Fear is Expensive: Optimizing Innovation through Trust
GeeksTap with Melinda Hsu: Fear is Expensive - Optimizing Innovation Through Trust
Startups worship speed, growth, and execution. But the biggest performance unlock? Deceptively simple: how people treat each other at work.
This week on GeeksTap, TV writer, producer, and director Melinda Hsu brings hard-won lessons from high-pressure writers' rooms to the startup world. Her take is that, trust, acknowledgment, and calm leadership aren't soft skills...they're performance multipliers. Melinda will unpack why fear is one of the most expensive line items in your org, how small moments of recognition drive outsized results, and what creative teams can teach founders about building cultures that actually perform. This isn't "be nice" leadership. It's "be effective" leadership.
Built for founders, operators, and investors who know performance matters, and suspect culture might be the lever they're ignoring.
About GeeksTap
GeeksTap is a weekly virtual gathering for founders, investors, and startup operators from around the world.
Each session brings together people who are actively building companies, backing them with capital, or helping scale them. The goal is simple: create a space where startup practitioners can share real lessons, ask thoughtful questions, and meet others working through similar challenges.
This is a conversation, not a webinar.
Who attends GeeksTap
Builders: startup founders and early-stage teams
Backers: angels, VCs, and active investors
Operators: people helping build and scale startups
If one of those describe you, by all means join us!
If one of those doesn't describe you, by all means don't!
What Happens on a GeeksTap session
Guest Speaker Conversation
Each week we host a founder, investor, or operator who shares candid insights from their work.
Tap Rooms (Small Group Networking)
After the discussion, participants rotate through three rounds of small breakout rooms (4-6 people) to exchange ideas and meet others in the ecosystem.