YouSaid · the spoken record

Christa Quarles

lines on the record: 45
first: 2021-07-29
most recent: 2021-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, for me and my company, I mean, I think we're kind of an underdog story. You know, I think we have old software here and there and we're rewriting the future and we're rebuilding it from the inside out. And so I think it's people, I hope, look at me and go, huh, how on earth did she do that? I never would have thought she could have taken that set of assets and it became that thing. And, you know, I look at people like Lisa Sue at AMD and what she started with and where she is right now. And it's just like nobody would have looked at that at that time and thought that that could have happened. So a story like that would be just remarkable.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would hope that they are kind, curious, you know, I'd say that the third one is still just joyful. I think life is harder when you don't bring joy to the equation. One of our sayings is joy and laughter belong here. So I think that's an important one as well.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I used to say I'd be, you know, I'd like to be able to tell it transport, but I think we've done this in the age of Zoom. The superpower I always wanted was that honestly, it's climate. I mean, you know, it's 108 in Seattle and my team's there today. You know, I was just in Southern California, it was 100 degrees. I mean, climate change is upon us. I mean, we saw this whole red dawn in San Francisco last September. And so I would heal this planet. We'll stop.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think put your own oxygen mask on first. You know, one of the things I say in my company, it'll often happen like somebody's going to a funeral or somebody's mom gets cancer or a kid gets sick. And I will say to them, you know, like self family company, always in that order. Because if you can't take care of yourself, you can't give oxygen to the next person. And I find that sometimes I run a little too hard.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god, like there's just so much more capable, it's not luck that I'm just really that much better than everyone else. I think that's the goal lie. I think understanding the importance of preparation meeting opportunity, i.e. luck, that's an important thing. Like where you are born, the time you are born, I think all of that leads into how people are successful and how money comes to be.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's all going to be okay. Like, chill out a little. Like, I think I was like, I was so amped and like eager and ambitious and I wanted the outcomes sometimes didn't slow down and stop and celebrate enough along the way. And I think I was just on to the next thing, onto the treadmill. I mean, I would regularly take the weekend off between jobs. Like that was like, I thought that was a good idea. And I think the idea is like, take a minute. You'll actually be better. You'll be more creative. You'll be fresh out. You'll be able to give more if you can take that time in between things and to take a pause.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love so many books, but the one that I read that I was really just eye-opened was cast by Isabel Wilkerson. And it reflects essentially race, relations in America, but also India and other parts of the world. They go through Nazi Germany. And to me, I look at caste as just a great limiter of humanity. You know, I think it's like we're not taking advantage of every human being's right to contribute. And I just opened my eyes on so much structural sclerotic, frankly, ways that we do things. And I think about it in the microcosm of my own company. And it's like, how are we limiting our ability to kind of lean in? So for me, it was just this really eye-opening and groundbreaking from that dimension. And I think everybody should read it.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really important back to the prior part of the conversation. So I think all of that's really important to lean in with curiosity and then to not let it repeat though. I think it's kind of like a stuck state back to that other part is if you just let them like keep asking every meeting and you just don't hit it on the head, you're going to be frustrated. They're going to be frustrated. I would just say like don't let it continue if it is continuing. Just take some time and knock it down.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my view, like Mori, is if you feel like it is just not the right path, it's just to bring them in and say like, all right, let's go deep. Let's spend an hour on this. You and me, let's just go deep and let's understand. We might also just be talking past each other. Because on the one hand, I'm a big believer in there's usually a kernel of truth, even if I disagree with 90%. Like I'm staunch disagreement with you on 99%. There's like that 1% that I have to say, how can that be true? So I just try to flip it and say like even if I don't want to do it and I don't think it, like how can it be true? And then I usually do a curiosity session where we just like, let's go deep. Let's understand. And maybe I'm missing something. I think being defensive and saying like, I know it all, how dare you? Like that's obviously not going to be great. And it's certainly not a place of curiosity either. Like, I think you want to lean in and be like, let me understand this better. Why are you obsessed about it? Give me your data. Maybe they have data you've not seen around the market externality.