The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 21 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Slootman: MBA graduates display misplaced certainty and make knee-jerk decisions
“A lot of the MBA types, I mean, they're sort of schooled, you know, to kind of have these knee jerk, you know, very quick, I know what's going on here. I've seen this before. I read about it. I've seen it before. And then boom, boom, boom, you know, and that, …”
Slootman calls written performance reviews a legal trap
“Written performance reviews end up being used against you know, it's like a legal trap.”
Slootman: Constantly praising employees for routine execution is complete nonsense
“It's just the absurdity of, you know, of celebrating things that you're supposed to do. I'm constantly reinforcing what a great job people are doing. I think that's just complete nonsense.”
Slootman prefers hiring maladjusted people with something to prove
“I'm looking for mal-adjusted people. People will have a chip on their shoulder. People will have something to prove. Versus people that, you know, they are so well balanced, they have to think about a reason to get out of bed.”
Slootman says he eliminated MBOs at every company he ran
“I've killed off MBOs in every company I've ever been in.”
Slootman: Performance calibration should focus on overcompensating top performers
“The real reason that we're doing this is not so much that I want to take money away from non performers or marginal performance. It's really that I want to overcompensate, you know, the top. People in the company, I don't want them to feel like, I'm getting th…”
Slootman: CEO anxiety is normal because competitors are trying to kill you
“No, we feel insecure and high anxiety all the time. I mean, I often tell CEOs, if you're feeling anxious, congratulations, because you passed the intelligence test. You should be anxious. People are trying to kill you. You know, you'll be insane if you weren't…”
Frank Slootman: CEOs Must Lead Boards, Not Ask Open Questions
“Yeah, but the reality is a board needs to be led. Okay. I mean, I always tell people the worst thing you can possibly do is go into a board meeting and go, What do you guys think? You've just created a vacuum. Okay.”
Slootman: Most CEOs Are Too Timid and Misunderstand Their Power
“Most CEOs are far more, you know, timid than they should be based on what their role really is. And the reality is the CEO has enormous power, but most CEOs don't realize they have it and they don't exercise the full measure of the power that they've been hand…”
Slootman: Individual merit cannot overcome poor company selection in careers
“So it's, you really gotta choose carefully because your individual merit cannot overcome, you know, the circumstances of your choices.”
Slootman: Businesses spend negligible time diagnosing problems before attempting solutions
“In business, we spend like two seconds, you know, on figuring out what the problem is, and then we spend all our time on, on figuring out what we're going to do about it, right?”
Slootman: Fast wrong decisions cost more time than slowing down for diagnosis
“If you're wrong, I mean, you're losing even more time, and more resources, and more confusion, and that opportunity cost, and so on, to really behooves you know, to be thoughtful about, you know, understanding, you know, what you're dealing with. That, that's …”
Slootman: Doubt during hiring should serve as a tiebreaker to reject
“When you're, I mean, I often have this in hiring decisions, people have doubts. Well, you have your answer. Don't hire the person that you have doubts about. Don't. Ok? And it's a tiebreaker.”
Slootman: Having ten priorities is equivalent to having none at all
“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?”
Slootman: Organizations move at a glacial pace without intentional urgency
“There's just all this slack that exists in the system. It's just an attitude adjustment that will speed things up. It's all ticks. We're just naturally slow. Hell, we're glacial, you know, if you let us, right?”
Slootman: Eliminating operational slack yields free performance gains
“There's so much room up, and that's the whole point of the book, you know, it's called Amp It Up. Why? Because there's all this room, you know, in the margin, you know, to do things faster, to do things better, to do things more effectively, and it's just free…”
Slootman: Evaluate enterprise sales reps on activity levels, not just results
“Look, you know, it's not so superficial that we just look at the top line results, and that tells everything, because we're going to go inspect, you know, your activity levels, you know, and, you know, in other words, we're going to find out everything, and it…”
Snowflake conducts quarterly money and performance reviews for all non-sales staff
“Everybody who is not in sales, because salespeople are on commissions plans, of course, but everybody who is not in sales gets a conversation, a money conversation and a performance conversation every single quarter.”
Slootman: Fast course correction is second only to perfect decision-making
“Course correction, if you can do it fast is, ah, man, I mean, that, that's the next best thing after making perfect decisions.”
Slootman: Good Board Members Consult Without Dictating Decisions
“So the good relationships are the ones that are highly consultative, but at the same time, you know, maintain my distance. I don't own that decision. They do. And I want them to own the decision, not me. Right? So, if they become strong owners, strong position…”