YouSaid · the spoken record

Matteo Franceschetti

lines on the record: 135
first: 2023-11-20
most recent: 2023-11-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Let's say there is a weekly meeting for growth, there is a weekly meeting for Ardor, there is a weekly meeting for product, right? So there are these recurring meetings. Again, you go back to the executive summary and then the OKRs. And you might write your KR or if you are the lead of the squad, you write everything. And at the beginning, you will write something that is long, that is not clear, is not data-driven, and the executive will help you. But it's trial and error.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now I was hey, but even there, because I think sometimes what I try to coach is just be smart. If you are really busy, just send a very brief agenda, literally three bullet points. The point of the agenda is not about being long. No one wants to read long documents. You can give me time back, right? I save usually an hour every day before I start working just to review all the agendas of the day. Very triple appointments. If you were busy doing a P0, I'm sure there is a lot of value in that P0. Just write a bullet about what happened, right? We shipped the app to 95% of the customer yesterday. We found this bug, we solved it within three hours thanks to Engineer X. I'm very happy.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We canceled the meeting, but you know, I'm not going to be happy. It didn't happen because you didn't plan accordingly, and so then I'm not happy. If you were shipping the new redesign of the app and you were monitoring all these metrics and then there was an unexpected bug, right? All the things that you couldn't expect.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rest of the executive team because usually the first mistake at the beginning is people are very long, they're a bit confusing, they don't use data enough. These are the typical mistakes. And so even there, I start having a pattern, right? The speed at which I can read an agenda is indicative of how good is the agenda because I can go through it really quickly.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One more thing, and then I answer. The other thing we do in the meetings, we don't go through the agenda, we just go through the comments. So everyone had to read the agenda in advance. We do Google Docs. Everyone leaves comments, and you just go through the comments. The rest, we assume that you have read it, you're fine, and there is nothing to be debated. And so sometimes our meetings can be very short. Even if the agenda is very meaty, three pages, four pages of an agenda, maybe there are three things to discuss. We discuss those, 12 minutes, and then we are all free. The way you do it is by giving comments. Oh, this is not clear. What is the data supporting the thing? What's happening here? What is the second order effect? Why is there only one option? What are the other options that you consider? What is the effort and impact of this? How did you pick it, right? Smart people at a certain point, they will start understanding not the question that will come. And then usually executives, particularly in the early days, they try to prepare and work on the agenda before the agenda gets shared with me or the”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends, meaning if it's just because oh, it's just Mattel, yes. Why do I have to bother you on a Sunday? If I have a major, massive meeting that could drive a multimillion dollar fundraise at 7 a.m. on a Monday, I think it's not debatable. I'm doing the best for the organization and for the job of hundreds of people.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With junior people, it happened two hand days ago. I asked for something because I had the meeting early on a Monday and I asked this thing to the finance team, the person didn't say, oh yeah, I'll get back to you. And then at 9 p.m., I didn't get the thing. And I say, where is the thing? I said, oh, I was thinking to send it tomorrow. I could have done a better job there because I should have set the deadline. So I think it was my mistake. But usually on my mind, if I don't set the deadline, it's the same day.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So usually there is an executive summary at the top, which is the summary of the key topics with the key data. Then there is points to be discussed. And then usually there is the real meat. And so this is usually based on OKRs or goals. Our goals usually are monthly, four to six weeks. And so let's say you have a goal to grow 1.4x, grow to improve CVR, and go to reduce CAC. You have three sections in the agenda. You tell us what is happening in each of them, what we are doing, what's working and what's not working. That is usually a good framework, right? Summary, what's working was not working. Summary was working was not working. And you supported with data. And then at the bottom, there is an area for action items that the team takes live. And so when we discuss something, we put the action item, the DRI. So who is in charge and the deadline? And the deadline gets discussed, meaning that is how you enforce velocity, right? In my mind, if people talk to me and they don't set a deadline, it's the same day. That is how my brain works.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Massive difference, and usually probably takes at least six months to develop someone to write an incredibly good agenda. Because the best agenda, they are shorter, they go straight to the point, they're data driven, and they're very clear.