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the key thing is so board's going to ask like say they ask 10 things but they don't have data on all those things and so my job is to go back to the board and say look I've looked at each of these questions you've asked I prioritize them relative to their impact on the business and these four things you guys were asking about honestly it's like these are one percent movers so they're not really going to change you know so it's really about assessing magnitude of how big could that idea be inside my organization there's no way the board's going to know or be able to size those opportunities so it's my job to go hey we've sized these we've now prioritized them and these two things we talked about i think are critical and foundational for the center and future of our company these eight things honestly they're going to be a distraction and usually the word's like great i mean every now and then you get a uh board member who has a pet peeve about something and that's an interesting one to handle and make”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The team around me and say, Oh, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? So I both have radically changed how I present to my board and how I communicate. And then I understand sort of the limitations between what it means to be on a board and what it means to be an operator. And you don't want those lines to cross because then it gets not as effective.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything. I will say, so the very first board meeting I ever attended, I came back and my next presentation to my own board changed radically. I realized these people show up, you know, five times a year or maybe more often in some VC board, that they just simply don't have the context. In fact, somebody gave me this advice early on. They said, don't underestimate how little your board retains. And I was like, oh my God, right? So like you realize they're coming in, they're having to reshift their own context. They're having to understand the problem that's in front of them. I was way, I'm not too in the weeds, but I just, I presumed too much context that the board had. And what I really needed was the board give, I like to say the provocation. It is you're there to stimulate thought and idea around something by virtue of my diverse set of experiences. I'm going to stimulate that with.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vast amount of emotional energy trying to convert somebody to being something that they're actually not. Now this is more of a comment about people later on in their career. If you're like 22, people can become anything.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Repeat, they might put a bull in their heads. They just don't want to do it. And I think that's the key thing is like you're always looking across the organization and trying to find out where people are out of alignment. So it does take time to figure that out though. And I think I spent a lot of time asking an executive, like, when do your eyes light up when you talk about your job? And there's these moments where you can just see like that part of their job just brings them immense amount of joy. And I was like, okay, we got to find you an opportunity to do that. And if we can do that, then this is going to be good. Now, it may not be what we need you to do. So like I've often said, I was like, if you're an apple and I need an orange, I can't make you become an orange. I can make you a juicier apple. That's great, but I can't actually make you be an orange. And so it's not personal. And so the kind thing is to say, hey, let's go find you a job where everybody needs like where they need an apple desperately. And we're going to, I'm going to crush it with you and let's go do that. Let's go figure that out. That's the part where you as an executive can waste.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To lean in is going to want to try these things. And so I think you have to kind of ask those questions and say, like, are all those pieces in alignment? Like, because it could be that, and this is, by the way, this evidences a lot in these scale problems. So the person who is amazing from zero to 50 often can't take the next leap. Some people can. Some people are purple unicorns and they can ride the ride. Like an early salesperson would be a great example where that first wave through, they're like the lone wolf. They're figuring out how to sell. They're figuring out what the words are. And then once they figure it out and you get into like lather rinse repeat, they either get bored or they're just not that organized because they're super creative people. And so they're just not going to be able to make that leap. And so like, okay, could we put them on another mission? Could we put them over in this other thing where we can take advantage of this incredible ability they have? Because if it just gets into lab.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is the really hard question because I think I'm a big believer in driving the personality, but I also think if I wasn't a CEO, I would either be hopefully a stand-up comedian on my good days, but I would be a psychologist. Like I need to understand what are you really good at doing? You know, what do you love to do? What does a company need you to do? And oftentimes where this all gets out of balance is I'm asking somebody to do something they either aren't very good at and we're all spiky in different dimensions. So understand where's this person really awesome? Where are they maybe not? Or they like they hate doing the thing like they're just not into it and their attitude is like I don't want to do this thing. In fact, we promoted a guy the other day and one of the questions I asked the manager, I said, how ambitious is he? And he was like, oh, he's very ambitious. I was like, great. I was like, because his desire to do these things is going to be higher. He's going to want.