Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Gupta: Work provides more immediate feedback than parenting, distorting our priorities

Ravi Gupta · 20VC: Sequoia's Ravi Gupta on His Lessons From The Hyper-Growth of Instacart, The Key Question To Ask When Building or Evaluating Teams & The Importance of Investing In and Detecting Slopes Rather Than Intercepts · Sep 14, 2020 · at 34:37

Ravi Gupta, Partner at Sequoia Capital and former COO/CFO of Instacart, discusses how becoming a father shaped his operating mindset and approach to ruthlessly prioritizing important tasks over urgent ones.

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“There's always a reason that you should stay late and work on something, because the impact that you'll make at work will be more visible for that next hour than the impact you'll make at home by the things you do with your kids, and it's more visible and tangible.”

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Assertion Contradicted
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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Assertion Not 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.”
Ravi Gupta Sep 14, 2020 ▶ 16:41 20VC: Sequoia's Ravi Gupta on His Lessons From The Hyper-Growth of Instacart, The Key Question To Ask When Building or Evaluating Teams & The Importance of Investing In and Detecting Slopes Rather Than Intercepts
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?”
Ravi Gupta Sep 14, 2020 ▶ 25:22 20VC: Sequoia's Ravi Gupta on His Lessons From The Hyper-Growth of Instacart, The Key Question To Ask When Building or Evaluating Teams & The Importance of Investing In and Detecting Slopes Rather Than Intercepts
Insight
Gupta: Sequoia evaluates founders on trajectory (slope) rather than baseline (intercept)
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Insight
Gupta: Any team evaluation short of 'enthusiastic rehire' is a no
“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 …”
Ravi Gupta Sep 14, 2020 ▶ 6:55 20VC: Sequoia's Ravi Gupta on His Lessons From The Hyper-Growth of Instacart, The Key Question To Ask When Building or Evaluating Teams & The Importance of Investing In and Detecting Slopes Rather Than Intercepts
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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