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David Barrett

Founder & CEO, Expensify · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveengineer@dbarrett ↗LinkedIn ↗expensify.com ↗

David Barrett is the founder and CEO of Expensify, a cloud-based expense management platform launched in 2008 that went public on the Nasdaq in 2021. Before creating Expensify, he led engineering at peer-to-peer file-sharing company Red Swoosh, which was acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2007.

12statements → 4claims → 0claims resolved → 3.75/5average certainty → 1.83/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

4 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 3 assertions · 8 insights · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how David argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of David Barrett on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything David Barrett said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Sophisticated clients select executive search firms before negotiating fees, Barrett notes
“The clients that we like to work with, and it's, I'd say it's 90% of the time, it's not price at all. I'd say that, you know, the sophisticated and appropriate users of search, they will pick a firm, and then they'll negotiate the price.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 10:28 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
Cultural fit accounts for 75% of a CIO search's success
“Well, I think the first thing is, because 75% of this is cultural fit.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 12:54 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
The most successful CIOs actively leverage their investment committees
“The most successful CIOs are leveraging their investment committees.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 21:08 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
Calibrating how a candidate thinks as an investor is uniquely difficult
“They know as much about the, in many cases, they'll, they'll have, especially in terms of unique insights, potentially into the, how that person thinks as an investor, which is the hardest thing for us to really calibrate.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 21:17 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
Successful institutional searches require a tight committee of three or four
“Well, a successful search, you get all those other constituencies, you get all their input up front, so they feel included. And then you have a really tight search committee of three, maybe four people, and they tightly control the process.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 22:54 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
Evaluating true endowment CIO investment performance requires at least five years
“So, I think you take your, really your first breath on the, and the calibration point, maybe at three years, but it's, I think, five years for me is the proof of the pudding.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 25:02 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Technology will never compress senior executive search into a six-week process
“The length of time to complete searches has not shortened. Because it is a people business, it is, it's based on personal relationships, meeting people in person, building trust, establishing credibility, both with the search firm and the candidate, and then t…”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 33:44 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
Performance transparency and media narratives created an unfortunate CIO arms race
“The reason you've seen so much So many changing seats over the last several years is that because of the increased transparency around performance, and then the, so then they get the relative comparisons where, you know, through, you know, the press has turned…”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 34:37 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Committees wanting broad pools hire proven sitting CIOs 80% of the time
“80% of the time, the search committee will say, we want to, like, broad brush. We want to see everybody in all the different buckets. You get down to the finish line, oh, we got a sitting CIO who's going to, done this for five years, proven track record, and I…”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 37:14 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stanford's outperforming peer endowments all had CIOs with ten-year tenures
“When we were doing the Stanford CEO search, Seven or eight institutions that they compared themselves to that were ahead of them on a ten-year basis, on their, in terms of their ten-year number, all those CIOs had been in place for 10 years.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 25:23 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Harvard Management Company's 2.5-month CIO search was Barrett's shortest ever
“Harvard was the shortest search we ever did. It was two and a half months. I mean, and typically these take four or five, six months.”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 27:04 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)
Insight
Executive search's commission structure encourages selfish recruiters over client focus
“In the search business, it's really hard to live by it, which is, don't hire assholes, because there's a lot of people in search that are, it's all about them, you know, there's, it's, you know, it's a professional services, and it's a revenue business. So to …”
David Barrett Sep 25, 2017 ▶ 41:25 David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26)

The other half of the tape: David Barrett's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →

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Every mention by year

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2017 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
David Barrett – Searching for Leaders (Capital Allocators, EP.26) Sep 25, 2017 26m
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