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FeaturedFebruary 6, 2024
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.
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July 14, 2024
Speed Above All Else
This past week, Pat Grady hosted an invite-only event to meet Frank Slootman, an iconic CEO, who led Data Domain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake to massive success. Founder Tanay Tandon returned from this trip and sent the following email to his board and his employees. Thank you Tanay for being this week’s guest post.
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July 7, 2024
It’s Only a Point
As we settle back into our game of choice, let’s try to make every point better than our previous points, every decision better than our earlier decisions, and every day better than our prior days. While we know that won’t happen every time, we do so to pursue the extraordinary and make every decade better than the last. It is our path to be legendary.
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June 30, 2024
Constant Application of Force
We had the pleasure of having Angela Duckworth speak at our 2019 Global Offsite. Angela shared four psychological assets that contribute to grit. Grit is about holding the same top-level goal for a long time. Gritty effort is the constant application of force over long durations.
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June 23, 2024
Summer Solstice & Slowdown
Don’t let the summer happen to you. Be deliberate and proactive. Determine what you want to accomplish this and every summer. The days will now get shorter and shorter until the Winter Solstice. Use the daylight wisely and let’s go!
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June 16, 2024
Week of Comebacks
There is a difference between a first-mover and a long-term winner. Apple has demonstrated that it can come from behind and become the long-term winner by designing a much better user experience across various technologies. The moral of the story is to know your core competencies, so what are your differentiated competencies that give you a fighting chance to become the long-term winner?
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June 9, 2024
Break Down Hard Problems
When faced with significant and challenging problems, it is often helpful to break them down into smaller, bite-size pieces. Telescoping plans into the future ensure connectivity between working backward and working forward.
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June 2, 2024
Pricing Strategy & Cost Advantages
Pricing and packaging were recurring themes in recent board conversations. Let’s optimize our pricing and packaging strategies with accurate customer data. At the same time, let’s also remember to develop a sustained cost advantage which gives us the optionality to keep higher margins or reinvest those margins to drive to ubiquity.
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May 19, 2024
Base Camp Leaps
We hosted Base Camp for some of our founders this past Friday and Saturday. This year’s theme was “Leaps”. Taking a leap requires vision and courage, but also acceleration and follow-through. You have to know where you’re aiming, commit with conviction, and then stick the landing.
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May 12, 2024
Improving Narrative Intelligence
In business, the point of the narrative is to improve our collective understanding by decoding and clarifying our data-driven and non-data thought processes. Improving narrative intelligence is essential for making better decisions and communicating them to boards, management teams, investors, and other settings.
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May 5, 2024
Creating a Culture of Feedback
To have a high-performance culture, you need feedback to learn and grow, yet we usually leave growth up to individual team members and feedback to annual performance cycles, resulting in a very slow feedback loop. To move faster, you want to create a culture where feedback can be given and received more timely.