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Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters
Some leaders think speed is simply about working harder or moving faster. It isn’t. The speed that matters is Mission Speed: the rate at which your mission advances in the direction you’ve chosen.
As teams scale, that speed can quietly erode. Decisions pile up, energy becomes diffused, and everyone stays busy, yet less gets done than it should.
In this limited-series podcast, Keith Lucas—former Roblox CPO/CTO, author, and startup advisor—unpacks how the best operators move fast. Guests include the founders of Roblox, Instrumental, Vera, Divi, Splendid Games, and Blue Rose Research.
Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters
Speed Is Intention: Building Fast Without Breaking Trust with Harold Hughes
Harold Hughes has built companies at two very different speeds: hand-drawing wireframes on paper a decade ago, and shipping AI-generated MVPs in an afternoon today. In this episode of Speed, host Keith Lucas talks with Harold — founder of NFNTE Capital and Divi, and a 30+ company angel investor — about what it actually takes to move fast without breaking trust. They cover building critical mass in the early days, how AI has changed Divi's product cycle, why speed can be both a founder's biggest edge and their biggest risk, and how Harold recovers after a bad day.
In this episode
- 0:00 — Welcome, and introducing Harold Hughes
- 2:28 — From Band Wagon to Divi: building critical mass fast
- 5:02 — Juggling product, brand, funding, and outreach without losing focus
- 7:38 — Building Divi's product with AI — from hand-drawn sketches to AI-built MVPs
- 13:21 — Balancing speed with security and trust when the product touches people's money
- 16:06 — Advice for founders: speed as a competitive edge
- 20:59 — Recovery: how Harold resets after a bad day
The Guest: Harold Hughes
Harold Hughes is the Founder & CEO of NFNTE Capital and Divi. Through NFNTE Capital, he's built entrepreneurship and AI education programs adopted by organizations like the University of Texas and the NBA; through Divi, he's building the intelligence platform for early-stage investors. A serial entrepreneur and active angel investor, Harold has backed more than 30 startups — including Liquid Death, AG1, and Partake Foods — and authored A Kids Book About Blockchain. He holds dual degrees and an MBA from Clemson University, and lives in Charlotte with his wife and two kids.
Connect with Harold:
A Kids Book About Blockchain by Harold Hughes (2021) — https://a.co/d/0iiyua6S
The Host: Keith Lucas
Keith Lucas joined Roblox as employee #7 and later served as CPO and CTO, leading product, engineering, and operations as the company scaled. He went on to serve as COO of Instrumental and now advises leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, and enterprise technology. He is also the author of IMPACT and host of Speed.
Connect with Keith:
Get the book: Impact — https://keithvlucas.com/impact/
Contact us: speed@keithvlucas.com
CREDITS
Produced by : Leah Barnum
Social Media: Julia Guagliardi - www.stillwaters-creative.com
Editor: Jon Keur - www.wayfarerecording.com
Content Designer: Natalie Leroux - www.studioeightyseven.com
Studio lighting/Setup - www.175productions.com
Speed is such an important part of the intention demonstration because it shows that you are motivated, that you are resourceful, and how you are able to learn faster than others. The person who's taking like their time and trying to make things perfect is going to move much slower than the person who is going really fast and failing and failing and failing over and over. Because by the time you've got your perfect version, I've already failed five or six times and now have a better version for myself.
SPEAKER_00I've spent almost 30 years in tech building teams and advising companies. I've also written Impact, a book for startup leaders who want to transform their teams from scrappy to scale. It is my pleasure to welcome Harold Hughes. Harold is a serial entrepreneur, CEO, and founder. He's also a friend. I first met Harold when I invested in and advised Panwagon, and I was immediately struck by his leadership. It was confident, clear, engaging, and inherently decent. Since Panwagon, Harold has consistently inspired me in how productive and prolific he is. He wrote a book for kids explaining blockchain, started Infinite Capital to help early career entrepreneurs, and most recently started Divi, an exciting new take on angel investment. Side note, I'm also a Divi investor and advisor. Harold is a fantastic guest because he combines great personal speed with great leadership. He's also building Divi in the midst of the biggest technology transformation in decades, and I am seeing him and his team move faster than ever. Harold, welcome and thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_02Glad to be here. Good morning, everybody. I'm excited. This is awesome.