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“like the people in the company whereas here i just had to like the company because i've got to put the team in place to go make that company successful”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give examples. I mean, right now, you know, we're looking at our brand. And if you think about, so we've got a lot of different software brands underneath Corral. So we've got Parallels to like running Windows on a Mac or our remote application. We've got all these sub brands. I've got Winzip. I've got. And so this idea of what do we call ourselves? What is the narrative of our organization? I don't think anybody else in the organization can do that work. I have to craft the mission of where we are, the purpose of why we are here, how we call ourselves. Now I can have help on like writing elements of it, but it's really my decision to guide that next three, four, five, six, ten years of this company. And how do I go do that? It's crafting where the narrative comes. The other key things that only CEO can do is put the CEO team in place too. Like when I had left Open Table and I was looking at president jobs, I was like, well, it's just a two variable equation. I have to like.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Down the ranks, there's certain decisions that only you can make, and one of the reasons why this is important is if I'm getting distracted from the decisions that only I can make, the organization is just not going to propel itself forward because it's almost like the choke point is my ability to make those decisions. And if I'm busy over here dealing with drama that somehow somebody else could have else handled, then we are now limited by my bandwidth and my capacity. And that's the thing that's going to hold the organization back.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like not adding drama into a situation either where, you know, you just felt like, God, like you could mix it up in there. So I started out by being, I think, a plate remover myself. I think when I look at executives, it is that person, you know, think about my CRO at Corral right now. She's like, yeah, and I thought about where this is going to go. And I'm going to like pull this and I'm going to do this. And don't worry about this because I got it and I'm going to solve it. And so like I was like, great. And like within like 10 minutes of her starting, I added, I put customer support into her division. So she's chief revenue officer, but I pulled customer support in. And I was like, I know you'll figure it out. And she's like, all right, we got this. You know, and I think she just is leaning in. I understand what the market, the organization needs. And she's just going to deliver on where I need her to go. The other critical thing is understanding which decisions only you can make as the CEO. Many other decisions can be delegated. Many other decisions can move.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I tried in my early career to be the plate room over. And so it comes from like, you know, I wasn't always the CEO. I wasn't always the one in charge. I mean, I literally forgot this story, but like it goes literally back to my or earliest, earliest day, but I literally would remove the physical plates. I was a bus girl. I remember one of my first jobs and my job was not to remove like the plates that people had finished eating them on, but I was like, oh, that needs to go. I need to get back to the kitchen and I need to run. And so there's job that needed to be done. I saw what needed to be done and I was leaning in and figuring out where it needed to go. And I just went and did things. And so I would tell my boss, I was like, hey, I thought about this and I realized that you need to be doing this. So I'm going to go take care of this and I solved this. And they would be like, great. And it was almost like, oh my God, like you thought of all that. And then you took care of it? Or, you know, and it's not like you were going rogue or doing something crazy. It was these things are not like obvious.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right? Like when you show up to work that way. And I think that's why I'm so obsessed about creating very inclusive environments because you're just 10 times the worker if you can show up and do the job versus worrying about like, oh my God, is my boss going to yell at me today? Oh my God. Like, I think Google has studied this where the number one factor in high performing teams is psychological safety. And so if people show up and they feel safe, then you can do your best work. And I think the thing that people forget is like play is an important part of creativity, innovation. And if you kind of create this thing where it's all locked down, it's just you're not going to get the outcome you want. And so that for me was how it showed up. I was just a smaller, less happy, less bright version, not even of myself. And I felt unsafe. And I do think that my prefrontal cortex shut down. And I think I was dumber, honestly. I think I had lost the 50 IQ points because I was like, it had all shut down because I was just didn't like the environment.