Frank Slootman
Chairman, Snowflake. On 3 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveauthoroperatorLinkedIn ↗snowflake.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Frank Slootman is recognized for scaling and taking three enterprise tech companies public: Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake. He is also the author of the leadership book Amp It Up.
3shows
4appearances
80statements
6resolved
5supported
0contradicted
83%fully supported
116said about them ↓ Everything Frank Slootman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Slootman: Customer success departments are the 'biggest bullshit' in Silicon Valley
“Yeah, we, I did kill customer success at every company I've been in. I think it's the biggest bullshit thing that goes on in Silicon Valley.”
Slootman: Mass layoffs expose the hypocrisy of Google and Salesforce family cultures
“Companies like Salesforce and even Google come to mind, but you know, in the end they're laying people off too, by the thousands. Okay. So I guess it's not family after all.”
Slootman: Graduates should avoid management consulting for real economy operating roles
“Don't go working for some consulting firm, you know, out of school, right? Try to get a real job in the real economy, building real products, selling real products. He says, you really need to feel what it's like, you know, to sort of be in the drive train of …”
Slootman: High-intensity cultures naturally filter out employees lacking the company's DNA
“Culture shorts and sifts. You attract the right ones and you start losing the wrong ones. So it's actually quite perfect. If people are leaving, they're just not your DNA. They're not your blood type.”
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: Fire quickly for behavior; it is a choice, not a skill
“We very quickly separate on behavior. You know, performance is something that we will give more time behavior. We won't. And that's because behavior is a choice, not a skill set.”
Slootman: Businesses should operate like sports franchises rather than families
“I don't think a business is a family. Unfortunately, in a family, you can't fire your family, even though you sometimes want to, you have to tolerate them and deal with them. And sometimes in the most egregious way, that is just the nature of families. I mean,…”
Fire employees immediately over poor behavior; it is a choice, not skill
“We very quickly separate on behavior. You know, performance is something that we will give more time behavior. We won't. And that's because behavior is a choice, not a skill set.”
True ambition and drive require a lack of personal balance
“It is a lack of adjustment because if you were a perfectly balanced person, you wouldn't have any ambition. You're so happy with where things are. You barely have a reason to get up in the morning, you know?”
Performance cultures must reward top staff along a strict bell curve
“There needs to be a bell curve. We want to know who is, you know, deserving of two X, three X versus who is deserving of zero. So that we see the full spectrum, the bell curve, if you will of people that are, you know, performing, you know, incredibly well. An…”
Companies achieve peak sales performance when every department supports sales
“You get much better sales organization when you have full alignment in the entire company so that everybody works, you know, for sales effectively. We always say that we're all working for sales here. Because they're the tip of the spear and the rest of us are…”
Great salespeople cannot sell bad products, but bad reps sell great ones
“Great salespeople can't sell a bad product. Right. But lousy salespeople can sell a great product.”
Enterprise sales failures are usually disguised product problems
“Typically sales problems are product problems, but Typically that's not the initial assessment because, you know, you don't want your baby to be called ugly”
Mediocre 'passenger' employees are the most harmful because they survive too long
“Some people are, you know, not good enough to keep, not bad enough to fire, you know, those are the worst cases because like, well, you know, person looks nice, speaks, speaks well, articulate, you know, but they're the ultimate passenger. They never move a di…”
Rushing to hit headcount targets in fast-growing startups is highly destructive
“I find that people rush, especially in fast growing companies, you know, we have hiring targets and they're just slamming bodies. And it's the worst thing ever. I'd rather hire, you know, more slowly, but better than faster.”
Slootman: Organizations decelerate to a glacial pace unless leaders drive intensity
“This is what naturally happens to human beings. It's just, it's innate. We slow down to a glacial pace unless there are People who are going to drive tempo and pace and intensity and urgency. That's what leaders need to do because people naturally slow down.”
Slootman: The CEO role is insanely confrontational, countering natural human instincts
“CEO jobs are insanely confrontational, which is not human nature. We don't like it. We aren't naturally confrontational. We avoid it.”
Slootman: Large language models alone cannot answer proprietary enterprise data questions
“When you're in the enterprise, you're dealing with structured proprietary data and, you know, they're not planning trips to Yellowstone. They're gonna, you know, they're gonna ask really hard questions... Believe me, you're not going to get the answer to that …”
Slootman: Natural language interfaces will severely disrupt traditional BI
“Anybody semi-literate will be able to get, you know, way more value than they ever imagined from the data. And it will change, you know, how products Get used. I mean, BI will not be the same. I think I see that as severely affected by this evolution”
Slootman: Data lakes are 'landfills'; AI requires highly organized, sanctioned data
“In a world of AI, if you don't have highly organized, optimized, sanctioned, and trusted data, what do you want, you know, your models to do? Just kind of train on, on, on a data lake. I call it a landfill. You know, I mean, you have no idea what the hell is i…”
The other half of the tape: Frank Slootman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 107 times in 31 episodes across the shows. 9 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 38Chris Degnan 21David Schneider 15Scott Dietzen 4Jason Lemkin 4Zach Lawryk 2Sarah Guo 2Rujul Zaparde 2
Statements about Frank Slootman, by other people (9)
Lawson: Choosing between diversity and meritocracy is a false dichotomy
“First of all, it is a straw argument that there's a choice between diversity and merit, right?”