SPEAKER_00All right. Harold, I want to start out with you. From bandwagon to infinite and now Divi, you've always been incredibly fast at building critical mass around an idea. The product, the brand, the outreach, the funding, the engagement. Tell me about that early stage. What does it look like for you? What are you prioritizing and how do you reach critical mass so quickly?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that I look at speed as a very critical part of demonstrating intention. So you think about it uh as a person who's been married for a few years, we've been married on 13 years, you can think about it in the example of if your significant other asks you to do something. The time in which it takes for you to do it probably is going to have an impact on how pleased they are that it got done, uh, your intention on being able to deliver it, right? So if I tell you, hey, Keith, I'm building this new thing, and then you don't hear from me for three months, that lack of speed probably speaks to my intention. It probably speaks to my focus. And so when I think about whether building bandwagon or infinite or even now, as we talk about Divi, speed is such an important part of the intention demonstration because it shows that you are motivated, that you are resourceful, and how you are able to learn faster than others. Uh, there's some quote that I know will butcher, and so I won't try and actually land it, but ultimately the idea is that uh the person who's taking like their time and trying to make things perfect is going to move much slower than the person who is going really fast and failing and failing and failing over and over. Because by the time you've got your perfect version, I've already failed five or six times and now have a better version for myself. And so when it comes to speed, those are the things that I've tried to use in every one of my companies uh because I think that it helps with knowledge transfer and education, but also demonstrating the intention of how important I think what I'm building is.
SPEAKER_00That's excellent. I want to also ask, touching on that, and I've seen all of that in action, like like in the actions you take, it has as a partner to you, investor, advisor, I can tell you that you are uh at the cutting edge of responsiveness and communication, and I appreciate it. That intention does in fact communicate to me. It's why I love working with you. How do you think about also the pieces? Like you have, like, because you are, you are, I do see you hitting on like all cylinders at once almost, which is crazy, but you do it. How do you think about these pieces?
SPEAKER_02I think that when it comes down to delivery, uh, as a person who likes to cook, I love to cook. And for many of the people who see my food and content on Instagram, they're not actually ever getting to eat it. And so, if as a person who loves to cook, if I only focused on how it tasted, I never focused on presentation, I never focused on documenting the process, then there's a lot of people who would never be able to see me as a talented chef or talented cook. And I think about that in the same way as a builder. If you are so obsessed with focusing on the product, but you don't talk to customers so you can learn about their preferences, you don't talk to potential partners that are gonna help you with distribution, you don't talk to potential investors who are gonna help you with the resources you're gonna need to allocate, you're gonna miss out on how you were able to deliver that product. And so for me, the speed is so important, but at the same time, being really intentional about where you spend your time matters because that's going to help you make sure you are moving properly, not only along the product journey, but the comp the customer journey as well as the company journey. And so I tend to try and say in the beginning, as that founder, CEO, that entrepreneur, you got to kind of be a jack of all trades in the beginning, but very quickly as you build out your team, and I'm really fortunate to have a great one, you want to find specialists. So if you have three team members, four team members, you don't need four jack of all trades or Jill of all trades. You don't need four incredible hulks. You need one incredible Hulk, you need one Iron Man, you need one Black Widow. And specialization actually helps deliver on that. And because I'm such a big fan of specialization, I studied economics in undergrad, and so specialization is my jam. Because we focus on specialization, I think that that inherently fosters collaboration. So if I am a person who's incredibly talented at product, but I'm terrible at marketing. If I focus on my specialization, that means I have to collaborate with someone who's good at marketing so that my product can go forward. And so in that case, speed and complementing all those different areas allows us to make sure that we are working together with our talents and skills towards a goal that we've mutually agreed upon. And I think that that is how you can build today most effectively, especially at any point of the resource uh cycle that you're in.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Thank you so much. I I great answer, really helpful and really insightful as always. Uh my my next question is about product development at Vivi, because I I know you're leveraging AI. I was with you at Van Wagen. I've seen the difference now. You've talked to me personally about the speed differences and what you're able to do. And AI is such a part of what's going on right now. Can you explain some specific ways in which you've been able to see this speed up with AI and how you're leveraging it and how your team is moving differently, how you approach building your product differently.