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know for me anyway, it was showing up. I was like kind of afraid to go in the office, but I was fearful. Like I didn't know the environment that I was in, it was uncertain. I didn't know if I was going to lose my job the next day. I didn't know if I was, I think I lost the truth of myself. Like I didn't feel like myself. I didn't feel like the best version of myself. I didn't feel like coming in every day like, yeah, we're going to crush it today. I felt smaller. And I felt I wasn't showing up with all of my lights lit almost. Like I just was like, ah, I'm going to just come in and do my best and hope to not piss somebody off. And inevitably, because of that, you're operating at like 60% capacity, right? Like essentially what was happening in my pre-parental cortex had shut down and I was like in the lizard brain, my amygdala back here. And we all know you lose like 40, 50 IQ points when you do that. So I was literally dumber and a worse worker.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good question. I played sports in high school and college, and I think the act of losing and getting back up, like falling down and just that simple process of falling down, like I'm done. Oh, no, that hurt. I'm down. I'm going to just, but I, but you've gotten up so many times. You just know like it's just part of the process. Like you build it into the muscle memory almost where, you know, just like this is what it feels like. Okay, I'm down. All right. Here we go. Let's go get the only time that it really didn't work for me was I was in a situation where I felt like I had never not been able to make it work in my life. Like I've always been malleable enough that like I said, like I showed up on Wall Street, like, you want me to be like a swearing dude? That's who I am. Like, I'm showing up. And so I've always just modulated my behavior for the environment that I was in until I got into a situation where I couldn't. And I will tell you that I got.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Creativity kind of well that you refill because you got to go at it the next day. I mean, operating is a full body contact sport, I like to say. And so you're in it and on it all the time. And so you better take care of yourself in order to be able to give back to that organization. And so that idea of take a minute, invert, slow down, figure out what's important. And then usually by the time I become right again, I know where I am, what I need to be doing.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've actually had to learn to do that because naturally, you know, my time equals zero is always like three months before it hits everybody else. So I have to recognize like they're just seeing this for the first time. You've already been processing it. So now like, you know, like we just did our quarterly town hall this morning and we great results, like really truly fantastic. And now I'm like thinking, I'm like, did I really stop? And I feel like I did, but I think it's important to acknowledge and to celebrate the wins along the way. I have become an yoga student and I think the act of like forcing myself to slow down to kind of like take monkey mind. Like when you're standing on your head, you really do have to just focus about what you're doing right in that moment. And I found it so therapeutic because people who are like, you know, like I'm constantly like I'm moving a lot and it just like literally invert and it's a sign and signal to my body like slow down take a minute and it's in those moments that I think you have this element of refresh.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I love people who do that because I can kind of get moving and somebody who pushes me and says like, you got to pay attention here. And it's going to be real. And I think one of my favorite reference questions to ask is who would make a great number two for this person? And what that reference question is getting at is like, you know, of course it's like sort of quote unquote weakness, but nobody can spike along every dimension. Nobody can be amazing at every single thing that they do. They have to have an understanding of like who's a great compliment for this person, who's going to do the thing that this person may not do. So I find people around me who are going to not cut corners and then tell them that they can tell me to stop.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am a corner cutter by nature, I'd say. In fact, I have surrounded myself with like eye daughters and tea crossers so that they keep me safe sometimes. I mean, I think a lot of leadership too is just self-awareness. Like, what is my temperament? What do I like to do? And I am thousands of miles an hour and I am, you know, I'm hopping like I'll dive into product and then I'll go into like, you know, our infrastructure technology and then I'll go into marketing and then I'll be over here in finance. And so I'm everywhere. And by definition of that, you know, I don't know if I'm fully jack of all trades, master of none, but I'm hopefully a master of a few of them. But I know that I want people around me who are going to be obsessed about the detail. And so I think it's about finding that complementary skill set for yourself such that you can decide, okay, like these are details that maybe I can't cost. And they're going to come up to you and say, hey, time out, we got to really focus on this because if you don't fix this, this is going to be a problem.