Paul English, co-founder of Kayak and Lola, discusses how tech leaders should manage severe mistakes and operational failures on The 20VC.
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“I believe in radical transparency. So if something goes really bad at my company, I'll reach out to my co-founder first and maybe to my management team out of my board and just say, I just really screwed something up, you know, help me think this through. So when you have something bad that happens, I think the worst thing you can do is hide it and try to work on it on your own. I'm a big believer in shared pain.”
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