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. And I wanted to have like a cool like prop artifact. I was going to show you one of the hand-drawn original bandwagon uh pieces of paper, but I couldn't grab it in time. But I still have them. In the beginning of building bandwagon, I'm a product person who recognized that I am the customer of the thing that I want to build. And so in my brain, I've got all these ideas about what the customer needs. And so I'm like, oh man, we need a marketplace that needs this, and the home page should look like that, and it should have a field that does this. And so I had to literally draw on a piece of paper and I would take an eight and a half by 11 and turn it sideways, and because that's how our computer screens looked. And I would draw one page and say, This is the page. And then if I click this button, I would put another page the next and put an arrow and say, This is what's going to be that screen. That was 2014, 2015. Hand drawing from my brain. Then I would go to my developer or my CTO and say, okay, this is what I envision. And then they would say, Okay, well, to make that work, then they're kind of doing the code and wiring the things up. And then from there, we designed it. And from there we could test it with the users, and then we got back into this loop. That was more than 10 years ago. Today, Divi's product cycle is very, very different. Now I can sit through and say, okay, I think there should be a button that does this. And I can type into a platform like Lovable, which is one of our initial partners what we used in Divi, but now we're using Claude and Codex and some of these other resources to now say, okay, product now. Then we're going to get to design. And then our CTO can work concurrently to make sure architecture and security matter. And so when it comes to the resource that AI has given so many product people, is it's allowed us to better visualize what the experience should be, and then from there be able to test that experience with customers. So instead of me having a hand draw, then get the engineer to build it, then get the designer to design it, and then put it in front of the customers, I can put out an MVP, a minimum viable product, and say, hey, this is generally what we're thinking. Would you use this? What are your thoughts about this process? What's missing from this experience? And then as we fine-tune that, get to a deliverable that saves less man hours and saves costs, especially if you're a startup founder who's bootstrapping, like we're doing in the beginning of building this company. And so it's been really, really transformative for me. And I'm seeing more and more entrepreneurs have that type of a wind in their sales to be able to say, wow, I can quickly go from idea to product. And I'll add one last thing. As an investor, you know this as well. Building Divi is a labor of love for me because I needed the product as an angel investor. And so it's so interesting to me how many founders today are still showing up thinking, this is my pitch deck. This, if you give me a million dollars, then I will build this. There are so many AI tools out there that I don't think anyone should be showing up with just a pitch deck. There has to be some type of a product experience so that the investor, the customer, whoever that partner is, can see a little glimpse into what the world would look like if your product was fully realized. And I think that that's something that we were able to demonstrate much faster with Divi than we were more than a decade ago with bandwagon.
SPEAKER_00I think that last part showing up with more than a pitch deck goes back to your earlier earlier comment about intention, that these tools are readily available. They're allowing you to iterate on ideas that you can play with. And so if you only come up, show up with a pitch deck and don't have these other things that are readily available, it can reveal an intention of not being all in or hands-on.
SPEAKER_02And to add to that, I think that it is not just the intention, but it also is about resourcefulness, right? If these tools are readily available, I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I talk to and they will say, Well, we're building this thing, but we need a million dollars to accomplish this. And I say, Well, you could build this and have you looked at this. And in the course of a 30-minute meeting, we've now delivered an MVP and they're mind-blown. And so as an investor, you want not only want to see that that entrepreneur is willing to be intentional and thoughtful about what they're building, but they have to be resourceful. Uh, the capital is not just sitting on the shelves waiting for each of us to pick up a copy of it or our portion of it. Capital is scarce right now. And so you have to be resourceful. And so what we're seeing now is that the most resourceful entrepreneurs are using these resources with intention and speed.
SPEAKER_00You also talked about security a few minutes ago. I want to I want to touch on that because when you when you think about speed, one of the things that I feel is so important is the idea of competent speed, that it's not random speed, it's it's direct in speed, it's competent. So in your case with Divi, you are building something that is both you want to move fast to iterate, uh, to be in touch with the customers to get feedback, but you're also building something to help people with angel investing. So there's security and quality that matter for the brand. I don't think these are like like binary trade-offs. How are you accomplishing both?
