Category: Learnings

Learnings

Amp It Up!

Chris Labs

This is a copy of the blog post by Frank Slootman. As the former CEO of both Data Domain and ServiceNow, two successful tech companies in recent years, I am often confronted with questions: what did you guys do? What is the secret sauce? How did you do it? We never thought of ourselves as that different. We certainly didn’t think we had stumbled on a silver bullet. Did we just get incredibly lucky twice in a row? With hindsight and reflection, there are observations worth making that may benefit others. Bottom line: There is room up in organizations to … Continue reading Amp It Up!

Happiness, Learnings

Choose carefully what is worth stressing for.

Chris Labs

One of the worst thing in life is stress. It kills you much more than junk food or lack of exercising. Let’s say you buy an expensive car (90k) while you make 200k per year. Because you salary is high but not crazy high in relation to your car’s value, you will stress when you hit a puddle. Your heart will stop if you drive fast over a bump. You will get mad and stressed if someone hit your car. Don’t make the double mistake of buying an expensive car and stress for it. Get a beater, whether that’s an … Continue reading Choose carefully what is worth stressing for.

Learnings

Once something is given to you, giving it up will entail a loss.

Chris Labs

It is called the endowment effect. Something you have been endowed is worth more to you. “Losing” it will hurt worse than “gaining” will give please. This is why companies can afford the money back guaranteed policy. Once people own them, the products are worth more to their owners than the mere cash value. -Barry SchwartzThe Paradox of Choice (p.73) Continue reading Once something is given to you, giving it up will entail a loss.

Learnings

How to close a sale/email outreach

Chris Labs

This is a copy of Shaan Puri’s post in AAP So Blushie, today i’m gonna show you how we channeled our inner Pablo by stealing and remixing a tactic that a different startup used to close sales to take the fund from $1.7m → $2.4m. ​Once you learn this little trick, you can use it whether you’re raising money, trying to close sales, or really doing anything with email outreach. ​Now it’s time to pull that Picasso: Ben slacked me about a tactic he saw Brex (a big, hot startup worth $2.5B+) using to close sales ​ ​ The way … Continue reading How to close a sale/email outreach

Learnings

How to get a proper Timeframe from employees.

Chris Labs

Instead of asking, when will XYZ be done? To which everyone is uncomfortable answering. Too short and I will run out of time. Too long and the boss will be unhappy. Ask instead: At what date would we be shocked if XYZ had not happened yet? What is the soonest we would be surprised to start seeing tangible results from XYZ? -I can’t remember the source but it was from a guest on MFM Continue reading How to get a proper Timeframe from employees.

Learnings

We don’t sell saddles here.

Chris Labs

This is a copy and paste from this blog post of Stewart Butterfield. Build Something People Want We know that we have built something which is genuinely useful: almost any team which adopts Slack as their central application for communication would be significantly better off than they were before. That means we have something people want. However, almost all of them have no idea that they want Slack. How could they? They’ve never heard of it. And only a vanishingly small number will have imagined it on their own. They think they want something different (if they think they want … Continue reading We don’t sell saddles here.