: transcription.
People ask me all the time if I miss my old job. Three years on Trint are growing rapidly. It’s always challenging, challenging and often fun. Building the Trint is really fun, I don’t have time to look back.
Tell us about a recent work day.
The bike ride to our office in Shoreditch, East London is a morning ritual, whatever the weather. (No, London doesn’t rain as much as people think.) It’s a scenic 20-minute drive from where I live and it keeps my body and mind on fire all day.
If I have meetings, I prefer to have breakfast. This means they don’t interfere with the rest of the day. The other day, our VP of Development and I had breakfast with a really talented developer we hope to hire.
When I’m in the office, I quickly flip through my email and Slack to answer urgent questions. Then my day is full of meetings with the team, with some of the external staff we work with, and with key clients. We had a lot of noise, so venture capitalists in the US and Europe showed great interest in us. We are not officially involved in fundraising, so now is a good time to establish relationships with potential investors. I try to limit the initial calls with them to one day a week.
If I have to write seriously, I’ll stay late. We have a few developers who like to stay late. Sometimes I order dinner for all of us and it’s a really good way to chat with the team.
As a journalist and then a startup founder, you have worked in a wide variety of settings. What was your biggest challenge in moving from one to the other?
Finance. Nothing in my previous career prepared me for the financial side of running a company. When I started three years ago, I didn’t know the difference between KPI and ROI. I remember sitting at the kitchen table in the early days of Trint trying to create a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. I didn’t know what I was doing and was getting ### all the time. The only way to sort out the mess is to close it and start over. I wanted to curl up under the table in a fetal position and shout, “Send me back to Iraq!”
What apps, gadgets or tools can’t you live without?
I am concerned about my relationship with my iPhone. We spend too much time together. Clearly, I’m not the only person on the planet with this problem, but I don’t think it’s great. This means I can follow up without being in the office, but it also means that the office is always with me. I use my iPad in the morning to read the newspaper at the breakfast table. I read The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Sometimes I take it with me on a trip to watch something on the plane.
One of the telltale characteristics of a startup is the number of third-party tools and applications that companies like ours must use (and pay for) in order for the machine to work. We use Zendesk ( Service Support); GitHub (code); Stripe (payments) … the list is really long. There are about 50 of them. Some of them cost several dollars, some thousands monthly. We cannot live without them. Slack takes off a huge email load for team communication, but creates its own challenges. Searching in it and trying to find something that was posted two weeks ago can be very frustrating.
Besides Trint, what’s your favorite automation tool?
Every software business like ours needs CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. We started with a cheap CRM that quickly outgrew. After thoroughly exploring the possibilities, we switched to HubSpot . It’s amazing what it’s capable of: analytics, key users, automated emails. I am only studying its potential.
How is your workplace arranged?
We moved to a new office in the summer of 2017. When I asked our team (now 20 people and still growing) what they need most in the new office, they said daylight.
We have it. And more. Trint is headquartered in the second house in Shoreditch, East London. It is called the coolest workplace in London and it’s easy to see why. It is five floors of floating plexiglass and a jungle of plants. Our office has a 30-foot ceiling and a massive window. We like to sit at long tables. We have a development and engineering group on one side of the room and a commercial group (marketing, support, sales, etc.) around a large T-shaped table on the other.
What’s your best shortcut or life hack?
Stay on schedule. If I see a day of continuous meetings, I am not very happy. It is very important to have time for respite and time for quick ad hoc conversations with the team.
Who are the people who help you achieve results, and how do you rely on them?
When the team started to grow in the summer of 2017 after the last round of funding and we were planning the next recruitment, the managers approached me and said, “We are adding another body and you have no say in this. “They insisted that I hire an assistant executive. They saw how much time I spend scheduling appointments and setting up. Abigail started with us in September. It was incredibly liberating. Now I can focus on people and decisions instead of calendars and meeting rooms.
How do you keep track of what you need to do?
I give my working calendar to my advisor. She puts everything on schedule.
What do you enjoy doing the most and how do you deal with it?
I’m not a very tech guy by nature. In my 30 years as a reporter, I’ve learned to act instinctively. The process has taken root. As our team grew from four to ten to twenty, I had to learn the processes that keep everyone on track. This takes real discipline.
How to recharge or take a break from work?
Most of all I am happy with the bike. I don’t have a car in London, but I have three bicycles. I use an inexpensive commuter bike to get to work. I have two long-distance road bikes. I am a member of a bike club in North London, and on Sundays I get up early to join the group for a 60 to 100 mile ride. We will cycle to Brighton, Cambridge, Windsor or through the rolling hills outside London. It’s hard work, but exciting. Ideal therapy after a stressful week.
What’s your favorite side project?
I still work as a journalist. I set aside time in my schedule to write articles for magazines, and I regularly appear on the BBC as a commentator on world politics. I still enjoy doing research and writing. During my first two years at Trint, I also taught the Global Journalism program to students for one semester overseas from Indiana University’s School of Media. But it became impossible to balance the needs of a fast-growing company with the needs of training.
What are you reading now or what do you recommend?
This is an interesting question. I am reading a book on my Kindle. The weirdness of the Kindle is that because I don’t see the title and author all the time, I often forget the name and author of the book I’m reading. This novel is set in New York and is about a writer who takes a job at the New Yorker. “You can only come down from here,” her father says when she tells him she got the job.
Fill in the blank: I would like _____ to answer these same questions.
Trint team members.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Life is a journey, not a destination.