Insight
Zuckerberg Spent 80% of His Time at Facebook Outside Comfort Zone
“Mark once said in a Q and A in internal to Facebook that he said that he, and a lot of the reasons why we do that is because of how secure we are as people. And he would basically say that Something like, I don't know what exact number, but he said like, 80% o…”
Disclosure
Sequoia's Data Team Stopped the Firm From Making Bad Investments
“Many of this, by the way, that, that we stopped Sequoia from investing where I think they would have otherwise invested. It was so close to investment.”
Insight
Fast Hiring Dilutes Talent Density From A-Plus to A Players
“One thing, if you add more people, what happened is you, the A plus players becomes A and so on. And very fast, you need to get to grow very slowly so you can reach equilibriums very slowly and then keep The value of the entire team high. So do not hire very f…”
Insight
Startups Must Centralize Growth Teams Before Decentralizing Into Product Teams
“I think the answer at an earliest stage of your growth, I think they should be a standalone team. I think it's for two reasons. One is I think it's the, is for the best practices, meaning that they can learn from each other and then they can go solve problems …”
Insight
High Growth Rate Beats High Initial Capability Over Time Due to Compounding
“People with a slower asymptote, the faster growth is, are going to overtake. And I generally tend to invest in people over a very long period of time, but within reason, within two people, Within slope and this, I know that basically the effect of compounding …”
Opinion
Chris Cox Excelled at Scaling Facebook, Not Turnarounds
“I mean, Chris Cox, excellent exec. For going from, at Facebook, Kristoff is excellent at good to great. I don't think he was good at okay to bad to okay”
Insight
Narayanan: No Single Executive Can Perform Both Turnarounds and Scaling
“You actually need to go inside a company, you need to do both. But not the same person can do it. You can't get the same person to do both. They don't even think like that.”
Insight
Narayanan: Staying Through Difficult Work Situations Builds Character
“The fact is that you need to build you not quitting is a character building exercise.”
Insight
Narayanan: Spend 6-9 Months Fixing Broken Work Situations Before Quitting
“So I think two years would have been a very long time, but I think six to nine months, I think it is worthwhile because otherwise I might never have done it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Narayanan Almost Got Fired at Facebook for Presenting Uncomfortable Data
“And it ended up being that the senior leadership that did not like what I was saying and I almost got fired for it. And, but that's when I think people like Harvey and Alex at Facebook actually backed me up.”
Insight
Narayanan: Avoiding bad investments is venture capital's biggest opportunity
“I actually think that good investments are relatively, I mean, there may be this one great investment that nobody knows about, and those are hard, and I agree with that. But if you think about the good investment, very quickly, everyone knows about it. It's no…”
Assertion Supported
Instagram Acquisition Forced Facebook to Switch Metrics From MAU to DAU
“When Instagram came along to Facebook, we still had the MEU as our goal. And so when we had the MEU as a goal, I mean basically Kevin's system was like, what? We are now in the mobile world. People use the phones all the time. We should be doing we do DAUs. We…”
Insight
Narayanan: Indecision costs more than wrong decisions if iteration speed is fast
“I actually think that the cost of not making the decision, in my opinion, is far worse than making a wrong one as long as you can iterate fast.”
Insight
Narayanan: Startups should not hire growth leads before product-market fit
“You don't want to hire anyone before product market fit, because at the end of it, I think, as I mentioned to you, I think growth is about scaling the product market fit in a sustainable way. It basically means that if you're not able to grow, if you, if you'r…”
Insight
Early-stage startups should hire for immediate needs, not 18-month scale
“But the earliest stages, I actually hired for what I needed right now, because there's no point in hiring someone who will be so valuable for you in 18 months and who can influence everything, but can't build your dashboard.”
Disclosure
Narayanan Advised OpenAI to Prioritize Influence Over Stats Skills for Growth
“And when I talked to OpenAI, they asked me who should be hiring for the head of analytics and head of growth and so on. I said, oh, someone who's looking at a rocket ship, don't worry whether they are statisticians or their influence is the most important thin…”
Insight
Narayanan: Employees leave when any of four job satisfaction pillars fail
“It's for four, four different reasons. One is they love what they do. Number two, they love the people they work with. Number three, they Feel like they can learn from the people that they work with and for the company is going up into the right. If one of the…”
Insight
PIPs Fail Because Conflict-Averse Managers Initiate Them Three Months Too Late
“I think when you put up someone on a performance plan, it's three months too late. It's three months before you should have intervened and tried to do the right thing. What happens most of the times is that people put them on the improvement plan when they've …”
Insight
Trusted Referrals Are the Only Hiring Method That Actually Works
“Hiring is a terrible process. I mean, I know you ask a ton of questions of what do you look for? What do you look for? And I know that honestly, I can say all I want, It's useless. At the end of it, you, it's easiest when they work with you or you ask referral…”
Insight
Narayanan: Do not hire engineers without high-impact work assigned to them
“So every new engineer that comes in and will have to contribute so much. Otherwise, if you can't find something that they can do that can be of that type of impact, don't hire.”
Insight
Narayanan: Growth is scaling product-market fit via a North Star metric
“I just think of growth is is basically about Identifying methods, approaches that scale product market fit in a scalable way. The way you do that is by identifying a north star metric and moving that metric.”
Disclosure
Facebook's Advertiser Growth Team Targeted Headcount Over Direct Revenue
“For example, I'll take the example of Advertiser Growth. In Advertiser Growth that Facebook in the advertisers, we decided not to move The revenue metric, but decided to move the advertiser growth metric, because that's a metric that we actually could tangibly…”
Insight
Narayanan: Quantitative data alone cannot validate most product hypotheses
“You can't do it through just data. You need to do it through essentially user experience research.”
Insight
Narayanan: Product-market fit, unit economics, and scaling are four separate steps
“I mean, product market fit, scaling product market fit, unit economics, scaling unit economics. I think those are all four different steps in my opinion. So I actually think that it is, ah, you can get to product market fit, but you may not be able to scale it…”
