Frank Slootman
27 statements across 9 episodes · 4 bullish · 7 bearish · 9 people on the record · first statement Jun 28, 2021 by Jeff Lawson · said 103 times in 29 episodes since 2019 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Frank Slootman's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (38), Chris Degnan (21), David Schneider (15), Scott Dietzen (4), Jason Lemkin (4), Zach Lawryk (2), Rujul Zaparde (2), Ishan Mukherjee (2)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 10 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis & Why You’d Never Hire From Salesforce or ServiceNow · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg: How to Make Mega Deals | Lessons from Rabois, Halligan & Grady · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 9 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
- 20Sales: How the Best Sales Teams Use AI to Win Enterprise Deals | Sales Teams Will Be Dramatically Smaller | How to Ramps Sales Reps Way Faster | Why Unpaid Design Partners are BS | Why this Generation of Sales is Soft with Ishan Mukherjee @ Rox
- 20Sales: Sierra: Inside Silicon Valley's Fastest Growing Sales Machine & How to Prospect, Outbound and Close Enterprise Deals in AI
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 29 mentions in 7 episodes 4 per episode
- David Schneider: Why the Worst VCs are "Seagull VCs" & VC Value Add - Is it Real? | E1200 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- AJ Tennant: How to Build a Sales Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | E2118 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Larry Shurtz: How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Vertical Teams | E1151 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Rujul Zaparde: Why Hiring Inexperienced People is Better | E1144 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Zachary Bookman: Why Valuations and Fundraising are BS | E1235 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Why Pricing is Worse Than Ever and There is More Funding Than Ever | E1157 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 35 mentions in 8 episodes 4 per episode
- Chris Degnan: Why You Should Hire a Head of Sales Sooner Than You Think | E1080 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Christian Kleinerman: Do OpenAI and Anthropic Have a Sustaining Moat? Who Wins the AI Wars? | E1063 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Zach Lawryk: The Ultimate Guide to Sales Engineering | E980 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck: Sales Cycle Elongation; Gratitude Journaling; Sales Layoffs | E964 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Tooey Courtemanche: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO | E1090 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Guillaume Cabane: Why Your First Growth Hire Should Be a Former Founder | E1088 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Stephane Kurgan: Lessons Scaling King from 100 Employees to 2,400; How to Find Great Talent | E1041 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 15 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- Tristan Handy: Why The CEO Should Make As Few Decisions As Possible | 20VC #937 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen
- Geoff Lewis: Why I Put $200M into Rippling; Uncapped Notes; "Compound Startups" | 20VC #933 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Arm CEO Rene Haas on How The Best Leaders Make Decisions and The Trade-Off Between Speed and Quality | Leadership Lessons from 7 Years at Nvidia | How Companies Can Retain Speed, Innovation and Agility at Scale
- 20VC: Scaling to $122M ARR IPO with $6M in Net Burn, Olo. The Ultimate Journey of Capital Efficiency, What Worked, What Did Not Work and How Leaders Need To Reshape Thinking Around Resource and Attention Allocation
- 20VC: Brex's Henrique Dubugras on Advice from Evan Spiegel and Eric Schmidt on CEOship, The Biggest Hiring Mistakes When Scaling, What Everyone Gets Wrong with Product Messaging and When is the Right Time to Launch Secondary Products
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 4 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Frank Slootman, oldest first
Jun 28, 2021 negative
Jan 25, 2022
Slootman: Eliminating operational slack yields free performance gains
“There's so much room up, and that's the whole point of the book, you know, it's called Amp It Up. Why? Because there's all this room, you know, in the margin, you know, to do things faster, to do things better, to do things more effectively, and it's just free…”
Jan 25, 2022
Slootman: Fast wrong decisions cost more time than slowing down for diagnosis
“If you're wrong, I mean, you're losing even more time, and more resources, and more confusion, and that opportunity cost, and so on, to really behooves you know, to be thoughtful about, you know, understanding, you know, what you're dealing with. That, that's …”
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022 positive
Slootman: Performance calibration should focus on overcompensating top performers
“The real reason that we're doing this is not so much that I want to take money away from non performers or marginal performance. It's really that I want to overcompensate, you know, the top. People in the company, I don't want them to feel like, I'm getting th…”
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022
Slootman: Most CEOs Are Too Timid and Misunderstand Their Power
“Most CEOs are far more, you know, timid than they should be based on what their role really is. And the reality is the CEO has enormous power, but most CEOs don't realize they have it and they don't exercise the full measure of the power that they've been hand…”
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022 negative
Jan 25, 2022
Slootman: Good Board Members Consult Without Dictating Decisions
“So the good relationships are the ones that are highly consultative, but at the same time, you know, maintain my distance. I don't own that decision. They do. And I want them to own the decision, not me. Right? So, if they become strong owners, strong position…”
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022 neutral
Slootman: CEO anxiety is normal because competitors are trying to kill you
“No, we feel insecure and high anxiety all the time. I mean, I often tell CEOs, if you're feeling anxious, congratulations, because you passed the intelligence test. You should be anxious. People are trying to kill you. You know, you'll be insane if you weren't…”
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022 negative
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022 negative
Jan 25, 2022
Jan 25, 2022
Slootman: Evaluate enterprise sales reps on activity levels, not just results
“Look, you know, it's not so superficial that we just look at the top line results, and that tells everything, because we're going to go inspect, you know, your activity levels, you know, and, you know, in other words, we're going to find out everything, and it…”
Jan 25, 2022 negative
Slootman: MBA graduates display misplaced certainty and make knee-jerk decisions
“A lot of the MBA types, I mean, they're sort of schooled, you know, to kind of have these knee jerk, you know, very quick, I know what's going on here. I've seen this before. I read about it. I've seen it before. And then boom, boom, boom, you know, and that, …”
Feb 28, 2022 negative
Leaders should execute quick terminations rather than using PIPs
“When you're a leader, if your bit flips on somebody, if you lose confidence, then you need to make the change. And I don't like pips. You know, I think I'm much more in the Frank Slutman school on this one. You make changes quickly in order to keep the team on…”
Jan 9, 2023 negative
Frank Slootman's culture book lacks actionable execution advice, says Henry Schuck
“I think the hard part about culture is like you read Frank Slootman's book and you walk out and you go like, okay, take the slack out of the rope. It's like, okay, I don't know really like what, like, what is the, bring your spear, kill someone. And that is li…”
Feb 21, 2023 neutral
Lawryk: Frank Slootman eliminated customer success to enforce sales accountability
“Frank Slootman sort of championed the idea that he doesn't want to have customer success at any of his companies. But I think what he's really saying is that he wants the sales team to take more responsibility for the success of a customer.”
Sep 22, 2023 positive
Kleinerman: Frank Slootman's leadership clarity accelerates decision-making
“He's also such a clear thinker. He has that commonality with Satya that he becomes a clarifying force. Oftentimes if you're just picturing yourself telling Frank about a problem and a couple of options, Just in the formulation, it becomes very obvious that you…”
Sep 11, 2024 positive
David Schneider helped grow ServiceNow from $80M to $5B in revenue
“I spent 10 years at ServiceNow joining Frank Slootman again, who I had the privilege of working with at Data Domain. Into that company, which was about eighty million or so in size when I joined, and when I left it was five billion in revenue”
Apr 4, 2025 positive
Mukherjee: AEs should hold both commit and consumption quotas
“So the student school of thought is only invest in the back carriers. Get the AEs, people who can hold a number. You eat what you hunt, like those folks, they should hold both the commit number, but also the consumption number. And it's an intense way to opera…”