Patrick McKenzie: evaluation

Transcript context

…I see. You've emphasized that founders should do more A/B testing. That's a main theme of your blog. They should do this because they under-optimize on it. What do they tend to over-optimize on? Interestingly, I was a marketing engineer earlier in my career and really thought that was important. In terms of high-level advice, I'd probably tell a founder a bit about marketing engineering. I wouldn't spend 95% of my time on it unless that was explicitly why they brought me in. What do founders spend too much time on? Playing house and chasing status are two well-known pitfalls. Your incentives will draw you into playing the role of a successful CEO before your actions have earned the company its level of success. The fundamental nature of early-stage businesses is that investment in you is not an indication of what you have achieved. It’s an advance on your future accomplishments. You need to rigorously pursue actually making those future accomplishments. There are many ways to pursue this. Talk to more users, write more software, make something excellent, get more people to use it, get better at selling it, etc. This is an important strain of Silicon Valley culture. I'm glad we have it and we're popularizing it worldwide, including to me in central Japan. Yet there are always other games going on. Those games are less important but very attractive. Not video games, but things like attending conferences, meeting interesting people, or going to the best parties. Showing up at the best parties does not, at most margins, increase the number of users you talk to. It doesn't write functioning code. Do the things that actually matter. Some distractions proudly wave, "I'm a distraction from everything that matters." Some don’t. Others feel like real work but are not. Don't do the things that don't matter. It sounds vacuous and yet… Let’s go back to VaccinateCA and close the loop on a question. I don't think we got a good answer but I think it’s important. Suppose you're the president of the United States, a new one replacing the current one. Looking back on what happened, if you were president, what would you do to create accountability and ensure we’re ready for a future crisis? Maybe you fire the right people, but beyond that, there’s a lot of different things that could go wrong. How do you make sure we're ready for them?…

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