Matt LeMay: belief

Transcript context

…What is your guidance on revenue-based goals as goals for teams? I think, again, it depends. I know people have very strong opinions about teams should always or should never have revenue-based goals. I don't think it's that simple. I think sometimes yes, if your company is working towards revenue, having a revenue-based goal makes sense, or at least being able to put some value in terms of revenue on the work that your team is doing. I've worked with some startups where they actively are not going after revenue because right now the name of the game is growth, right? They want to show that they have enough users to raise that next round of investment. I actually worked with one startup where their revenue was going up, and their number of users was going up, and we had to have a really interesting conversation around which one actually matters to our investors. And we kind of wound up developing these two scenarios, the high growth scenario and the low growth scenario. And talking to the product team, it was really clear that there was no way they were going to hit the high growth scenario. So they pivoted to focus on profitability so they could build more runway and raise that next round as a smaller business with a sustainable revenue base. So I get why people are hesitant to commit to revenue goals. I think that there are certainly situations where revenue goals would be too broad or not exactly what the business needs, but at the end of the day, money is how the impact of most teams is going to be measured. And if you don't have a point of view on why your team is a good investment, either in the money return it brings, or in another return that is equally or more important to the business, then again, that feels like a tenuous and risky position to be in. To kind of get people's brains noodling in the right direction. What are some examples of good goals, like specific goals that your teams have set that are one step away from a company goal? What are just some examples without naming companies?…

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