Matt Mochary
Founder & CEO Coach, Mochary Method. On 2 shows, 2 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderauthorinvestorentertainerother@mattmochary ↗LinkedIn ↗mocharymethod.org ↗Wikipedia ↗
Matt Mochary is a Silicon Valley executive coach who trains founders and venture partners, having worked with leaders at OpenAI, Coinbase, Reddit, Notion, and firms like Sequoia and Benchmark. He is the author of The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building and previously co-founded Totality Corporation.
2shows
2appearances
42statements
3resolved
1supported
1contradicted
33%fully supported
31said about them ↓ Everything Matt Mochary said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Mochary: Leaders who never regret firing someone do not know their bar
“Well, then you don't know what the bar is because the bar of where you should be letting people go is here. And the bar that you've let people go is here. So until you get close to that line, You don't know what that line is.”
Mochary: Mochary Method fires anyone who merely meets expectations
“If someone is meeting expectation, we let them go. We've already let all those folks go. So on our team, it's Only outperformers.”
Mochary: Even poorly handled layoffs result in better performance within two months
“Even if it's handled incredibly poorly, the company ends up performing better. It just takes a little longer for people to recover who the state team to recover emotionally, but the worst case scenario, it's handled terribly. Within two months, the company wil…”
Mochary: Creative autonomy, not equity upside, actually motivates startup builders
“I don't think it matters at all. I think that what really motivates people is building shit that gets used in the world. I think people will say, and they'll fight for equity in money, but in the end, that's not what actually motivates them. Because I've seen …”
Permanent board seats are the death of every great venture investor
“First of all, know that boards are the death of every great investor. So Be wary. If you sell to founders that when they take your money, you will join their board and be on their board forever. Know that you have just ended your career eventually.”
Mochary: Adding employees increases organizational overhead geometrically
“Every additional human you have in your organization. Causes extra overhead and geometrically so because now that you have to keep all those people informed, give them all context, make them all feel heard”
Mochary: Disclosing major problems to investors builds rather than damages trust
“I think if you actually tell them, tell your investors, the exact opposite of what we think is gonna happen is gonna happen. You think you're gonna lose their trust. I think you're gonna gain their trust.”
Mochary: Adding headcount increases organizational overhead geometrically and reduces velocity
“With fewer people in the organization, things work better. That's the big Realization that most people never discover. So they hit product market fit, they get tons of money from investors, not just hire, hire, hire, hire, hire. But every additional human you …”
Mochary: Managers who fire employees should act as their career agents
“The key is, in my opinion, you become their agent. Like a, you know, like Michael Ovitz, a CAA agent. You help them find their next job actively.”
Mochary: Leaders do not need an executive coach if they follow scripts
“And so all you do is you read it and you follow the script and letting someone go or making someone feel heard. My positive is once you do it one time, like, oh my God, that worked so well. That's the only motivation you need. And you've got the script. So you…”
Mochary: Internal innovation teams must report directly to the CEO
“So that's why it has to be a small team that reports to outside of EPD. It can't report to the head of engineering, head of product or head of design. Can't. It's gotta go outside, usually directly to the CEO.”
De-escalate angry colleagues by voicing exaggerated, expletive-laden criticisms of yourself
“And one of the easiest ways is to simply have their anger named and their thoughts named. So I will simply say, hey, I sense that you're feeling a lot of anger right now, and my guess is that some of the thoughts you're having are blank, and then I'll really g…”
Mochary: Leaders must separate customer-focused decisions from empathetic implementation
“She shared with me her framework for making decisions, which is she separates the decision from the implementation. Meaning she thinks about who is the stakeholder here that I'm solving for. And almost always in a company you're solving for the customer. So wh…”
Mochary: To make people feel heard, mirror their unsaid blunt thoughts
“So what you're doing is you're giving me the feedback, but you're couching it. You're polishing it. You're rounding the edges. You're making it softer. It's not really what you're thinking. But it's what you're willing to say. And so if I want to make you real…”
Mochary: Naval Ravikant did not want to remain CEO of AngelList
“What we realized coaching Naval is that Naval did not want to be CEO. And he just didn't know how to get out.”
