Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q and prioritize and pressure to ship faster. Aren't we all under that pressure, right? Um, yeah. Um, and do you find just the penultimate B, do you find that because of this customers are more demanding in terms of when they want those enterprise style commits to come, or are they still willing to wait two to three quarters for what you, what the CEO agreed to in the contract?
A I, I think the customers, that's what well said. I think the Customers are willing to wait, but they want certainty that is more than the agile model delivers. This is a real hard problem. They're used to the old model of, Hey, it's going to ship in Q three of 20, 22. And it's like, I don't know what I'm shipping next week. This is agile. We're, we're not trying to set the future. And so I think that, but the client view is actually reasonable because they're, they have these training cycles. They have the, if you have sell to big customers, they have to train their users. They have to do change management. And so there's this constant battle of like agile, not wanting to have date commits and customers wanting date commits and you have this just back and forth all the time. That's a big challenge.
AI assessment note: “I think the Customers are willing to wait, but they want certainty”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q Um, and what, um, and so I, I want to get into the mistakes, but now you're coming up on 200. That means if you squint, like, if you really squint, as crazy as sounds, a billion's way out there, right? Way out there on the horizon, right? How far out can you, can you see? Like, how far out can you see it as you're coming up on 200?
A Oh my gosh. I, I, I would say that, like, normally I'd say, oh yeah, maybe three years out or whatever. Um, just being vulnerable, I have a hard time seeing out at all right now, given Like the diff, all the things happening in the world with, you know, just the macro economy, whether it's inflation or deflation, geopolitical stuff, and then obviously AI. So it's just candidly very hard to see out. So like within our little bubble, I can see, oh gosh, this is, you know, every company needs to, is moving to recurring revenue business model. When you do that, you got to focus on that retention. You know, we've been fortunate to be the main player in that space. So this would naturally grow and we can add more products. And so
AI assessment note: “I have a hard time seeing out at all right now”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.85
Q And it turns out as you're approaching 5000 to 10,000 for SMB, you just start hitting, it's just kind of the next, once in a while there's exceptions, as you say, right? Um, but even usually when you peel back the exception, usually the footprint of the product's expanded a lot, right?
A That's exactly right. Yeah, everyone has to do something, expand. So nine, nine's kind of relevant to this, which is, You know, not being patient. It's kind of, again, all my lessons are kind of semi-contradictory, but they, they sort of fit together. I think there's an element also, though, of realizing whatever market you're in, putting aside like you've launched Act two, in the market you're in, you just sometimes can't force it. And I, I mean, God, there was so much FOMO. I'm like, I'm extremely susceptible to FOMO. Like if anyone, if there's any party going on anywhere, I want to be there right now. Right. And so I'm very susceptible to it. So like FOMO was the all time high in, you know, The 2019, 20, 21, like all those times. How come we're not snowflake? How come we're not data bricks? How come we're not growing that fast? Right? And so one of the things I learned, like to quote the great, you know, Hamilton and Aaron Burr is you, sometimes you gotta wait for it. And like, you know, this case, you've got a couple hundred million dollar business now, and you know, it's not the biggest business in the world. It's not the fastest business. I'm proud of what we've done. And, and a lot of times the things that the mistakes we made were like rushing, you know, for example, trying to close a deal that wasn't really ready. And that, That inevitably doesn't turn into a good cust…
AI assessment note: “That's exactly right. Yeah, everyone has to do something, expand.”
Redirected raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q That was just as common. The person that was brought in to be the CCRO or the CCCO laughed, and that person is, is running the place today still, right?
A It's, it's crazy. I mean, so many times it seems like there's an instant fix that that top person's going to do it, and the truth is, honestly, it's just, there's a lot more work you need to do as a founder, as a CEO. Maybe it's on your strategy. Maybe it's in your product. Maybe it's on literally getting, you know, the people that are Get the business to be in the right position, you know, to have the responsibility, you know, so it's hard to abdicate the responsibility. And this is probably the mega learning is it's all just a lot of it comes back to you. You know, you're looking for the quick fix from the outside, but a lot of it's about you. So, um, I don't know if that's good or bad lesson for anyone.
AI assessment note: “so many times it seems like there's an instant fix that that top person's”
Partly produced feed
D 3 · C 3 · P 3 · Cm 2 2.85
Q um, and I don't know how much time you have, Nick, but what were your five? Talk to us if you put this together, five positive things, because I cut straight to the data sometimes in the experience. What are the five things? You're better at this than me, much better. What are the five positive things that SAS CEOs should do for their team to get us through this?
A Well, thanks for, thanks for saying that. Yeah, I think that, uh, and first of all, just tying it to what we talked about, I think, you know, everyone heard this is different. Um, this isn't every time it's a new challenge, but you know, there's some positives that we'll be able to get through and some businesses I think have an opportunity here. On the business side, I think, you know, clearly focus on retention, focus on upsell. I think we get it. In fact, I just published a blog post on that. I'll put in the chat window on that kind of team side. I do think this is where leaders, Are identified, right? Like, this is where people figure out who the real leaders are, is in times of crisis. We can all think of our favorite, like, political, global leader back in, you know, the 19 forties, whether it's an FDR, Winston Churchill, anyone else, we remember those people because they stood up during the tough times, and I think it's important for us, for our teams, to really find that way to lead through this. I wrote this blog post about my experience, and honestly just remembering another tough time with nine 11 and How tough it was back then and kind of how, how we get through things together. And the five things very quickly were kind of gratitude, really just you kind of every day finding ways to thank people, um, making sure your team knows that you're still kind of working har…
AI assessment note: “the five things very quickly were kind of gratitude... the show doesn't stop as number two”
