Auren Hoffman Quotes

most of success in life is just following up with people at least 20 times

one of the most frustrating things is seeing people that clearly are not reaching potential because they are not working hard enough

the more join keys, the more valuable to dataset

If you are an investor and you are trying to value a dataset, the easiest thing you can do is first recognize how many join keys there are in this dataset that can allow end-users to bring in additional data.

all dinners parties should have one-conversation. any dinner that is not one-conversation is not worth going to and not worth hosting — those dinners are rarely ever good.

a one-conversation dinner party needs a moderator who keeps the conversation going, asks good questions, and cuts people off from boring others. a moderator is ESSENTIAL.

rule #1 to be happy: never assume someone is saying something critical of you unless they explicitly state it

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

Gen X is the punching bag generation
it is the generation that everyone else equally hates ... and yet it will likely be the one that is called upon to steer us out the mess

having $1M does not make you a one-percenter – it’s over $10M

related: the top 1% of income earners (doctors, lawyers etc) and the top 1% for *overall wealth* are two totally different groups of people

downers are worse for society than uppers. downers allow people to be victims. uppers have problems too -- but they are net-net better than downers.
caffeine > alcohol
adderal > marijuana

there is no need to have completely uniform HR practices across your company.
each department (eng, marketing, sales, etc.) can be its own mini lab to run experiments … and when they work well, you can roll them out to the entire company

most important lesson I learned in business:
delegate things you are good at (not things you are bad at)

Data businesses are generally misunderstood. DaaS has different metrics than SaaS.

While there has been a lot written about SaaS businesses (how they operate, what metrics to watch, etc.), there has been surprisingly little written about data businesses.

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.

Data is ultimately a winner-takes-most market.

As a data company starts to dominate its niche, it can lower its price and gain more market share and use those resources to invest more in the data … thereby gaining more market share (and the cycle continues).

you should never use software that is older than you are