SPEAKER_02I think that with anything, trust is the most fundamental piece that we have to deliver on. And we all know that brand trust is built over time but can be eroded so quickly. And so the trade-off we do have to be mindful of is that with our choices with speed, I mean, AI has made it to where if I want to say, hey, we want to roll out a new feature today, you know, you and I can have this conversation, I'd say, oh wow, that's a really great idea. Let's put that into Divi. We could have it shipped in a couple hours. Well, if you aren't intentional about security and you aren't thinking about the trust that you built with your customers or your clients, that could potentially be eroded if you have a missed up. And so for us, having the product lifecycle that we have, Harold builds and thinks through having talked to customers, having talked to potential stakeholders, what the product should look like. And then at the same time, Hampton, our CTO, is thinking about the foundational layers from an architecture standpoint. What are we exposing ourselves to? What of this should we build? What of this can we partner with and work off the shelf? And then Monet, our designer, is able to say, okay, from a user experience standpoint, what feels the most natural? Like, where should this go? What are we asking of them? And so, above all, trust is one of the things we're unwilling to compromise on. And so, yes, speed absolutely matters. And that competency that you're talking about is where we say trust is most important. We're talking about financial assets, we're talking about the emotional decision making that comes with angel investing. Um, in most cases, where it's not looking at uh a stock market or publicly traded uh chart. You're thinking, does this founder have what it takes? Is she able to take this company to the next level? I'm gonna back her. And those types of emotions, we want to make sure that we equip that investor with the resources that they need to manage this process. And so trust can't be lost in our process, um, despite how fast we want to go.
SPEAKER_00So I I want to turn to advice that you might have for startups. Um you're not, you're you're not just a founder, you are an advisor yourself, an angel investor, coach to people. What are one or two things you wish every startup founder and leader understood about building speed on a team? How do you do it? What does it look like? What is it not look like?
SPEAKER_02I think the biggest thing that I would encourage entrepreneurs to note is that speed not only is your competitive advantage against some of those larger incumbents, but it's also a potential pitfall when you're thinking about uh product releases, development, and how you navigate this journey as a founder. So I'll cover both sides of that. When you hear the saying like no one's been fired for buying IBM, that saying was created in the idea that, yeah, sometimes your client is gonna go with the tried and true. They're not willing to mix it up. Oftentimes when we get into these sales motions, we think, well, they're either buying our product or they aren't. Well, the third choice is doing nothing. A lot of customers will just say, hey, I'm not willing to change what we're already doing. I'm gonna stay here. And so when you think about being able to be fast and be speedy in delivering, that allows you to move faster than some of these large companies. As we talk to entrepreneurs constantly, I'm always telling them, yes, Apple can't ship that in three months. They can't probably ship it in a year. But if you can get to market, you can probably partner with an Apple or play on that market. So that's where speed is a benefit. On the flip side of it, if you are not handling customer service concerns quickly, if you are not thinking about how to resolve issues in your product quickly, or if you're thinking about the fact that, oh, we're the first in the space to do this, no one else is doing this. Well, now that these AI tools are available, your competitors are actually right around the corner. I was just talking to a founder the other day and I said, your competitors today are this group, but tomorrow it could be this group because of how big AI is. I was doing a podcast the other day and I was talking about Divi, and they were saying, Yeah, well, someone could actually just listen to this, go to your website, throw it all into their AI module and build a Divi competitor. And I was like, they absolutely could. And so what stops them, right? How do you as a founder preserve what you're trying to build? I know it's too early to say we're trying to develop MOTA, especially the pre-seed and seed stage, but differentiators matter. And so if you're not thinking about why and how to do that, you're already lost. And so speed is absolutely valuable and critical when you're competing against those big guys who are, you know, hard to change directions quickly. But I do think we underestimate the speed of our competitors in areas where we need to be better customer service providers. We need to resolve issues quickly, and we need to recognize that thanks to speed, there's a person who could start a company tomorrow and has quickly caught up with what you've been doing for the last three to six months. Uh, and so how do you guard against that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think about AI and as an amplifier in many ways. And one of the things it amplifies uh in in terms of what you've just said, is it amplifies what's always been true. That a really close connection to the people you are trying to serve and a desire to serve them and understand them and build what they need, in addition to the vision you want to bring into the world, is so critical. And that the speed of AI is amplifying that thing that has always been true.