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will not take a meeting with anyone in the company if I don't get an agenda slash memo. We call them agendas, but they are memos. It could be from a one-pager, half a page, but an average meeting. It could even be five pages. We have a weekly growth meeting where we review all the data from the previous week. And there is multiple pages with all the data. Obviously, they come from the dashboard, and there is a bunch of thinking about what is happening and why. So I'm not going to take any meeting. You can't schedule a meeting with me if I don't get an agenda. I get all the agendas the night before.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct And the other typical mistake is people come back, and what they say is, I need three months, so I start looking for a replacement. I still need some help here. At the beginning, I was accommodating that. Now I became ruthless. I said, no. If you spoke to the person, if you gave them the time to adjust, and if that didn't happen, now you pull the plug. And the reason is first you need to let these people move on and find the right job. You need to be respectful. You don't keep hanging and you already know that you want to look for someone else. And second is if you don't let the person go, you will never move on to really find the right partner. Treat them fairly. Give them an opportunity if we can help them recommend them in other companies where they think we do. You need to find someone who is the top 98th percentile for the job.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that would be the first thing I will discuss with the executive, right? And the reason is not because you want to be, you don't want to be fair. Actually, you want to be fair. So what you need to do there is first you need to talk to the person, right? Because if things are not working, there is always a why. Most of the times people are not bad. And so maybe we're not the right fit as a culture, as a product. Maybe we're not the right fit for this time of their life, right? We are very intense as a culture. And so if you're not intense, if you have other things going on in your life, we should respect that. But at the same time, tense, you cannot be friend with everyone. I always tell my team, right? So you need to pick your friends. Talk to them. Give them an opportunity to improve and raise their bar. If they do it, that is success. We need to part ways.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we do it every year for people. I don't think we are very sophisticated on this. So, whatever I say, I think it works for early stage companies. I think we need to raise our bar on this. But what we do today is we have three levels of compensation increase based on you're a top performer, you're okay, or there is no change if you're a low performer.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't have them since day one. I literally spent a lot of time studying on a weekly basis, right? I really studied the best. You will see that a lot of the things I share, for example, they come, I don't know, from people like Keith or others. It depends on the subject matter. But it was developed over time. But it makes the difference.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After multiple years, after an insanely great performance, so you need to be every six months or 12 months you have your performance review, you get rated on all these principles for each of them, strong, medium, low. And if you are a top performer in the company, probably you're at the point you're not asking for a title change. But if you do, that is the only case when we consider it.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“IC to manager. You need to be a manager before you're formally a manager. The easiest way for us, our teams are structuring squads. There is the engineering team, there is the product team and all that. Then they work in squads. So maybe there is a PM, there is two engineers, and there is a designer, right? And there is a squad lead, the person who is leading that micro business unit. I want to see you leading one of those things or at least be part of the leadership of that squad successfully before we ever talk about you being a manager.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So usually it's bad. Some of the best people they don't really care about title. I understand that some people you still want to go home, not to your partner, to your friends, and have some pride of what is your title, but if you're moving. We had experiences where when we were hiring bad in 2019, at a certain point, the VP of engineering changed the title of an engineer. And this guy started coming in completely dressed with a t-shirt and the tie the following day thinking of being a manager. And he was managing like, I don't know, one or two people. So it literally made no sense. So the story there is you need to pay attention, meaning sometimes you can play with titles. I don't like it. 80% of the times. You can do it, but it's less about the title and making it clear that you're still an IC versus a manager. And we don't make anyone a manager unless they already led a bunch of squads successfully. So my step is you will never become manager immediately, right?”