Outsource immediate business decisions to uninvolved parties when experiencing fear or anger
“If I have to act immediately, I outsource my thinking to someone else. Someone who's not in fear or anger. So I share the situation with someone who's not part of the situation, and their brain, therefore, is not triggered because it doesn't matter to them, an…”
Benchmark's Peter Fenton discloses a genuine personal weakness within five minutes
“The master of this is Peter Fenton at Benchmark. He, within five minutes of any conversation, he will tell you a weakness that he has, and it's not, he's not joking about it. He tells you a real weakness, and my God, it makes me love him, but I'm not unique in…”
Startup CEOs need warm network introductions from investors, not strategic advice
“And usually it's not strategic thinking because you have very little information about the company. They're at the company, 30 days a month, 12 hours a day. They have so much more information than you do. But what you have that they don't is you have a network…”
Mochary: Leaders Should Only Accept Feedback That Resonates With Them
“If the feedback is something that does not resonate with you, Then no, you do not need to accept it. I think you do need to say thank you, and you do need to reflect back what it is that they said so that they know that you've heard them, but you don't then ne…”
Train a Chief of Staff by granting total email and calendar access
“The best way to train chief of staff is to give them full access. They have complete access to your email, to your calendar, to every meeting that you're in. So they literally sit beside you, listen in on every call and sit in every meeting. And that lasts for…”
Mochary: Pre-warning recipients of bad news reduces amygdala response
“What I found is, is that the way the amygdala gets triggered is often because of surprise. And so if you give someone just a few seconds to mentally prepare, then the amygdala often doesn't get triggered nearly as hard”
Mochary: I have never lost an outcome bet with fearful founders
“I've made this bet hundreds of times, and so far I've never lost.”
Mochary: Fear distorts reality and causes exaggerated predictions for founders
“When someone's in fear, they're gripped. They can't see reality. Their brain is making very exaggerated predictions.”
Mochary: Saying 'I perceive you to be in anger' de-escalates defensiveness
“And then finally she said, I perceive you to be in anger. So it's an I statement and it's simply what she's perceiving. There's no judgment. And that was able to punch through my anger. And then I woke up and went, oh, and then I stopped and just didn't act un…”
The other half of the tape: Matt Mochary's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 27 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Grant LaFontaine 11Lenny Rachitsky 5Petra Wille 4Harry Stebbings 3Jules Walter 2Alex MacCaw 2
Statements about Matt Mochary, by other people (4)
Openly Roasting the CEO Builds High-Trust Executive Leadership Teams
“He'll kick it off with me where it'd be like, all right, you can go and roast Grant on all of the bad things he's doing. Give him like the toughest feedback you can give him. I'll sit there and listen to it. And most of the time it's accurate. And so I'll ackn…”
One-on-one coaching should focus on incremental gains over perfection
“So it really focuses on Incremental improvements, not crazy stressing everybody out improvements, not what it, what could I do to make it a 10. It's more really how could I improve your situation, really build rapport, really be there for your product folks.”
Executive Coach Matt Mochary Coached Clearbit for Free in Its Early Days
“Matt Mashari helped us in the early days, and he didn't charge us a thing.”
Matt Mochary's coaching client list includes partners at Benchmark, Sequoia, and Kleiner
“On the VC side, Matt has worked with the likes of Peter Fenton at Benchmark, Several Sequoia partners, Hemond at GC, and Mamoon at Kleiner, to name a few. As for founders, Matt's worked with the founders of Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Reddit, Flexport, and many mor…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 16
Lenny's Podcast 11
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2022 15 mentions in 2 episodes 8 per episode
- 20VC: Startups Fail Because They Do Not Take Enough Risk, Why A/B Testing is Inefficient and Slows You Down, Why It is Impossible To Hire Good PMs so Stop Trying & 3 Key Signals The Best Engineers Present with Grant LaFontaine, Founder & CEO @ Whatnot
- How to be the best coach to product people | Petra Wille (Strong Product People)
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2020 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Twitch Founder & CEO Emmett Shear on When To Persist vs When To Give Up For Entrepreneurs, The Fundamental Tension When Scaling Orgs and How To Optimise Them & How The Role of CEO Fundamentally Changes with Scale
- 20VC: Floodgate's Mike Maples on 3 Key Breakthroughs Startups Experience in Success, The Rise of Angel and Operator Funds, Multi-Stage Funds Re-Entering Seed Investing and The Insight Development Framework
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Matt's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founder & CEO Coach, Mochary Method | 1 +1 | 28 | 50% 1/2 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO Coach, Mochary Method | 1 | 14 | 0% 0/1 | full record on 20VC → |