Metadata
- Author: Elad Gil
- ASIN: B07DRPGGQ7
- ISBN: 1732265100
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DRPGGQ7
- Kindle link
Highlights
We are in a product cycle business. Which is to say that every product in tech becomes obsolete, and they become obsolete pretty quickly. If all you do is take your current product to market and win the market, and you don’t do anything else—if you don’t keep innovating—your product will go stale. And somebody will come out with a better product and displace you. — location: 357 ^ref-29104
In fact, the general model for successful tech companies, contrary to myth and legend, is that they become distribution-centric rather than product-centric. They become a distribution channel, so they can get to the world. And then they put many new products through that distribution channel. — location: 369 ^ref-29064
One of the things that’s most frustrating for a startup is that it will sometimes have a better product but get beaten by a company that has a better distribution channel. — location: 371 ^ref-57575
The definition of a moat is the ability to charge more. — location: 468 ^ref-17885
Charging more is a key lever to be able to grow. And the companies that charge more therefore tend to grow faster. — location: 470 ^ref-18998
First and foremost: managing yourself. — location: 541 ^ref-27259
Key components of personal time management include: Delegation. Auditing your calendar regularly. Saying no more often. Realizing your old way of operating will no longer work. Finding time for the things you care about in life. — location: 547 ^ref-15778
they send items on to other people for execution and end meetings with few to no action items for themselves), a strategist, and a problem solver — location: 553 ^ref-52052
Trial and error. Try delegating and try again until it works. — location: 555 ^ref-61039
assemble a set of CEOs whose companies are at the same stage as yours, and meet them regularly for dinner so you can compare notes—you can learn a lot from your peers. — location: 559 ^ref-60551
auditing your calendar and asking yourself, “Do I really need to do this? Or can someone on my team do it instead?” — location: 573 ^ref-62420
common types of meetings they should skip 90% of the time: — location: 581 ^ref-1488
First-round interviews. — location: 581 ^ref-46628
Sales or partnership meetings. — location: 584 ^ref-39070
Every internal engineering, product, and sales meeting. — location: 587 ^ref-7330
One of the most important things you will do as CEO is learn to say no to those things that are not the best use of your time. — location: 596 ^ref-53131
6am customer or partner meetings. If your East Coast contacts will meet with you at 9am ET, they will also meet with you at noon ET. Don’t take every meeting at any time—that will just exhaust you and not really help progress. — location: 602 ^ref-18689
A CEO’s energy levels dictate those of the team. — location: 632 ^ref-30746
Similarly, schedule exercise in the morning at least three times a week. — location: 637 ^ref-57494
Mark Zuckerberg famously delegated big swaths of Facebook to Sheryl Sandberg in order to free up more time to focus on product and strategy. — location: 642 ^ref-37905
If you end up working long hours on things you fundamentally couldn’t care less about, you should consider hiring one or more executives (or a COO) to do all those things on behalf of the company. — location: 643 ^ref-15719
- You should hold regular 1:1s with your team. — location: 650 ^ref-44643
Do regular 1:1
- Once you are at about 30 people, you should hold a weekly staff meeting. — location: 652 ^ref-5672
- You should start to add skip-level meetings as one way to stay in touch with the broader organization. — location: 659 ^ref-17769
I think that founders should write a guide to working with them. It would be one of the pieces I’m describing, to clarify the founder’s role: “What do I want to be involved in? When do I want to hear from you? What are my preferred communication modes? What makes me impatient? Don’t surprise me with X.” That’s super powerful. Because the problem is, people learn it in the moment, and by then it’s too late. — location: 703 ^ref-63861
So for us, yes, if your launch is not on the product launch calendar, that means it’s not going to happen. — location: 725 ^ref-7081