Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Openly Roasting the CEO Builds High-Trust Executive Leadership Teams

Grant LaFontaine · 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot · Mar 23, 2022 · at 32:02

Grant LaFontaine, CEO of Whatnot, details an executive coaching exercise prescribed by Matt Mochary to accelerate trust among senior leaders.

0:00 / 0:14exact quote · 14.5s
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“He'll kick it off with me where it'd be like, all right, you can go and roast Grant on all of the bad things he's doing. Give him like the toughest feedback you can give him. I'll sit there and listen to it. And most of the time it's accurate. And so I'll acknowledge it in that It's fine. It allows me to improve, and I think doing that builds a higher trust environment”

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 Grant LaFontaine

Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2032
Whatnot Will Have the Largest IPO in History by 2032
“We're the biggest social commerce marketplace in the western world. We've had the biggest IPO ever.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 37:04 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
Assertion Supported
Whatnot Operates Without Product Managers, Jira, or Ticketing Systems
“Because we're in a world where we basically don't have PMs, there's so many decisions and bits of ownership that engineering is required to take control of. We don't have JIRA. No one writes tickets.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 12:20 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
Opinion
Clubhouse, OpenSea, and Whatnot Are the Only Notable Recent Consumer Startups
“I think in the past year, there's probably been like Three really interesting consumer companies. It's been Clubhouse, OpenSea, and us.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 22:14 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
Insight
A/B Testing Slows Product Execution and Encourages Incremental Thinking
“I think it just slows you down, encourages incremental thinking.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 23:59 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Whatnot Operates With 50 Engineers and Only One Product Manager
“So today we have about 50 engineers in the team. We have one product manager.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 5:46 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Team Performance Drastically Improved After Every Employee Firing at Whatnot
“But what I can say is after every one that we have done, the team's actually improved quite drastically.”
Grant LaFontaine Mar 23, 2022 ▶ 19:16 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
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