Auren Hoffman Quotes

now: bots pretending to be humans
soon: humans pretending to be bots

HR isn’t about compliance.
It’s about great capital allocation

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

This is the #1 thing that most people who work at data companies do not understand. Most people think that they need to hoard the data. But the data increases in value if it can be combined with other interesting datasets. So you should do everything you can to help your customers combine your data with other data. One way to make data easy to combine is to purposely think about linking it — essentially creating a foreign key for other datasets.

All successful people push others to move faster. That is the main common trait of successful people.

the biggest problem with Gen Z is that they do not use and love email enough

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

Harvard is an asset management business cloaked as a college.
but if you are a start-up, do you want VC money funded by Harvard?

no need to hold grudges, but ok to keep a list of everyone that has stiffed you (even if it was just a dollar) and never, ever do business with them again

repeat founders make different mistakes than first time founders. It is easier to make first sales and get a false signal on product market fit when you have good connections and know how to sell

the classic mistake is hiring lots of salespeople and thinking that will grow sales.
usually the easiest way to grow sales, at least in the short term, is to cut your salespeople ... and have the best people close the leads.

one of the most satisfying things in life is marking a Jira ticket as DONE

Working at a data company is like being an archivist at the Library of Congress.
You know your job is important but you also know it is a supporting role that helps other people shine.
you don’t write the Constitution, but you help preserve it.

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

From running a data company and investing in dozens of data companies, here are some learnings about data businesses that I wish I knew 6 years ago:

Data businesses are MUCH harder than I thought
* There are often only a small number of buyers
* Data businesses can be SUPER competitive
* Can take a lot of dev infrastructure which can be costly — it is a fixed cost but costly nevertheless
* If you are a horizontal data business (selling to many industries), you never are great for any one industry
* Just because you get to $10M ARR, doesn’t meant mean you have REAL product-market-fit

Being too religious is only good when you are right
If you are right, you get to go to heaven. But if you are wrong, you need to jettison your old beliefs.