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enough of the externalities, and they're not where they need to be, you could just be too early on this grand vision, I'll call it. And sometimes when you're too early, you're wrong.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End product state needs to be and your belief and what that customer experience needs and could be is what I think often propels. And you see entrepreneurs do this all the time where they're like, add it and add it and add it. There are also externalities, I guess. Like sometimes market conditions are just not ready for the thing that you want to build, right? So we had an example of this at a table with like Open Table Pay where we wanted to get rid of the whole like put your check and the whole back and forth and the dance. And we had it going, but the point of sale infrastructure was not where it needed to be in order for that to ultimately be successful. And so we were just early, like had that launch now be wildly successful because you think you see food delivery businesses and other things like that have changed the paradigm of what point of sale looks like in a restaurant, but we were just early. And so that's the other thing that pay attention to is like, are there externalities that prohibit your vision from coming to reality that you don't control? And if you don't control.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it is the most important question. First of all, I always ask, what is the unscalable thing we need to do to get to scale? And so you do a lot of unscalable things. And so at some point, you just start being stupid, right? You know, you keep turning the crank and you're like, and I think that's what's embedded in that is this fight for product market fit. And I think when you're in a bigger company, you have product market fit over here, but if you're not looking at the adjacencies and trying to understand the tangential product market fit, if you will. And I think it is an iterative process. And I think it gets back to point of view. It's like, how strong is your hypothesis? How much do you believe that this product does in fact need to exist? And therefore, it's just one more tweak. And so it's really an element of, you know, and I'm a big believer in data, right? Like, you know, I would trust all else bring data. Like it was my time at Plato where, you know, we were more of a data company truly than a gaming company, I would say. But there are times where your belief in what the”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about saying these guys are crushing it over here, let's expand their remit. They're going to try more things. And I think to be clear, I mean, there was a point in time where we wanted to understand at Open Table just the power of how deep the network effect could go. And so I said, we picked a street in Palo Alto. And I said, give it all the way for free. I said, I don't care. Don't charge anything. I just want to see if we can get 100% of the restaurants on the street. And what was interesting was they came back and we literally couldn't give the product away in that instance because the restaurant would be like, well, I'm not an open table restaurant. I'm this kind of restaurant. And I was like, huh, okay, like that means, and so the teams that were driving that, you know, it wasn't just me directing, obviously, but it was the team. And it was a spectacular failure. But it taught us so much that like, oh my God, like, we're solving the wrong problem.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the company, I would say, look, you know, now obviously you don't want to have company ending failure. And, you know, hopefully you put guardrails up to evolve that. But just giving people the understanding that like those people are the ones that are going to get promoted. Those are the people who are going to make it, you know, go ahead. Those are the people who are getting spotlighted in the, you know, the quarterly town hall or the monthly, you know, ask me anything. And so that was the thing that I had to learn. And I learned kind of the hard way because it wasn't intuitive to me that it was just as simple as that. Like, what are you rewarding in this organization? And what reward will drive your outcome? How did you imbue that to the organization? Was it by someone taking a big risk and you very publicly promoting them, moving them swiftly up the hierarchy to show that you could ascend with risk? How do you go from what do I reward, what do I not reward to people going, wow, that's what can happen? Sometimes it's as simple as just, hey, you're going to get like 10 more engineers, you know, you know, it's about resourcing.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not going to do as much, or I'm afraid to do as much. And so I did kind of hit my head against the wall, I would say, for like the first year because I was like, why can't they just, why are they ambitious? Why are they trying? Why aren't they going? I had hired a chief people officer. And he said, well, you know, he's like, can I give you some feedback? And I was like, all right, yeah, I love feedback. And he said, you know, five of your company values are essentially move faster. It was like progress over perfection. Find the testable hypotheses. Like I was just like, get moving. And what I realized that the only lever I had as the CEO was, what do I reward and what do I not reward? And I think what's interesting is that I had to make it unsafe not to take risk. And so, you know, if you were just going to sit in your little box and kind of like do your thing, that was going to be a risky position now. Whereas the other people who are leaning forward and trying new things, and I would evidence, frankly, grand failure.