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think of that definitely. I think even there you want to see a pattern. I see sometimes people that have been part of Tree Reef. But you know what you need to think there is, let's say there is a reef after a year or even six months sometimes you see it and you see this happening multiple times in their career like three, four times then what I start questioning is how did you judge the company? Why did you pick this company, right? There is that part of judgment that is key in their career because it means they are thoughtful about what company they are joining and why. Then the company can fail. If you tell me, oh, look, I wanted to join a space company and it was forget SpaceX, right? And then they failed. But I have been a dreamer of space for all my life. I get that. But if you get a company that is maybe debatable and it was really tiny, you came from Amazon and you went to, you know, it just makes no sense. There is another area that I judge a lot.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. I look at that a lot. That is why it's really important to understand how they found the next job. Meaning if it was your former boss that gives you the opportunity of a lifetime, you live after 18 months, I understand, right? If there was a reef, fine.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is another great question Was the great people in 2025 minutes? I can go through five jobs that are fast. There are some people where you go through two jobs in 30 minutes and that is another red flag because you can't fuck.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or my manager, they never give me the right task and this and that. Or they didn't give me enough freedom to operate, blah, blah, blah. Then you ask, who was your manager and what are they going to say about you in the next referent check? But you want to say in the reference check because they can lie because they know that you will do the referent check. And so there you immediately see certain people becoming rigid. You know, I mean, we had a good relationship, but it was not really perfect. My manager. And the last one, why did you leave? And there is a soft way to, you know, did they push you out? Was it a reef? And when you start doing for five jobs, five, six jobs, you start seeing patterns. And so when I go back to you as an executive, it's not Matteo's opinion is I come back with a list because I take notes and I saw X red flags. And at that point, they trust me.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I go through each of your previous jobs and I ask you five questions how did you find the job and what did they hire you for? So that helps you because in how you fund the job if they had five, six jobs, you want to see if they were recommended by anyone or the previous managers. That is a great sign, right? If it never happens, it's not a red flag, but it's not a positive sign. Second biggest achievement. Biggest achievement seems a stupid question, but it's one of the greatest questions. Because if you start talking to me about, oh, I bonded with my people or my teammates, I assume that you bond with the other teammates. I'm talking about what has been the biggest achievement, your biggest contribution. You, not your team. And the best people come back with data. I improve the CVR of the website from 8% to 9.2 by doing A, B, and C. That is a great thing. If they are fluffy, third question is, what has been the lowest point? And this is another great one because a lot of people, they start complaining and you see what they complain about.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the definition of clique, let's expand it. So I send you a bunch of bullets with pros and cons. I try to be very detailed, particularly when I pass, because I don't want this to look like, oh, Mattel was in a bad mood. And he just said to pass, right? I have my pre-made playbook of how I run these interviews, right? And I run all the interviews with the same playbook. And that helps me because now I have seen thousands of candidates with the same playbook, the same questias, right? And so I can identify certain red flags faster.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We hire really fast in 2019. I would say we probably screw up a larger percentage of all the people we hire because we had that approach. What we learn is the pain that you go through if you hire the wrong person is probably 10x bigger than delaying the hire by a couple of months. And so the way I look at this is in different buckets. One, I measure the top of the funnel of each executive and I see how many interviews they do per day per week. And now I start.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the other thing, and this is more mental, is we are the default and no higher. The default is if you come to ASLIP, we don't hire you unless you really blow our mind. The reason why this is helpful is, I don't know, one of my executives recently came back and said, oh, there is this engineer, has a great pay degree, and I work at this company at that company. I'm not a strong hire, but I think I can write this person into the role. And I say, no, we are a default no higher. So unless you are extremely bullish on this person that you believe we would be dumped to let this person go, we don't hire. We just stop here the process and we move on.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kidding me, I was a principal engineer at Tesla. Yeah. But you already know that sometimes executives, then you're surprised sometimes recruiters say, oh, this person will never do it. They are a senior executive at Tesla. The good people, 100% of them, they do it. And they get excited. So that is one. When you talk to a person at A Sleep, there are three ratings. There is pass higher and strong higher. We don't hire anyone if there are not three strong hires hard rule.