Ravi Gupta, Partner at Sequoia Capital and former COO/CFO of Instacart, shares his key framework for evaluating team quality with Harry Stebbings.
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“I think the question you've got to ask if you're building or evaluating your team is, would you enthusiastically rehire this person if given the chance, knowing everything you know? And I think the word enthusiastically is so important here because it removes this ability to be wishy-washy or unclear. If the answer to that question is anything other than absolutely, then your answer is no.”
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More from Ravi Gupta
AssertionContradicted
Gupta: Sequoia Capital requires unanimous partner approval for all investments
“This is reinforced by things like unanimous decision-making, which means we all need to be bought in when we decide to partner with a company.”
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AssertionNot publicly verifiable
Gupta: Sequoia allows founders to choose which partner joins their board
“When entrepreneurs ask somebody at Sequoia, hey, if I work with Sequoia, who will my board member be? And the answer is always the same, which is whoever you want. You get to choose.”
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Disclosure
Gupta: A Sequoia partner shared their 360 feedback with the entire partnership
“At Sequoia, one of our partners late last year shared their three 60 feedback with all of us at a partner meeting and then asked, can you help me get better on these?”
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Insight
Gupta: Sequoia evaluates founders on trajectory (slope) rather than baseline (intercept)
“I think that when we talk about the people we like to invest in at Sequoia, we talk about investing in slope rather than intercept.”
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Opinion
Gupta: Stripe maintains its talent bar by enduring unfilled open roles
“I think that Stripe is absolutely inspirational on this topic. And I personally, I think they've done it the right way, which I think they are willing to deal with the pain of not filling a spot because they respect that spot so much that they're only going to…”
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AssertionContradicted
Gupta: Sequoia backed Stripe founders before they wrote any code
“At the time, Patrick and John at Stripe, when all they had was an idea and not a single line of code, because they were remarkable and they were daring.”
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