Sam Corcos
Co-Founder & CEO, Levels. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorauthor@samcorcos ↗LinkedIn ↗corcos.io ↗
Sam Corcos is the co-founder and CEO of Levels, a metabolic health company. He previously co-founded Sightline Maps and the Y Combinator-backed startup CarDash.
2shows
3appearances
71statements
7resolved
4supported
1contradicted
57%fully supported
Everything Sam Corcos said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Levels shares meeting notes and performance reviews internally with all staff
“We share basically everything, including all of our one-on-ones and team meetings are all shared within the company. So you can see all of the one-on-ones between every other person at the company performance is shared within the pump within the company. So yo…”
Corcos: Product management should play a much smaller role in tech
“Product management, broadly, should play a much less significant role than it does as a default in most software development companies.”
Levels shares recordings of all 1-on-1s and board meetings company-wide
“All of our meetings, including our one-on-ones are recorded and shared by default to the whole company. So our board meetings, generally speaking, are shared with the whole company.”
Founders cannot evaluate executives without knowing how to do their jobs
“Your ability to assess and know whether they are the right people, if you're willing to put that to luck, then sure, you can just hope that you hired the right person, and you have no way of assessing the quality of their work output. If you can write a strate…”
Levels publicly posts all investor updates and all-hands meetings
“We post all of our investor updates publicly online. All of our team, all hands are publicly posted online.”
Slack is a synchronous communication tool masquerading as asynchronous
“Slack is a, it's a synchronous tool that masquerades as an async tool. And so, you end up getting into these multi-hour conversations with your thumbs, where you're, like, waiting for five minutes for them to get back to you, and you're just staring at your ph…”
Levels delegates PM admin and retrospective drafts to Philippine executive assistants
“We've been working with our EAs in the Philippines to do a lot of that admin work, and so they, we've we taught them how to do the daily check-ins, how to do, they even write the first draft of most of our retros now, because they can see all the daily updates…”
Corcos: Founders Should Target Believer VCs Rather Than Convert Skeptics
“It's a little bit challenging because when you're fundraising, you're a prophet, not a missionary. You have the vision, and you're trying to get people who already get it. You're not trying to convert people to your religion.”
Corcos: Child stranger abductions are as rare as lightning strikes
“Say if you have a child, the odds that your child is kidnapped by a stranger Is about the same as them getting struck by lightning.”
Corcos: News consumption creates a false perception of global risk
“Ultimately the news is poison and it makes you view a, It gives you a perception of the world that is not real.”
Corcos: The Main Downside of Starting a Company Is Mild Embarrassment
“Like starting a company feels risky, but really what's the worst that can happen? Like it doesn't work and you feel like mildly embarrassed. It's actually the downside situation is not the worst thing that can happen.”
Corcos: Co-founders who cannot commit to CEO decisions should leave
“There's a point at which, you know, you can disagree behind closed doors, but once the path is defined, which is defined by the CEO, you've got to get behind it or you've got to leave. Frankly, like if you can't get behind the idea and you can't get behind the…”
Corcos: CEOs have a 1% impact on everything and no direct deliverables
“When you're the CEO, you have a one percent impact on everything, but you have Almost nothing that you can actually point to as your own work product.”
Levels eliminated corporate titles beyond basic functional roles
“We've done away with titles beyond just, yeah, beyond just functional definitions.”
Corcos: Job Titles Serve as a Form of Non-Monetary Employee Compensation
“Titles are a form of compensation.”
Corcos: Employees outside an immediate team rarely identify low performers
“They actually very often don't. The people who work directly with them, maybe like the two or three people who are closest to them know, but everyone else at the company, if they end up leaving, it's a complete mystery why they left.”
Corcos: Startup talent quality follows a U-curve as companies scale
“I think in many ways there's also a U-shape to this, where in the very early days, sometimes you just hire the best person that you can get. Because you don't have a lot of choices. And then over time, as you see some amount of traction, you can attract really…”
Corcos: Fundraising transparency works when founders build internal trust
“If you've built up enough social capital internally, think of it like you've built up the trust bank with enough of enough credibility that people know that you're not lying to them, then it's totally fine. And it's never been an issue.”
Corcos: Employees must know company financials so they can contribute
“People should know the financial state of the company. People should understand what's going on because people can contribute to these things.”
Corcos: Levels has 25% retention, which is insufficient long-term
“I mean, churn is still very high. It's like 25%. We have 25% retention, which is not what it needs to be for this to work in the long term.”
Corcos: Founders Should Take as Many Investor Meetings as Possible
“I think you should take as many meetings and do as many pitches as you can.”
Corcos: VCs spend only an hour a month thinking about your startup
“They spend maybe An hour a month thinking about your company and you spend all day, every day thinking about your company.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Sam's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Levels | 1 | 51 | 50% 3/6 | full record on 20VC → |
 FOUNDER'S JOURNALLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Levels | 2 | 20 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Founder's Journal → |