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Slootman: Having ten priorities is equivalent to having none at all

Frank Slootman · Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on How To Narrow The Focus and Increase The Quality | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jan 25, 2022 · at 7:56

Frank Slootman, Chairman and CEO of Snowflake, discusses his operational framework of narrowing focus to raise execution quality.

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“We pile more and more things on and we ask people what their priority is. You know, you get like 10, you know, you might as well have none, right?”

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 →

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