Everything Lars Dalgaard said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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 was rejected by 73 VCs when raising funding for SuccessFactors
“73.”
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.”
Dalgaard: SuccessFactors grew to 50 million users
“And so I had to see that come into fruition and at fifty million people using it, I began to believe that it was going to be a consistent and systemic change that would not go away.”
Lars Dalgaard became Unilever's youngest division CEO at age 26
“It was the third largest company in the world. They had 320,000 employees, and I was the youngest CEO at 26 there by 13 years.”
the a16z Podcast 3