Frank Slootman
Chairman, Snowflake · 1 appearance on the record.
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executiveauthoroperatorLinkedIn ↗snowflake.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Frank Slootman is recognized for scaling and taking three enterprise tech companies public: Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake. He is also the author of the leadership book Amp It Up.
21statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 4.38/5average certainty → 2.76/5average debate potential → 4.0/5argument clarity · the sources → 111said about them ↓
2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 assertions · 3 opinions · 15 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Frank argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →
4.0 / 5
directness 4.5 · coherence 4.2 ·
precision 3.6 · compression 3.1
redirected or did not address 1 of 34 assessed questions (3%). Watch them ▸
This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →
How they sound: speaking style how? →
268 words/min while actually speaking · 33.7 um and uh per 1k words · 31 false starts per 1k · 30.6% of pauses land inside a clause
English is their second language (first language: Dutch). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.
Measured by listening to the audio itself: 7,797 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →
How the interview went all their pushback → series average →
Across 1 rated episode:
host pushback ▾ 3/10
setup questions received 65%
host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 11:11“Can I ask, is it a good decision made today better than the perfect decision made tomorrow?” ▶ 27:37“Do you ever worry that discomfort or insecurity is driving decision making, which you can very easily do?”
when Frank pushed back ▶ 11:17“Um, no, actually, I think, you know, people have sort of a natural, uh, you know, rush to, to judgment.” ▶ 16:36“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…”
Everything Frank Slootman said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
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, …”
Slootman calls written performance reviews a legal trap
“Written performance reviews end up being used against you know, it's like a legal trap.”
Slootman: Constantly praising employees for routine execution is complete nonsense
“It's just the absurdity of, you know, of celebrating things that you're supposed to do. I'm constantly reinforcing what a great job people are doing. I think that's just complete nonsense.”
Slootman prefers hiring maladjusted people with something to prove
“I'm looking for mal-adjusted people. People will have a chip on their shoulder. People will have something to prove. Versus people that, you know, they are so well balanced, they have to think about a reason to get out of bed.”
Slootman says he eliminated MBOs at every company he ran
“I've killed off MBOs in every company I've ever been in.”
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…”
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…”
Frank Slootman: CEOs Must Lead Boards, Not Ask Open Questions
“Yeah, but the reality is a board needs to be led. Okay. I mean, I always tell people the worst thing you can possibly do is go into a board meeting and go, What do you guys think? You've just created a vacuum. Okay.”
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…”
Slootman: Individual merit cannot overcome poor company selection in careers
“So it's, you really gotta choose carefully because your individual merit cannot overcome, you know, the circumstances of your choices.”
Slootman: Businesses spend negligible time diagnosing problems before attempting solutions
“In business, we spend like two seconds, you know, on figuring out what the problem is, and then we spend all our time on, on figuring out what we're going to do about it, right?”
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 …”
Slootman: Doubt during hiring should serve as a tiebreaker to reject
“When you're, I mean, I often have this in hiring decisions, people have doubts. Well, you have your answer. Don't hire the person that you have doubts about. Don't. Ok? And it's a tiebreaker.”
Slootman: Having ten priorities is equivalent to having none at all
“We pile more and more things on and we ask people what their priority is. You know, you get like 10, you know, you might as well have none, right?”
Slootman: Organizations move at a glacial pace without intentional urgency
“There's just all this slack that exists in the system. It's just an attitude adjustment that will speed things up. It's all ticks. We're just naturally slow. Hell, we're glacial, you know, if you let us, right?”
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…”
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…”
Snowflake conducts quarterly money and performance reviews for all non-sales staff
“Everybody who is not in sales, because salespeople are on commissions plans, of course, but everybody who is not in sales gets a conversation, a money conversation and a performance conversation every single quarter.”
Slootman: Fast course correction is second only to perfect decision-making
“Course correction, if you can do it fast is, ah, man, I mean, that, that's the next best thing after making perfect decisions.”
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…”
The other half of the tape: Frank Slootman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 103 times in 29 episodes on 20VC. 8 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 38Chris Degnan 21David Schneider 15Scott Dietzen 4Jason Lemkin 4Zach Lawryk 2Rujul Zaparde 2Ishan Mukherjee 2
Statements about Frank Slootman, by other people (8)
Lawson: Choosing between diversity and meritocracy is a false dichotomy
“First of all, it is a straw argument that there's a choice between diversity and merit, right?”
Degnan: Frank Slootman is among the most ruthless executives in tech
“Look, I mean, I had the fortunate, you know experience of working for some pretty ruthless guys, in particular Frank Slootman.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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”
Every mention by year
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
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on How To Narrow The Focus and Increase The Quality | Full In | Jan 25, 2022 | 35m |