Auren Hoffman Quotes

Low-EQ leaders need to rely on emotional translators. They can entrust other high-EQ executives with translation and interpretation. They can tell you when someone does X, they really mean Y.

Hire people for things you are good at.
This way, you’ll know exactly what to look for in a candidate AND be able to evaluate that candidate’s work meaningfully.

When people around you know that you have low-EQ, they can help you help them.

Low-EQ leaders can mitigate frustration by being explicit about their low-EQ (and that they are unlikely to pick up on non-verbal cues).

The most important business skill in the next hundred years is the ability to select and manage vendors
... but there are no good books or bschool courses on it

the analogies of businesses to sports teams are wrong on so many levels. sports teams are capped. businesses are uncapped.
businesses are more like the NBA than an individual basketball team.

1900s: get leverage by hiring people
2000s: get leverage by hiring bots

All great product people can do BD.
And all great BD people can do product.

sometimes you meet a super smart charismatic entrepreneur, but you cannot understand their business.

100% of those times, I've lost money as an investor.

CEOs still need to do lots of cold outbound
... until at least $100M ARR

of all the salespeople I have worked with in the past, I can basically rank order their success on how hungry they were to win

Price is important.
It is doubtful the meter would have taken over the world if Napoleon decided to charge a small tax every time the meter was used.

one of the best ways to evaluate B2B companies is looking at their docs

good UI = good company (they clearly care about the customer)
some of the best = Stripe, Marqeta, Twilio

Old ponzi: steal from reputable charities
New ponzi: steal from international criminal cartels

low-EQ CEOs can gain from clearly explaining your thinking to others. This takes out the “guessing game” for your co-workers.
Because people are more likely to misunderstand low-EQ people, you will need to go to greater lengths to show your thinking.

if you are not careful, you can become what you criticize