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually the problem we currently have in the function. So we also learn what is your perspective, and it's actually like your first day of work. This is a problem you would face the first day of work. Put it together, put your thoughts, put your strategy, show me the data, show me your clarity of thinking.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first thing is we accept to be slow at hiring and slow not in terms of the process, in terms of the steps, but we have a bunch of steps. The second thing is everyone has to do homework. Anyone who joins the company, we give them a project, they need to work on that at home and they will present to a panel. I don't care if you are the senior executive and you are the CFO of Amazon. If you want to join AidSlip, you have to do your homework and we give you a few days and a very complicated project and you will present. If you don't want to do it, it's fine. For us is a way of selection, right? Because it shows how committed you.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reaction. If they start thinking about the brand, the brand impact, and this and that, you need to be thoughtful, but you need to take some risks to learn faster. And maybe they reach a point where they were not anymore because the company was way bigger. And it's really hard to reverse back if they have been there two, three, four, five years. And then sometimes some of these people, what I have seen is if they have already been successful, if they made money, you know, maybe there are a different phase of their life. Instead in our company, again, we are pirates, man. If you need to work on Saturday and Sunday to ship the thing and test it, and it's a ball move, you have to do it.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first, even if these people were really the successful drivers of other companies, which could be possible, you want to make sure that first the historical time of when they were successful is still similar to yours. It goes back to what I was telling you, right? If you find people that were able to scale a business from 100 million to a billion, but at the time there was growth at all costs and they joined your company, your company is designed around CAC efficiency, it will be really hard for them, right? They have already been successful, probably they already made money. They have their own playbook. That playbook doesn't work for you. So you need to find people that were really successful at scaling businesses with a very efficient CAC. That is a different game. The second is if they come from very large companies, the requirements compared to a startup are very different. We are pirates. They are the Navy. These people need to be able to launch new product in two days just because they want to test it and be fine with the customer.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think one of the biggest lessons is you really need to pay attention with when you hire executives from big companies. I think this is something really well known. But I made mistakes there too.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disagree. I think we overthink because the whole point is your start. How many people really know your brand? Even if you're big, you know, you're not Apple. Don't fool yourself thinking that you're that big brand. Then what you need to be aware is there is a lag, right? So if you change price, there will be customers that sell your product for the previous 30 days, 60 days, right? And they saw a certain price, higher or lower. Like, for example, in our case, we tested different warranties on the product, right? We have seen for X period of time people say, oh, but what about that warranty? Everything you do, you can do it the same day. You just need to be thoughtful, which goes back to clarity of thinking about thinking the second order effect. Will people ask this? What do you answer? Did you train the customer support to have an answer? So there is where you just need to be thoughtful, but you can do everything today.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Help us was the cover, one of the biggest wins of the business. Now sometimes we have a subscription. We could have launched the subscription in a way where we could have tested more things before and could be more sophisticated. But there we did it immediately after we launched it. And so we could have done it a month before instead and a month after.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It changes. You will never have 100% confidence when you ship hardware that everything is perfect. You will always discover things that you didn't know. And so at certain point where you need to flip the narrative is about learnings. The whole reason of velocity is not velocity for the sake of velocity. It's you need to learn as fast as possible so then you can adjust things as fast as possible, which goes back to the point where if you are too rigid with very long-term roadmap that doesn't work in a startup. When we switch from the matrix to the cover, which now is 99% of our sales, we did it in three days. And we didn't have a cover, but we had the wrap for the mattress and we had the cover and we wanted to see how customers would react to that. And this thing immediately became 20-30% of the sales, even if it was hidden in accessories. And so I always push my teams, can this help us learn faster? And if the answer is yes, go and be bold and take the risk.