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Public company quarterly reporting forces executives into short-term tactical thinking

Carl Eschenbach · 20VC: Sequoia Partner, Carl Eschenbach on Building and Scaling High Performace Teams and The Common Mistakes In Scaling A Go-To-Market Strategy · Mar 15, 2017 · at 10:58

Carl Eschenbach, Partner at Sequoia Capital and former VMware President and COO, compares public company operational pacing with venture capital long-term strategy.

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“You had to deliver every quarter, and then you had to report to the street your performance every quarter, and that was at a ninety-day clip, so while you try to focus on being quite strategic in how you build your business plan and your operating model and what you're doing, you always tend to be a bit tactical because you've got to meet that ninety-day objective, so you always are having a short-term outcome.”

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