SPEAKER_02Um Well, I think that that's exactly true. You know, the thing I tell entrepreneurs today is that it is easier than ever to get into a market. You name that market, you'll be able to get into it. But it's harder than ever to stay in that market because it's the population of being able to jump in, the barrier to entry is so low with these technology tools. And so what I do think you're gonna see here, and this is like you'll throw out this is a prediction from Heralds, uh, is that you're gonna see more vertical integration. You're going to see companies that get really niche down into what they're doing. And then as they serve this audience, then instead of trying to say, okay, now we're gonna serve another audience, they're gonna say, no, no, no, how do we serve that audience more and more and more and more? And so by being able to go deep with that one group, is going to allow for the opportunities for entrepreneurs and business leaders to say, Oh, yeah, we've carved out this space for ourselves. I think that that is going to be so clear, especially as technology continues to uh impact these industries.
SPEAKER_00So let me let me turn to the final question. And it's it's not about speed, it's about recovery. Recovery is one of the key traits of great leaders. It's the I liken it as it's the ability to have a bad day and come in fresh the next morning, optimistic, ready to solve problems, and move forward. How can you recover?
SPEAKER_02So, from a tactical standpoint, I love good food. If I've ever had a bad day, I'm gonna put some wings on the big green egg and smoke some wings. I love to like cook and serve others in that way. Uh, but from a philosophical standpoint, I'm a man of faith and think about how fortunate I am to have another opportunity every single day on this side of the grass, right? And so when I take a step to think about that, I'm one of those folks, I'm a Knicks fan. So for those of you who are watching this after the summer of 2026, you're gonna see like, wait, they came back from 22 in the fourth quarter with seven minutes left. They came back from 29. Like, this is crazy. But because I believe that, well, if this can happen in one day, well, then the opposite can happen the next day. So if I have three, you know, customer no's and investors turn me down on day A, well, day B, I could have three to say yes. And so I've always been a person that never said, why me, when something bad happens. There are some people who do that. When something bad happens, they say, why me. Uh, but I don't do that because I think it's so important to note, we never say why me when something good happens. And so that level of balance is so important for me to never get too high, to never get too low. And so from a recovery standpoint, knowing that part of this journey is recognizing that you're going to have this nonlinear path to success and that every single thing that I want is on the other side of discomfort. And so recognizing that some of these things that set me up, uh, where I feel like, oh man, that's disappointing. That that really blows is an opportunity for me to say, like, well, what if this actually changes my perspective? What if this actually opens a new door? What if that wasn't the right partner? What if that wasn't the right investor? What if this customer would have trained too many resources? And so I am really mindful of that. So from a recovery standpoint, I try to keep that from a mindset standpoint. And then lastly, when all else fails, serve others. And I find that being able to take time to meet with other entrepreneurs, give them perspective on what they're building, provides me like a small vacation for my own challenges and things we're working on with Divi. And I'll say this it is incredibly important to be diverse with your group of entrepreneurs that you're around. I think that it is important to make sure you have a heterogeneous network. So, what do I mean by that? If you're a pastry chef and you only hang out with other pastry chefs, you're probably going to talk about the same pastry chef industry problems. But if you have a plumber and a botanist and a tech person and a mechanic in the group, you may find in talking about your problems with the botanist or the mechanic, they'll say, Oh, yeah, not a similar problem like that. We we did it this way. And simply by putting yourself in someone else's shoes or sharing your challenges or journey with someone else, you'll find they've already solved that in a different industry, but you didn't know because you've just been surrounding and insulating yourself with people who only have accepted that this is just how things go. And so by being able to take time to like pour into others and mentor and support and talk with them, I not only get the like the love and the space and the grace from it, but sometimes I actually find a solution over there too. And so that's kind of my approach to recovery uh and you know, waking up being thankful to have the next opportunity to go knock it out the park again.
SPEAKER_00Harold, this has been awesome. I want to thank you again for agreeing to do this. I've it's been outstanding that I've found uh your ideas, as usual, really helpful and insightful. Thank you so much for being part of this.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate it. Glad to be here and uh let's keep building together.
SPEAKER_00All right. Have a good one. Thanks.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, man. See ya.
SPEAKER_01Next time on speed. This concept of having an aspiration or a vision and iterating to get there, I think is a good way of going about it. Because it still allows you to have that broader vision, but the realization that it's gonna take iteration to get there, I think is really important. And it's not gonna be a straight line. That's applicable to any size company and helps with that focus, also helps with the process as you get bigger. But having those checks and balances and kind of that culture to your point, I think is is paramount to getting it right.
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