Outlier’s Path

Having spent more than a decade as an operator at LinkExchange, Tellme Networks, and Zappos, and then the last decade representing Sequoia on the boards of some exceptional and legendary companies, I have learned much from outlier founders.

Update your first believers, and they might find ways to help you and your company reach your full potential.

Founder Mathilde Collin of Front invited me to speak at Customer Service Game Changers. Much of the conversation centered around what I learned from Zappos, including a culture of customer obsession, building a brand of customer service, providing a different AND better experience, focusing on critical input metrics, and contextualizing customer experience.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, yet some people can take on more and more, and others are constantly overwhelmed. The differences involve prioritizing, planning, team building, empowering others, and verifying their work. While this sounds simple, only some try to learn from the best who are a few chapters ahead and put in the cycles to work across all five dimensions.

There are different methods that should help us triangulate our path between today and the future. Inspiring stories, missions, and goals are imagined and worked backwards, but remember that companies, products, and services are built brick by brick and worked forwards.

Waymo is winning because they are shooting for the right goal and are moving quickly towards them. So when you set goals, be deliberate and know why you are shooting for them. Once set, move fast.

I spent the past week in Europe, first in Sequoia’s London office and then flying to Helsinki to attend the Slush conference. The Slush organizers had the idea of having me interview Tony Xu of DoorDash and Miki Kuusi of Wolt about their partnership. I couldn’t pass that up.

Great teachers, coaches, and mentors influence us far beyond their academic instruction. Their contributions to our personal and professional lives can last a lifetime. Great teachers are underappreciated, and I am thankful for them.

For a company to grow, the CEO must grow across all dimensions. Instead of optimizing your known strengths, let’s go ahead and chip away at the ossified shell you’ve been carrying for protection and uncover new areas of strength you never knew you could have.

Planning processes and performance feedback allow us to dream about the future, so start dreaming about what we, our team, and our company can become. They allow us to reflect on the year, rethink our priorities, reinvent on behalf of the customer, reallocate our efforts and resources, and reaffirm our shared objectives.