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That downside. Yeah. And I will say I hit that head on when I was at Open Table because if you look at the history of OpenTable, it just worked. And it's not fair to just say that, but it is the power of a network effect two-sided marketplace business. Essentially, we had supply, we had Japan, it was a scaled two-sided marketplace. And the beauty of those is they do just sort of work. However, it works until it doesn't, meaning like if you don't evolve the product, if you don't step into the future, eventually you will get overtaken. And so when I got into the company, we were at a point at which the software that we had inside the restaurant was an old Microsoft on-prem distributed database, like not in the cloud situation. And we needed to move into the cloud and we needed to move fast and we needed to take advantage of all that that would have to offer. But you have now this company where everything just sort of worked. And so there's this like learned helplessness of like, well, if I do something, it works. If I don't do something, it works. So I'm just maybe.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a breakpoint. I see 500, 2000, 10,000. So it's this like exponential curve because essentially what happens is when you get more people, the decision trees kind of fan out and how you used to make decisions needs to change. And if the organization doesn't change with the size of it, you get stuck or mired or worse yet broken because you just keep wanting to do it the way you did when you were at 50 people. And you realize my message just isn't getting out. I'm not able to drive people and I'm not really inculcating a culture where people feel empowered and enabled to go forth because let me tell you, when you're at certainly 10,000 people, like you can't dictate every decision. You can't drive every outcome. And so you have to build a culture back to that Dunbar's number concept. And so, you know, culture is how people make decisions when you're not in the room. And increasingly, you're not in more rooms as the company gets bigger and you have to really adjust and figure out how that transition is going to go.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a really interesting problem, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it because I've been at such wildly divergent scaled companies. And what I've observed is this kind of exponential path of breakage. Companies tend to break at 50 people because it's like used to be able to just get everybody in the room and like shout at them or put them in a Slack channel and tell them what to do. And you knew every single person and you could direct everything that they did. And then the next breakpoint is about 150 people. But curiously, also Dunbar's number. So, you know, you can only hold that number of relationships in your head. And that's, I would say, the biggest breakpoint that I see most companies hit. It means like, and this was exactly what happened to me at Plato, like we hit 150 and like pretty, you know, all the software that's helped companies grow. But like, we didn't have an HRAS. So it's like in somebody's like spreadsheet on Excel. We had never written a policy about anything. And so all of a sudden you have these people and you're like, oh my God, how do you communicate to them? How do you get them aware? So when.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really quickly, I would say investment baking was not the finest leadership experience that I witnessed, but sometimes I think your best examples come from the worst experiences. You know, I could not bring my whole self to work when I worked in investment banking. I muted every part of me. In fact, I joke sometimes like I became a dude because I, you know, I showed up, I swore, I did what it took to be successful in that environment. And then I think you get to the smaller company and say, you know, Open Table was about 700 people when I joined Corel's about 750 people. So it's enough that I can know a lot of the employee base and every change that you make has a big, big, big, big impact. And so I think it gets back into how you have to modulate yourself depending on the scale of the organization. And frankly, the ambition that sits underneath it.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think what's embedded in that is scale. And so what's fascinating, or what I felt fascinating about Disney, was it was just huge, you know, like it would swell to over 100,000 employees during park high season time. The anthropological concept of like, how do you move that many people around was really just fascinating to me? And so I think that was a very interesting, just because the sheer just volume of what it takes. But it also means like I think all big companies are somewhat alike though. Because in order to move that many people around, the system process and that's why startups can often win because the big company gets stuck in this whole largesse of kind of moving around. I would say investment banking is a totally different thing. It's like actually entrepreneurial pods of cowboys or at least that's the way it was when I was there. And you kind of like gun slung and did your thing to try and make money.