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 36 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
Dalgaard: Took SuccessFactors public earlier than desired due to board pressure
“Because I, honestly, I didn't really want to go public, but my board wanted to go public, and so I was, had a great sense of duty, of doing things that, I mean, obviously, I got a lot of runway, building your own company the way you want it, and so I felt the …”
Dahlgaard: Equal status for sales and engineering was SuccessFactors' top breakthrough
“This is maybe one of the biggest breakthroughs in SuccessFactors history was that we made reps feel like they were as important as engineers.”
Dahlgaard: Startups attempting to eliminate commission-based sales always revert
“And frankly, all of companies in Silicon Valley that we didn't have Salesforce up front and thought they could rethink it, have all come home to roost. And they now have great sales forces that sell with commission for a living.”
Dalgaard argues unified teams vastly outperform toxic 10x individual performers
“Oh, I'm completely comfortable losing the Tenexa. What the total unanimous team that are together in fighting this big battle can gain together because they have that power of trust completely dwarfs that one Tenexa. And you multiply all those people up, what …”
Dalgaard: Founders take far more personal risk than venture investors
“It's pretty intimidating to be around your VCs. You've thrown your whole life into this. They haven't, and so it's bigger risk for you personally than it is for them”
Dahlgaard: Sales reps voted non-sales peers onto President's Club trips
“What we did in that case is, we gave them a vote. Who helped you the most this year? And they got to go.”
Dahlgaard: Overcomplicating sales compensation plans is the worst founder mistake
“What I can tell you is the worst thing you can do in the world is make Selling so damn complicated with so many different variables that a rep can try and optimize that they don't have the ability to actually figure out what you want them to do.”
Forcing direct peer confrontation resolves office disputes 90 percent of the time
“I would say nine out of 10 cases, they become people who trust each other and start working together.”
Dalgaard: Executive coaches provide safer and more consistent guidance than advisors
“And what's really great about a coach is that they're actually a safer place in a way than a board is. And it's not like, well, I have an advisor. That's not the same. An advisor will cancel a meeting with you. They have something else to do. They won't be con…”
Dalgaard: Silicon Valley leaders fear direct conversations about employee failure
“One of the biggest issues I run into in tech companies, no matter how big they are, how successful or how they're great they are, is there's no time for not having a real conversation about this is how you fucked up and this is not going to work. Let's figure …”
Lars Dalgaard: Building a board consisting solely of investors was a mistake
“I made the mistake, I would say, of having all investor, similar to what you said in the beginning, board members.”
Dalgaard: Independent directors must love the business, not the CEO
“I don't think that you can have Somebody be independent if they only love you. I think they have to be in love with your business, but I think it's dangerous if they're smitten by you and sort of bowled over because then they don't become independent.”
Dalgaard: I initially took independent board members less seriously than VCs
“My external board members, for some, I can't really explain reason, I just, I took them less serious, and I wish I had taken them more serious”
Dalgaard: Prospective board members must do blind background checks
“It's very, particularly if it's your first board, it's very easy to fall in love. This must be it. Now I'm getting that, and it's, your ego drives your decision-making, even if you won't admit it. Now I'm on my first board. This is exciting. Maybe not so fast.…”
Dalgaard: Recruit independent board members for problem-solving fit, not PR prestige
“I was so focused on getting the people who had been big in my industry before so that I could advertise that now I had them. I, I'd much rather have the one who wasn't the biggest today, but the one that was the right fit with me, that wanted to go and fight t…”
Dalgaard: Sharing board materials under NDA tests potential board members
“I think at that stage, you should be comfortable under NDA giving somebody this stuff, because you're, it's such a great test for both of you,”
Dahlgaard: Product managers must include sales reps in roadmap meetings
“And so I made it a rule that product management would never have a meeting discussing roadmap without having sales reps in the meeting.”
Dahlgaard: Initial large sales deals do not signify a solved sales model
“One rep does one big deal. That doesn't really mean anything. You, I mean, sales is a hard job. It's very easy to think that because a couple of reps do some big deals, now you've figured it all out and let's move on to the next thing.”
Dahlgaard: Top sales reps often fail when moving to a different company
“Some reps that are successful in one organization, like super successful, might not have any success in a different company. It's a very different thing depending on what you're selling”
Dalgaard: Founders should avoid chasing hot market trends
“Don't try and catch a wave. Don't try and do something you've read in a magazine that might be hot, and you can just get in on it, because there is no such thing. Once you try to catch that wave is gone, and it's got a bunch of people on it that came up with i…”
SuccessFactors explicitly defined its primary core value as 'no assholes'
“My first one was Respect for the individual. It starts, and it said, no assholes.”
Dalgaard: Southwest's market cap equaled all other competitors combined after 20 years
“I believe strongly it's what Southwest Airlines did. They came into an industry where everybody said, there's monopoly. You can't do anything in this. What are you thinking? And 20 years later, their market cap was that of all the others combined.”
Dalgaard refused to hire or sell to personal friends for ten years
“You can't find any of my friends working for my company for the first decade, and you can't find any of our customers being any of my friends.”
Dalgaard: Hard data lies less than a founder's internal narrative
“Data doesn't lie as much as your own brain does. And you can come up with all sorts of interpretations around why what you're thinking is actually right, but there is nothing to prove it.”
No SuccessFactors employees sold company stock prior to the IPO
“Nobody in my company sold before we went public.”
Dalgaard: Board of directors only knows a fraction of company details
“The combined board will never know more than you can balance on a pin hat of the company, and they shouldn't. That's for the CEO to know.”
Dalgaard: Initial interviews set permanent emotional contracts with employees
“I think it's like 90% more important, that first interview, because you create an emotional contract with that person forever.”
Dalgaard: Wait 20 minutes into interviews before asking deep personal questions
“I don't ask it in the first minute, because then it's useless. I ask it like, 20 minutes in. Because you've built some rapport and they know who you are and how real you are.”
Dalgaard: Non-technical applicants should lead with leadership confidence, not apologies
“I would never be apologetic in an interview around, you know, like, I'm not a tech person, I'm not, like, I can just see it, because I've interviewed a bunch of people that had your background, and I saw some, you know, apologies, and then also this sort of li…”
Dalgaard: Showing raw vulnerability forces CEOs to reciprocate authenticity
“And it's like we've trained ourselves to stay the fuck away from that place, but I go straight where it hurts the most, and I talk about that. And it never fails. All these CEOs, they're very, very successful, they're running public companies, they look in the…”
Dalgaard: I rushed hiring an independent board member right before IPO
“It takes very long time to find a very good person for you, and so you don't want to rush that the way I did it right before the IPO.”
Lars Dalgaard personally hired his company's first 800 employees
“No, no, I never, I always do my own, yeah, including every single person I hired, and I hired the first 800 people personally.”
Dalgaard pitched 73 venture capital firms that all rejected SuccessFactors
“We had the opportunity, or I personally did, to pitch to a 73 venture capitalists who all said no.”