A Players
topic on 6 shows · 10 statements across 8 episodes · said 1 times in 1 episodes since 2025
the a16z Podcast 1 
Masters of Scale 
BigDeal 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 
Capital Allocators 
20VC
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the a16z Podcast 1
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
10 statements about A Players, every show
Herjavec: A players move forward while B players wallow in misery
“A players move the ball or the needle forward. B players get stuck in repetition or something. And I think B players wallow in misery. Adaptability is the ability to wallow quickly and move on.”
Ibarra: AI Lets Companies Clone A-Players and Make Them S-Tier
“I think there is now, I think, a clear path to where I'm seeing in these platforms. You can clone all your best A players, right? Take all the best A players on your team across marketing, sales, CS, sales, rev ops, and make them S tier with AI. I truly believ…”
Levchin: You can only differentiate A and B players after hiring them
“The point is, you can filter out C players. You can definitely filter out D players. Differentiation between B and A is what happens once you've brought them in.”
Levchin: B players hire C players out of fear of being outperformed
“The Steve Jobs quote, A players, higher A players, B players, higher C players, is profoundly true. There should be an asterisk explaining why this is true, and the reason for it is fear.”
Levchin: B players handle essential tasks that A players reject
“Having people who are Perfectly willing to do good work day in and day out is not the worst thing in the world. There's plenty of things that A players will turn their notes from because it's just not that challenging. It's not accelerating them out of the A p…”
Ohanian: Sports clubs must continuously market their players off the pitch
“And so part of the job of a club is to then tell the story of our players every minute they're not on the pitch.”
Briggs: Expanding markets requires waiting for an A-player hire
“One B player in a team can lead to a lot of C players quite rapidly and making those calls early, and keeping the bar high, and only entering a market once you've found that A player, I think is probably key to their expansion.”
Schatz: Top sales performers will quit if managers do not challenge them
“If that's the conversation that you're having with an A player, that A player should fundamentally quit your organization. If you're not challenging them, they will quit, they should quit.”
Rabil: Premier Lacrosse League Gives Stock Options to Its Players
“What you have in Silicon Valley is the treatment of your employees Where they get stock options of the business and that's carved out in your employee cap table. So we carved out a portion of that for our players. And so our players have options in the busines…”