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really want to do. And so this idea that, oh, I'm going to put something out there that end user is going to respond and I'm going to change by virtue of that feedback, these real-time feedback loops. We were in direct observation with Disney as they were transitioning business models. And that was just a really exciting time to be at the company. You know, oh, and we bought Lucas while it was there. So that was cool to, you know, hang out at Skywalker Ranch a few times.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Through. And I would say, you know, my time at Disney was during a really transitional and transformational point in its history. It had been this heck leader, honestly, when you think about the early days of animation. And then modern media had sort of lost its way and Netflix was coming around and they had to reimagine what the future was like. And so when we sold Plato into Disney, a lot of that was, hey, consumers are spending different amounts of time with different types of media. We got to understand this. And I think it was Bob who leaned in and maybe it was because he was on the board of Apple, you know, really was about this transition into how the modern consumer is going to spend their media time and this tech transformation and understanding technology and understanding. And if you think about it, it's not too dissimilar from the transition a lot of retail companies have made to go direct to consumer. If you think about Disney, Disney was not really direct to consumer. It was direct to a cable company, but it didn't really think about the end user and what did the end user?”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know Disney really was foundational, as you say. I mean, first of all, I got up close with Bob Eiger and anybody who has the chance or opportunity to learn from him. He's written a great book, I think it's called What A Ride. But he had this incredible ability to one day like conduct high-end diplomacy for Disneyland Shanghai. And then the next day, debate the finer points of the Sims with me. And I was like, how is this possible? Like, how can he go from here to there? And so this ability to kind of deep dive on a topic and come back up in just the breadth of awareness, context setting skill set that that takes. I also, you know, carry with me like just some funny things like in the Zoom world like Disney paid attention to your like executive hygiene and so like did you start a meeting on time did you end a meeting on time how did you conduct the meeting and so there was a little bit of pomp in there but i think there was the craft of leadership was considered and so i think that's where i got a lot of the early lessons about how to think”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Old banking world to go join this company because I like I was like, screw it, I'm just gonna go, and I didn't get paid my bonus that year. I left in December and I was going to get paid it three months later, which could have been stupid, but I dived in and went in to startup life.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, the entry point was just this high sample, really. I mean, you know, sometimes you go to a company and you see that single company here, I had looked at hundreds of companies. I don't know if it had gotten into the thousands, but certainly many, many companies would meet with CEOs every single day. And it was my job to figure out winners and losers. And I think that was the interesting part. I think we're veered off was like I was super tired of just sitting on the sidelines, armchair quarterbacking, as we say in America. And I was like, I want to go play the game. And so the only way to do it here is to just go to a startup. And so I went to a small gaming company called Plathum. And we were second to Zynga. And we were really launching this whole games as a service concept. So we had cloud. We had social. We had new business model. We had everything that you could possibly figure out as new. And that was really the entry point. I dove in. I gave away a giant bonus that I was going to get in my.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, it was being on the sidelines in Silicon Valley. You know, I'd come out after business school. It was right around the year 2000, so dot com 1.0 and all of my friends were getting written up in the New York Times out of Harvard and they were starting these startups. You know, I grew up in Western Pennsylvania. I didn't know my parent, my dad worked at a steel company. My mom was a teacher. Like, I just didn't have the exposure to it. And so I go out west. And I was like, well, I'm going to at least just watch the tech companies. So I went to an investment bank where we were taking growth companies public and it was from that vantage point that it built my pattern recognition because we had separated research and banking. So I was going out and meeting with company after company after company and figuring out like which of these is going to go IPO one day. Like how do I determine this? And a lot of it was just starting to understand business models, leadership profiles, like which company was going to make it. And that was.”
2021-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: A Masterclass in Leadership and Scaling Companies: The Decisions only the CEO Can Make, The Secret To Talent Acquisition and Retention and How To Find The Unscalable Things that are Fundamental To Scale with Christa Quarles, CEO @ Corel Corporation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source