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After I explain and give examples, because then what I did in the memo, I gave good examples and bad examples. We had an executive meeting, sorry, an executive site four weeks ago. I created another memo about a product that we're going to launch. This was new. But I think the case is pretty strong and it's pretty obvious. So everyone understood, okay, no, this makes sense. It's not just Mateo idea. Then they say, when do you want that? And I said a very aggressive deadline. The first answer for the first five minutes is, oh, it will take us a month to validate all these things if this is possible with our data. And I say that doesn't work. We don't have a month to validate. How can you validate it in three days? Then they started thinking and say it goes back to the Elon Algos of simplifying and reducing requirements. Okay, we don't need 100% certainty on that thing. Maybe we need 80 and for 80% certainty we can just do A and B tomorrow. The same across all the different teams and by the end.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bigger thing is what I told them is they need to stop being too rigid on bi-weekly or monthly goals. If they're too rigid on that, when things happen and in startup, things happen every day. They are not agile enough to fix them. So let's say we discover a bug today. That bug needs to be fixed tomorrow. And it cannot be, oh, but we have this roadmap and we are shipping this engineering feature and we can do it in two weeks. No, they do it tomorrow. And so you need to talk to your engineers and they need to understand the importance of fixing this for a brand that is premium and is positioned at 2,000 bucks. That is the number one thing. We are sometimes too rigid with our schedules.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At first, it was mixed, right? Some people say, okay, this guy just keeps pushing for velocity for the sake of velocity. But by the end of the week, 100% of them, they were 100% in.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say, I want to increase our pace by 30%. And tomorrow we are going to discuss this. We had our internal executive meeting. Everyone reads the memo or they read the memo before the meeting. We debated the memo. By the end of last week, so last Friday, everyone took action in changes with their team to increase velocity 30%.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's literally part of the culture. We call it 8 slip speed, 8s speed. When we do something really, really fast, we celebrate that and immediately jump in and I also hashtag itslip speed. We want to do what any other company does in half the time. The key usually with senior executives where you really need to push them because in particular if they come from big companies, they are more skewed towards quality and reliability while instead you want to be bold and just ship something 80% take the risk and move on and you need to create a culture.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I want the 80%. And so there is where you need to be clear. It's also one of the points of the Elon Algo in his book, right, about simplifying the requirements. So it's the definition of quality. Quality to me is not perfection, but there is a threshold where if you just ship tomorrow shitty up, then we don't go very far as a brand, right? But if it's 85% there and then you keep improving every single day for the next week and you take it 200%, 100%, we should do that. There was actually this point that now they taught us at YC where if you were going to the YC partners during the YC program saying, oh, I'm going to launch, I don't know, this website in 30 days. Some of the partners, they would tell you, no, you start shipping something tomorrow and you break that thing down in 30 pieces and every day you make some progress. We really talk about progress at eight sleep. How can you do as much progress as possible on a 24 or 48 hours?”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the times it's probably connected to the opposite matrix. Like you want to ship quality of software. Sometimes now we wanted to improve the quality of our software to make our software more reliable. But then what happens is it starts taking months to ship a new feature. Or another example is focus. Sometimes my engineers or the head of engineering says we cannot address a bug we found last night. This can happen in two weeks because the team is already focused on this pipeline of products. My answer is no, we need to do it today. I give them a 48 hours, right? So usually if something come up, we need to fix it within 48 hours. If that doesn't happen, we must have a very strong reason. And I want to read about that. You always want to find this balance between these two opposite parts of the business.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best thing ever, and actually, this is a mistake a lot of companies do when they pick only one metric. I'll give you an example in growth. In growth, my team has a goal to grow, call it 2x a year over year at this CAC. There is a tension between these two, but this tension is exactly what they want, right? Because if you just give them growth, they could grow 5x year over year. They just spend 5x more CAC or 3x more cak. If they just use CAC, then they're not challenged to figure out how to unlock new channels that can push our growth. And so opposite matters, we don't do anything at 8 sleep if there is not an opposite metric.