Rabois: Startups must reset to zero-and-zero after every success
Keith Rabois · Keith Rabois & Mike Shebat: Creating an Olympian Mindset to Work Ethic| E1087 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Nov 27, 2023 · at 33:55
Keith Rabois is a General Partner at Founders Fund. He addresses how startups can avoid complacency after achieving key milestones.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You know, one metaphor I like to use for this is like, imagine you're playing in a like football, let's say in America, you win the Superbowl. But your own, you have to go back preseason, start all over in training camp, and your record's zero and zero again, and you have to reorient everything. So you can think about that as every calendar year at a startup, or every time between finding, you win a Super Bowl, you've been perfect, you've been better than everybody else on the planet, but you go back and you have to start from scratch again.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Keith Rabois
Rabois: No $100 billion European tech company has been created since 1990
“There hasn't been a hundred billion dollar European company created since 1990.”
Rabois: LinkedIn developed a mediocre culture because early engineers wanted 35-hour weeks
“Yeah, we didn't have an Olympic work ethic. We had a bunch of French engineers that wanted to work 35 hours a week. At the time, In 2003 to five, when the company was really founded, most people thought the internet was dead, so we didn't, Reid Hoffman, who fo…”
Rabois: Building a tech company in Silicon Valley is an active disadvantage
“And I now believe Silicon Valley is a disadvantage not even neutral, it's an actual disadvantage.”
Rabois: Ramp is the best-run private company on the planet
“I think we just finished a board meeting where it's pretty clear that this is the best run private company on the planet.”
Rabois: Ramp will beat Brex and become 10x more valuable
“Ramp is absolutely going to be the winner. Probably will be two, three, four, five, 10 times more valuable.”
Rabois: Most growth VC funds are dead or dying from chasing momentum
“Chasing momentum, not really understanding fundamental company building, thinking spreadsheets dictate results, like, you know, not understanding the inputs versus the outputs, that these companies are built by people, not by math. At the end of the day, still…”