Matt Mochary: belief

Transcript context

…ll in Google Docs. And they said to me, "Matt, this is amazing. I love this one-on-one process. I love your team process, but I don't want to have to teach each of my reports the way you've taught me. I'd like it just being softer. I just hit a button and boom, it happens automatically." At first, I said, "No, that's not interesting to me. I'm not a developer. You, Brian Armstrong, you're a developer and you have a thousand engineers that work for you. Why don't you go create it?" But in the end, I said, "Okay, this could be fun." So, I hired a team of developers and we started to create the software, and one, the product is working. But two more importantly, I now have a team of humans that we work together that I can start testing my more radical ideas out with. I would say about half of them are wildly successful and the other half complete duds. It almost seems like one are the other. But now I have my own basically laboratory to test things. Of course, when I see radical things that other people are doing, I try them in our organization, and it's phenomenal. I'll tell you the most radical one. I was asking one CEO, I said, "Have you ever let someone go and regretted it?" He said, "No." And I said, "Well, then you don't know what the bar is because the bar of where you should be letting people go is here, and the bar that you've let people go is here. So until you get close to that line, you don't know what that line is." He said, "Wow, that's true." Then I thought about it and I thought to myself, uh-oh, I have never let anyone go that I regret it, so I don't know where the line is. Then I thought, oh no, I've got to go into my team and let someone go, and here's the problem. We've already done talent density, we've already done the Netflix thing. If someone is meeting expectation, we let them go. We've already let all those folks go. So on our team, it's only outperformers. So, I thought there was one guy, he's an outperformer, no question about it, and super positive, an amazing guy and can do anything and is happy to do everything. But there wasn't much left for him to do because everything else was being covered. I talked to my number two and said, "Can you do what you're doing and what he's doing?" And she said, "Give me two weeks," and she did. She came back and said, "Yeah, I can." So, we let him go. Now, when I let someone go, I try to do it with a massive amount of compassion because I know it's brutal. I mean, losing your spouse, your home, and your job, these are the three most traumatic things that can happen to you. When that happens, of course you go into massive fear and the brain shuts down, so I want to be there and help them through that process and actively help them find their dream job because there is a place that absolutely needs them. So, what I do is I become their agent and I say, "I want to help you discover what it is that your ideal role is, and I want to help you create it or land it." I did that with him. Turns out, what he wanted to do was go start a company and create a new product so he could just start that day one. r ideal role is, and I want to help you create it or land it." I did that with him. Turns out, what he wanted to do was go start a company and create a new product so he could just start that day one. But, the litmus for me is that everybody I've let go, I believe anyway, that I continue to be friends with. That shows me that the process by which I let people go is a humane one. Here's the crazy thing, after letting this guy go, after about 30 days, I was like, ugh, did I do the wrong thing? Was that too much? But then after about two to three months, I realized, no, that actually was the right thing because my number two was able to absorb the things that he was doing and here's the crazy part, with fewer people in the organization, things work better. That's the big realization that most people never discover. they hit product market fit, they get tons of money from investors, just higher, higher, higher, higher, but every additional human you have in your organization causes extra overhead and geometrically so, because now you have to keep all those people informed, give them all context, make them all feel heard, because unless they feel like they're contributing and you understand what they're saying, then they feel ignored and they feel passed over and they feel disrespected and grumpy. There's this morale problem that exists. There's this friction of information flow and a morale problem that grows and grows and grows. Really, the only answer is, I mean, that's why people bring me in because they're growing, growing, growing, and things are breaking. I have a system that keeps things together, but it doesn't make it perfect. It just makes it so that the company doesn't fall apart. But really the ideal is just to keep the team super small. That's what WhatsApp did, that's what Instagram did, that's what Linear is doing right now. That's what Notion has been doing for a while. Those, to me, are the real success stories. This reminds me of a story I just listened to on Lex Fridman's podcast. They were interviewing the head of AI at Tesla, or former head of AI, and Lex was asking him, "Why did you get rid of LiDAR on your cars? Like aren't more sensors good so that you can be better at self-driving?" And he's like, "If you have LiDAR, you got to think about the supply chain and getting all those parts. You got to think about all the additional data that it brings and adds more chaos to your data, and you have to think about that. Think about if that one part is gone, everything slows down, and in theory it is better, but then all these other factors end up making it worse." Talking about how Elon's philosophy is the best part is no part. It feels like that's exactly what you're saying.…

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