Silagadze: Premature promotions usually lead to departures since demotions are impossible
Mike Silagadze · 20VC: Why Virtually All Companies Hire The Wrong Way, Why EdTech Is The Most Brutal Market & How To Scale Your Sales Team for Engineering Founders with Mike Sliagadze, Founder & CEO @ Top Hat · Mar 16, 2018 · at 15:14
Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of Top Hat, shares lessons learned from internal promotion mistakes at his company during an interview on 20VC.
0:00 / 0:26exact quote · 26.1s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We've certainly made The mistake of promoting people too early, and unfortunately, that usually doesn't end well, because what tends to happen is you can't demote them, because that's, you know, politically or whatever, from an optics perspective, you can't really do that, and at the same time, you know, they're not leveling up as fast as the business needs, and so ultimately, that almost always ends up with the person leaving the company, so promoting someone too early is, is quite disastrous, like, that's really something to avoid.”
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 Mike Silagadze
Silagadze: Teaching quality is a very low priority for universities
“Teaching, as surprising as it may be, is really very low on the total pool of priorities in higher education. In fact, that's just, it's not how universities get funded. You know, universities are not known generally because of the quality of their teaching. I…”
Silagadze: Companies should measure IQ because it strongly correlates with performance
“Most companies don't measure IQ at all, and that's wrong. I mean, there's a zero-point-six correlation between IQ and job performance, and that is, in fact, if you could base your hiring decision on one factor, you could only base it on one factor. IQ is actua…”
Silagadze: Higher education is a luxury good, not a productivity investment
“I think many people believe that education is an investment that makes you more productive. In a sense. And I think beyond some of the very basic stuff that you learn in primary school, I don't actually think that's the case. I actually view education as a con…”
Silagadze in 2018: Crypto bubble could dislocate the global economy
“You know, it seems like certainly the crypto mania is concerning. I worry that it's going to get large enough to where I'll actually dislocate the global economy just like the real estate bubble did not too long ago.”
Silagadze: Only 10 to 15 EdTech startups have reached $10M+ revenue
“Out of the, you know, thousands and thousands of companies that have been funded over the last decade or so, only a handful, I would say probably 10 or 15, have really broken out past the, let's say, tens of millions in revenue milestone and, you know, are on …”