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Mehta: A company's most critical metric is employee optimism about the future

Neil Mehta · Finding the Next Figma, Wiz, & Stripe Before It's Obvious | Neil Mehta Interview · Invest Like The Best · Apr 15, 2025 · at 28:06

Neil Mehta, founder of Greenoaks Capital, explains how he evaluates company culture and momentum during site visits.

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“If you pulled everybody at this company and you asked them, are your best days ahead of you or behind you? What would the proportion of people say? And especially the most important people. It's not like year over year growth. It's not margins. It's not like strong form competitive advantage. It's not JDC. All of those things matter. But if I picked one thing That's kind of what I'm, and very early on, even in the startup, you could kind of tell if the energy's not there of like I'm excited about the, more excited about the future. By the way, I think this is, I mean, I just was in Europe a couple weeks ago that like a vast majority of people for, it seems like, 40 years have believed like the best years are behind them, not ahead of them, right? I think if you were running a company, that's the one stat you should care about more than anything else in the world.”

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