Alfred Lin
28 statements across 2 episodes · 10 bullish · 7 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jan 21, 2025 by Alfred Lin · said 1 times in 1 episodes since 2023 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Alfred Lin's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
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brought up most by Ravi Gupta (1)
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2023 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Alfred Lin, oldest first
Jan 21, 2025 bullish
Jan 21, 2025
Founders should hire leaders one or two chapters ahead, not ten
“My observation is that when you try to hire someone that is from a company that is one chapter or two chapters ahead, they tend to work out better. And part of that is because they're only one or two chapters ahead of you. If you try to hire someone who you're…”
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Lin: Leaders must categorize turnover into regrettable versus unregrettable departures
“You have to manage the turnover of regrettable. What is a regrettable turnover? Why you're not, Able to retain your best people. And if you have unregrettable turnover, then why did you hire these people in the first place? And so you, if you break the problem…”
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Jan 21, 2025
Company speed naturally slows down without continuous pressure from leadership
“Velocity as opposed to speed, because speed is just how fast you're going. But velocity, velocity also has direction. And I think the combination of the two is quite important. But the whole speed of a company generally doesn't get any faster unless you're pus…”
Jan 21, 2025 negative
Lin: Firing an employee within three months signals a hiring failure
“If you hire someone, you have to let them go in three months, that was a messire. There's almost no reason why that person was not going to be able to do the job for the, for three months. They either were not a cultural fit, they didn't have the right skills.”
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Lin: Applying operational force surfaces structural bottlenecks in high-growth companies
“Often, you know, when you apply force, you realize where the obstacles are. Because you butt against that obstacle. And then you realize, okay, I keep butting against this. Maybe you have to figure out a way around it.”
Jan 21, 2025
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Investors who sat out the 1999 bubble missed Google and Salesforce
“And if you decided not to invest in that time, you would have missed out on Google, Salesforce, PayPal, Zappos, OpenTable. There are a lot of great companies that were still founded during that time, and Paying market prices for those investments would have be…”
Jan 21, 2025
Jan 21, 2025 negative
Many AI startups see massive initial adoption but suffer terrible user churn
“Right now there's a different example where lots of, there's a lot of test revenue, but the churn is very high because people don't stick, so there are a lot of things where You see very, very fast adoption, but the churn rate is very, very poor.”
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Lin: Early Airbnb functioned as a listing service rather than a true marketplace
“Maybe in the early days of Airbnb, I think people forget it was much more of a listing service, and it was less of a marketplace, and if you sort of take the definition of a marketplace, you have to complete the transaction, and you just not only have to compl…”
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Zappos's most valuable customers also had the highest product return rates
“We then did this analysis and this is the type of analysis I really enjoy doing, like, let's take our best customers, and let's take our worst customers, and look at their return rates, and it turned out our best customers at the highest LTVs return the most”
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Sequoia Capital prioritizes an employee's learning slope over their past experience
“At Sequoia, we hire for slope, not intercept. So experience obviously matters, but if you just hire for the experience and their slope is not fast, that's going to become a problem at some point. And so we really, really ask founders to think about what is the…”
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Lin: Companies must create an annual plan to evolve their culture
“Cultures should not be static. Every year you do a strategic plan and a financial plan. You figure out what your next year's revenue is going to be. You're hiring a plan. You're marketing a plan. You have all these plans. You should also have a plan for cultur…”
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Alfred Lin: Free cash flow provides total strategic freedom for startups
“Free cash flow equals freedom, because eventually a real business generates real free cash flow. ... The freedom that allows you to not have to raise money, the freedom to allow you to invest in new areas, the freedom to continue to grow, because you can inves…”
Jan 21, 2025 negative
Startups building incremental AI refinements will become roadkill for Big Tech
“Other things that, you know, I'd say we try to avoid is things that are roadkill along the way of a company like OpenAI or Google or Amazon or Meta. So, small refinements into what the model doesn't do well today. That's just gonna be real cool along the way.”
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Jan 21, 2025
Lin: Outside Questions Expose Flawed Assumptions When Inside a Bubble
“So, that's why I think it's valuable to have people who are slightly outside of where you work to keep you accountable. It's like, hey, how's this, how does this work? Just by simply asking questions, you get into a situation where, like, wait, I can't explain…”
Jan 21, 2025 negative
Building early-stage startups remotely is extremely difficult without prior shared history
“I think it's very, very hard to build an early stage company remote, and the reason I say that is unless you, you've worked with each other before, I view there to be a well of trust that is created when you work together in this, you know, the reason why peop…”
Jan 21, 2025 negative
Jan 21, 2025 bearish
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Lin: DoorDash faced difficult Series C and D rounds before fixing unit economics
“They grew very fast, they probably grew too quickly their unit economics wasn't great, they had a few hard fundraising rounds for the C and D, they fixed the
The unit economics.
So in 2019 it was a walled oiled machine”
Jan 21, 2025
Lin: Strategic Planning Should Include Retrospective Reviews of Past Decisions
“I don't think enough companies look at that enough. You know, instead of projecting next year's revenue and next year's strategic plan, part of the strategic plan should be about looking backwards. What decisions did you get right? What decisions did you get w…”
Jan 21, 2025 negative
Jan 21, 2025
Lin: Scaling Companies Must Prioritize Decision Velocity Over Process
“Like, the process becomes, instead of making fast, good, fast decisions, the thing that people value is having a good process that slows you down to make sure you have the right decision. You have to make high-velocity decisions at scale.”
Dec 23, 2025
Lin: Sequential to-do lists fail without high-level prioritization
“Often we can create a very, very long to-do list, and then you've got to pop up a level and just look at the to-do list. What's the most important things I have to get accomplished? Because if you just list all the to-dos, you probably will not be able to get …”