Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q I want to open up the conversation to deal making more broadly. Now that you're not a small company anymore and you're a big company making acquisitions, you know, uh, tabular, neon, mosaic, just to name a few. What is your, sort of your, your approach in terms of when to, to, to build versus when to buy slash how do you think about sort of acquisitions more broadly?
A Yeah. I mean, what we try to not do, so let's start with a simple thing, uh, is a lot of companies, especially at scale, they'll buy revenue. So they'll look at a company, they'll say, Hey, this company is this size. We'll just, uh, buy that company. We'll put more salespeople on it. Then we can accelerate the revenue. We're buying that revenue. Uh, and that's how they're doing it. Um, we're not doing that. You know, what we're really doing is number one, we spend a lot of time with the team and the founders. So we're trying to see, Hey, can we build together? Like you come here and you build together. That's very different from that buying revenue model. The buying revenue model, oftentimes you part ways from the C with the CEO from day one. Like you can see the big companies, they literally have a plan. Like I have, you know, I have some execs that come from these big companies to say, Hey, our plan usually is to part ways with the CEO. Like you make a deal and the CEO can leave. Um, and then, but also the key people in those companies quickly leave all of them, like the top management. And then, you know, you keep promoting the people from below that couldn't get promoted before. And then eventually you bring in your own people to take over the company, and then the company's dead. There's nothing left of it. And there's no integration between that asset that you bought and …
AI assessment note: “what we're really doing is number one, we spend a lot of time with the team”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 3 4.15
Q I want to open up the conversation to deal making more broadly. Now that you're not a small company anymore and you're a big company making acquisitions, you know, uh, tabular, neon, mosaic, just to name a few. What is your, sort of your, your approach in terms of when to, to, to build versus when to buy slash how do you think about sort of acquisitions more broadly?
A Yeah. I mean, what we try to not do, so let's start with a simple thing, uh, is a lot of companies, especially at scale, they'll buy revenue. So they'll look at a company, they'll say, Hey, this company is this size. We'll just, uh, buy that company. We'll put more salespeople on it. Then we can accelerate the revenue. We're buying that revenue. Uh, and that's how they're doing it. Um, we're not doing that. You know, what we're really doing is number one, we spend a lot of time with the team and the founders. So we're trying to see, Hey, can we build together? Like you come here and you build together. That's very different from that buying revenue model. The buying revenue model, oftentimes you part ways from the C with the CEO from day one. Like you can see the big companies, they literally have a plan. Like I have, you know, I have some execs that come from these big companies to say, Hey, our plan usually is to part ways with the CEO. Like you make a deal and the CEO can leave. Um, and then, but also the key people in those companies quickly leave all of them, like the top management. And then, you know, you keep promoting the people from below that couldn't get promoted before. And then eventually you bring in your own people to take over the company, and then the company's dead. There's nothing left of it. And there's no integration between that asset that you bought and …
AI assessment note: “what we're really doing is number one, we spend a lot of time with the team”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 3 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q And then the question is, you know, have you done everything?
A Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. So, you know, you just, it takes a lot of effort. Um, you know, you need to learn all your keyboard shortcuts. Um, but, um, but I think that's, you know, people feel motivated that, Hey, I have like direct relationship. You know, we used to say, we used to have one of the culture principles used to be, hey, uh, be a co-founder. Uh, and we don't want to have any employees at Databricks. We just want co-founders. So, uh, and the key point was like, hey, you're kind of the owner of this company. You're not just a renter. Come here and yeah, we can talk about it. And you can, you can suggest an idea. You might've just joined and you're straight out of school. You might have a great idea for a product. Tell me about it. You know, I'm, I'm happy to push it. And so it's, it's making people feel like they, they have an impact and they're inspired back to Ben's point. Then it's going to be much more exciting for them, right? Then following some bureaucracy. So I, I don't follow the bureaucracy basically. I go talk to anyone I like, you know, I try to go to the person that is actually the closest to the work that's being done at any given time. Uh, but there are some tricks and rules around how you do that without breaking the whole organization. So you can't just willingly, uh, talk to anyone. Uh, but yeah, that's, that's part of it.
AI assessment note: “I don't follow the bureaucracy basically. I go talk to anyone I like”