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you have barrels and ammunition. Barrels can lead anything from zero to completion. Ammunition supports them. Usually the output is a function of this. You can do as many things based on the number of barrels you have. If you have five barrels, you can usually do five things. But the key of this operational excellence is how do you make sure that you keep moving really, really fast without compromising quality. And so they are opposite metrics and you challenge them against each other.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Operational excellence to me means output, right? So, what is the output and the efficiency of this output? And so there are a couple of factors behind that. The first one is quality and the second is velocity. You need to keep a very high bar in terms of quality at a very high velocity. And then you have this output. And the output there is actually some example from Keith Keith Rabois, right? Output usually is a function of how many barrels you have. Barrels are people in your company that can get everything done from zero to completion.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us, everything happens in writing async. So we don't lose time. Write it down. Just say, oh, analyze five options. I recommend option C. Cool. Can I read it? I read fairly fast and within literally five minutes, I can give you a thumbs up, thumbs down. And even async, we don't even need to jump on a call if we're not in the same place.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a great point. The other way is, yeah, maybe this increases your revenue, this new channel, but is there a faster and simpler way to achieve the same that works for now? Sometimes people come to me and they just give me one option. I suggest we do A. It doesn't matter if I'm in favor or against A. I never like to see one option. I want to see multiple options and you tell me why we are not pursuing the others and we are pursuing this. I want a picture, a portfolio. pick one based on impact and effort.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they didn't think enough. They believe they have a thought, but they didn't develop it properly, and they don't have enough data to support it. They're confused. At the end of the day, the opposite of clarity of thinking is confusion. You have a blurred concept that you are unable to express. Or we want to try this channel. Why? And why? The five whys. Keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. Do we need to test it now? Think of this, right? It just happened, right? They were suggesting, okay, let's test these other channels. And my point is why, right? It was in an international market. We didn't test it in the US. Why would we go there? Oh, because then we, I don't know, we can grow faster, but can we grow faster with all the current channels and just kill them more? Yeah, maybe. And did you spend enough in these channels and do you already know that there is no margin for incremental cak? You keep making questions. As a team, you need to help each other, meaning you will never start with clarity of thinking in anything. So I need help myself. This is just an example where as a group, we develop our clarity of thinking. But after you debate this, write it down and send me a blurb or I want.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see what I mean? For aspirational, you use images, right? And you try to position very premium, something that you really dream of. But in terms of words and the value proposition and the benefit, you need to be very simple. And so there I always think of you having dinner with a friend tonight. How are you going to explain my product? And there is where now we keep tweaking and tweaking and tweaking to help you pitch our product tonight.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something I'm really obsessed about. First, the best way to develop clarity of thinking is writing, right? You need to write. Once you start writing your thoughts, you understand there are many things that are not clear or that you still don't know you didn't develop. But clarity of thinking is this ability to distill in very few words a complicated concept. There is an area where I challenge my team and myself a lot because are you supporting your thinking with data? Second, what is the clear outcome? Sometimes people are, if they don't have clarity of thinking, they can write something that is very confusing, is not data-driven, and you don't get to the end point. And so it's just a matter of practice. And you see people like Paul Graham or Keith Rabois, right? They are some of the greatest at expressing a very complicated concept with few words, something that I call it the grammar rule, but it's something that my grandma could understand. Sometimes my team writes me something and is extremely complicated. And I just say, okay, can you explain this to me?”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think some of the greatest investors, if they believe in you as a team, they know you will fix it. Fixing unit economics is possible. It's human, hard work of operational excellence. And so you just need to hire the best people and you will do that. But will the word change and adopt a technology that improves sleep? Yes or no? That is something that they just need to have a gut feeling. Okay, I want to discuss the principles.”
2023-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source