Degnan: Frank Slootman is among the most ruthless executives in tech
“Look, I mean, I had the fortunate, you know experience of working for some pretty ruthless guys, in particular Frank Slootman.”
Ramaswamy: Slootman Stepped Down Because Snowflake Was Slow on AI
“I think what happened was the company was a little slow to reacting to changes from things like machine learning and AI. And that was a little bit of, honestly, the reason why Frank voluntarily pushed for the change, because he felt presently that we are heade…”
Mukherjee: AEs should hold both commit and consumption quotas
“So the student school of thought is only invest in the back carriers. Get the AEs, people who can hold a number. You eat what you hunt, like those folks, they should hold both the commit number, but also the consumption number. And it's an intense way to opera…”
Lawryk: Frank Slootman eliminated customer success to enforce sales accountability
“Frank Slootman sort of championed the idea that he doesn't want to have customer success at any of his companies. But I think what he's really saying is that he wants the sales team to take more responsibility for the success of a customer.”
Frank Slootman's culture book lacks actionable execution advice, says Henry Schuck
“I think the hard part about culture is like you read Frank Slootman's book and you walk out and you go like, okay, take the slack out of the rope. It's like, okay, I don't know really like what, like, what is the, bring your spear, kill someone. And that is li…”
Leaders should execute quick terminations rather than using PIPs
“When you're a leader, if your bit flips on somebody, if you lose confidence, then you need to make the change. And I don't like pips. You know, I think I'm much more in the Frank Slutman school on this one. You make changes quickly in order to keep the team on…”
Kleinerman: Frank Slootman's leadership clarity accelerates decision-making
“He's also such a clear thinker. He has that commonality with Satya that he becomes a clarifying force. Oftentimes if you're just picturing yourself telling Frank about a problem and a couple of options, Just in the formulation, it becomes very obvious that you…”
David Schneider helped grow ServiceNow from $80M to $5B in revenue
“I spent 10 years at ServiceNow joining Frank Slootman again, who I had the privilege of working with at Data Domain. Into that company, which was about eighty million or so in size when I joined, and when I left it was five billion in revenue”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 103
No Priors 4
2026 12 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis & Why You’d Never Hire From Salesforce or ServiceNow · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- No Priors Live: Is the SaaS "Bear Thesis" Overblown? MongoDB CEO Answers
- "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg: How to Make Mega Deals | Lessons from Rabois, Halligan & Grady · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 11 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
- No Priors Ep. 139 | With Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy
- 20Sales: How the Best Sales Teams Use AI to Win Enterprise Deals | Sales Teams Will Be Dramatically Smaller | How to Ramps Sales Reps Way Faster | Why Unpaid Design Partners are BS | Why this Generation of Sales is Soft with Ishan Mukherjee @ Rox
- 20Sales: Sierra: Inside Silicon Valley's Fastest Growing Sales Machine & How to Prospect, Outbound and Close Enterprise Deals in AI
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 29 mentions in 7 episodes 4 per episode
- David Schneider: Why the Worst VCs are "Seagull VCs" & VC Value Add - Is it Real? | E1200 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- AJ Tennant: How to Build a Sales Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | E2118 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Larry Shurtz: How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Vertical Teams | E1151 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Rujul Zaparde: Why Hiring Inexperienced People is Better | E1144 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Zachary Bookman: Why Valuations and Fundraising are BS | E1235 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin: Why Pricing is Worse Than Ever and There is More Funding Than Ever | E1157 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 35 mentions in 8 episodes 4 per episode
- Chris Degnan: Why You Should Hire a Head of Sales Sooner Than You Think | E1080 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Christian Kleinerman: Do OpenAI and Anthropic Have a Sustaining Moat? Who Wins the AI Wars? | E1063 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Zach Lawryk: The Ultimate Guide to Sales Engineering | E980 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck: Sales Cycle Elongation; Gratitude Journaling; Sales Layoffs | E964 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Tooey Courtemanche: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO | E1090 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Guillaume Cabane: Why Your First Growth Hire Should Be a Former Founder | E1088 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Stephane Kurgan: Lessons Scaling King from 100 Employees to 2,400; How to Find Great Talent | E1041 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 15 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- Tristan Handy: Why The CEO Should Make As Few Decisions As Possible | 20VC #937 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen
- Geoff Lewis: Why I Put $200M into Rippling; Uncapped Notes; "Compound Startups" | 20VC #933 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Arm CEO Rene Haas on How The Best Leaders Make Decisions and The Trade-Off Between Speed and Quality | Leadership Lessons from 7 Years at Nvidia | How Companies Can Retain Speed, Innovation and Agility at Scale
- 20VC: Scaling to $122M ARR IPO with $6M in Net Burn, Olo. The Ultimate Journey of Capital Efficiency, What Worked, What Did Not Work and How Leaders Need To Reshape Thinking Around Resource and Attention Allocation
- 20VC: Brex's Henrique Dubugras on Advice from Evan Spiegel and Eric Schmidt on CEOship, The Biggest Hiring Mistakes When Scaling, What Everyone Gets Wrong with Product Messaging and When is the Right Time to Launch Secondary Products
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 4 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Frank's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Chairman, Snowflake | 2 | 32 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| NO PRIORSLEDGER | Chairman, Snowflake | 1 | 27 | 67% 2/3 | full record on No Priors → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Chairman, Snowflake | 1 | 21 | 100% 2/2 | full record on 20VC → |