Insight
Founders must beware investor candidate referrals who optimize for broader networks
“And there can be this danger though, and that you have this investor and you know that they're just interested in your success, right? That's Success for you, success for them. However, they also have this other network and this other group of people that they…”
Insight
Founders should not believe the fabricated origin stories their PR firms invent
“When you found a company, you hire a PR firm, they sit down with you and like, all right, like let's make an origin story. Where were you when you thought of this? Was there a napkin? Did you go to a garage? Whose garage was it? You know, and they weave this b…”
Insight
Hesitation to delegate primarily stems from a leader's anxiety over quality
“I think the real fear that a lot of us have that we don't want to admit is based in anxiety, and that's no one can do it as good as I can.”
Insight
Six months with the wrong hire sets a startup back two years
“Six months of the, of a person in the wrong position will set you back. Two years, because you're building these foundational blocks.”
Insight
Startups crossing major headcount thresholds must pause to digest new hires
“When you go from one stage to another, so let's say, you know, 50 to one 51 50 to 303 to five, we would refer to it as a snake eating a horse, I think, or a snake eating a goat, I believe, and you're taking this big thing on, and you just have to sit for a bit…”
Insight
Startups should recruit overqualified executives for their future stages of growth
“I think you should hire for where you want to be, you know, and all you need to do in that case is work on your narrative and on your story, and how do you convince that guy who's in some ways too big for this job to come work for you? You know, you convince t…”
Insight
Internal reactions to company rebrands always start with immediate, universal rejection
“Any company I've ever worked for, you have this new mark that you've hired the best people to put together, and you release it to the world, and everyone hates it.
You know, you hate it, you hate seeing it on your phone, and then slowly after a while you just …”
Insight
Slack sent software engineers on sales calls to build cross-functional empathy
“Another thing that we did at Slack is sending engineers on sales calls.
And once people understand the value, like, I don't want to go into a, you know, a huge client meeting that's in necessarily in a industry necessarily I don't know much about and just
Just…”
Insight
Startup founders fall into three archetypes: dreamers, problem solvers, and opportunists
“There's like the dreamers, the world builders, like the Elon Musk, and then there's the problem solvers. And then there's entrepreneurs or opportunists who just love the game of business.”
Insight
Scaling startup founders become unqualified for their own jobs every four months
“And feel like with startup founders, that's just happening every three to four months and you have to completely change your perspective.”
Insight
Insecure leaders micromanage tactical details simply to prove they are still needed
“Likely you should hire someone that's good and perhaps they won't catch everything, but it's almost like some people want to wait around for that one thing that's wrong so they can prove, ah, see, look, you need me here.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Twitter and Slack built internal flashcard games to memorize employee names
“At both Twitter and Slack, there were tools that were put into place, internal tools, where it was kind of like a game-like mechanism, where you could see a picture of two employees, and you have to, like, guess, you know, this name is the name of which employ…”
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2020
Cordle: Slack adopted a version of Amazon's decision memo
“And at Slack, we adopted a form of the Amazon memo.”
Disclosure
Kris Cordle listens to 50 hours of audiobooks a week
“I just looked at my Audible stats, and I'm up to reading, like, you know, listening to, like, 50 hours a week right now.”
