Lars Dalgaard
Founder and Investor, Luv Ventures. On 1 show, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@LarsLuv ↗
Dalgaard founded the cloud human capital management company SuccessFactors, leading it through an IPO and sale to SAP. After serving as a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he launched the venture investment firm Luv Ventures.
1shows
4appearances
36statements
3resolved
1supported
0contradicted
33%fully supported
3said about them ↓ Everything Lars Dalgaard said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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.”
The other half of the tape: Lars Dalgaard's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 3 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sonal Chokshi 1Marc Andreessen 1
Every mention by year
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the a16z Podcast 3
2019 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Lars's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Founder and Investor, Luv Ventures | 4 | 36 | 33% 1/3 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |