The Ledger, every show
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks, across all 44 shows. Pick shows below, then mix any filter with any other.
shows 
every show 44 of 44
Unhappy customers create 10x more downside than happy customers create upside
“10 X more downside for an unhappy customer than upside for a happy customer.”
Top 1% engineers are 10x more productive than top 10%
“The difference between a top one percent and a top 10% engineer is pretty dramatic. You know, it's like tenfold productivity, and so it's really, really crucial, you know, to get that.”
Pure Storage rejected top valuations to secure better board members
“We never took the highest valuation that was offered to us. We chose a fair and good evaluation in order to get the best possible board participation for the company.”
Scott Dietzen: Micromanagement signals a bad hire or wrong job fit
“If you're micromanaging somebody, there's a mistake, right? Either you've hired the wrong person or you're in the wrong job. You're trying to manage somebody else.”
Startups need competition to build market categories
“I mean, you actually need competition to build markets. If you're the only company in a space, it's, it can be a lot harder.”
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…”
Startups need top 0.1% talent in engineering, not in finance
“There are other functions inside the business that, you know, you don't necessarily need to be the best In the world at finance and accounting, right? You want to be good, and you better be squeaky clean, but you don't have to hire the top one-tenth of one per…”
Micromanagement indicates a bad hire or wrong management role
“If you're micromanaging somebody, there's a mistake, right? Either you've hired the wrong person, or you're in the wrong job if you're trying to manage somebody else.”
Flash memory will replace all mechanical storage in data centers
“I had come to the conclusion that Flash was going to replace all the mechanical storage in the data center.”
Avoiding loss analysis makes startup cultures fragile and dishonest
“I think one of the problems entrepreneurs have is they're great at sharing the good news, the attaboy, attagal, we won, but they're less inclined to want to open up and dig in on the losses, and it makes everybody feel fragile and dishonest.”
Unrealistic optimism creates fake and unsustainable company morale
“Well, so I think the morale, if you're not being realistic, the morale is fake, right? And so you're inflating things in a way that's not sustainable.”
An employee surprised by firing reveals a manager's failure
“Sometimes I'm asked to come in and deliver the bad news to an executive, and if they're surprised, that's information for me that the manager hasn't been doing their job.”
CEOs should bring plans, not open problems, to board meetings
“If you're a founder CEO, your job is to propose a path and then Rely on the board to help you course correct. So one side of the error is not coming in with a plan. Got a problem. If you're going to propose it to the board, you know, you're going to get a plan…”
Founders should set conservative near-term targets to consistently overdeliver
“This is another classic founder-CEO mistake, is offering, you know, a dramatic upside. Paint a great long-term vision, but be really pragmatic about what you can achieve in the coming quarters, so you underpromise and overdeliver consistently.”
CEOs must build strong organizations both below and above themselves
“And Neil Bouchery told me, you know, the hardest bit about the CEO job is you've got to build both below you and above you, right? You've got to build a leadership team, but you've also got to build a board, you know, to help ensure your success.”