YouSaid · the spoken record

Ravi Gupta

lines on the record: 126
first: 2023-04-18
most recent: 2023-04-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think even professionally, I think that is kind of similar. Like the person I admire the most professionally, at least from a distance is Bill Campbell. The way that people talk about what he did for them and how much he cared for them and what he meant to them, that is an impossible standard that I will never, ever, ever reach. But that to me is a pretty amazing professional hero to have. So those would be the things I'd say. And I will tell you, I feel very, I'm very proud that you said that you'd want to do this again because I really love the show. I love the way you think. And I was very happy when you emailed me to ask me if I could be on it. And I also would love to do it again.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Success for me means that the people that are most important in my life. Feel like Gave them everything I had. The time, right? I think that. That they feel like they know how much I love them, that they know how much I care for them, and that that comes through and that it's not something that they know because of grand actions, but it's something they know because of every Danis. It's something that they know because of just that I showed up for them, you know, That would be success. And then I think”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Due to self sabotage themselves, they fall into anything that breaks that trust with the people around them, that breaks that trust and breaks that ability to predict why they're doing what they're doing.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After we had kids we basically never had an argument about that, not once. Well, why? We have arguments about other things. We never have an argument about like, what do we go do? And the reason is actually simple. We actually both very clearly know what the optimization function is. Both of us have the same one. What is best for the family? If Avnate Tamara was like, we should move to Alaska. And I would kind of be like, I don't really want to move to Alaska, but why do you say that? And I would be pretty open-minded because I would know that she has done some calculation in her head that that's better for the five of us, right? And so you can hear something that's kind of a cuckoo idea on its face. And you're like, no, I'm listening because I know that we have the same goal. I know that I know exactly why you are exactly what you're trying to accomplish. That is so powerful, right? To like have that understanding and that trust. And so I think maybe the things that people...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I mentioned this to you on one of our phone calls, but my wife and I, we've never really fought much. But before we got kids, like whatever level of fighting it was, it was slightly higher before we had kids than after, which is a little weird because kids are like a stressor, you know, in some ways. But the things that would happen beforehand would be we'd discuss like career stuff and he'd be like, well, what's better for your career? What's better for my? My wife is a doctor. And so you can imagine all the different things that you could optimize for. Is it economics? Is it impact? Is it your turn, my turn, all these things?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I like that they sort of had the courage of their convictions there and didn't just listen. And again, that trust point, we keep on coming back, but so much of it is just like trusting why somebody is doing something. Because then if you disagree, at least you're like, all right, cool.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Parents told me, and it's like That one really sits with me a lot because I remember how upset I was back then. And I really am grateful in that respect that They didn't take the reaction of a 14 year old and have it impact the way they did it and they did what they thought was best. Now, whether it's right or wrong, who knows?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm really happy they did that now, right? We are different. And I think that showed a lot of courage at that time. And I think that, but I guess my point would be like, I think they could have easily improved the relationship with me as a 14-year-old by being like, you're right, that's a really good point. Well, cool. We'll do it that way. So those are a couple of things that come to mind. I don't know if they resonate, but those are two of the things that come to mind.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was pissed when I was in high school about that. I was really upset, and I was like, you know, smart enough to make a coherent argument. Like, this is not fair. You treat him differently than you treat me. This is not fair, right? Where are your kids? You're supposed to treat us exactly the same. And I remember very clearly my parents saying, one, we think we treat you guys pretty similarly, but if you don't, fine. But our job is not to treat you the same. Our job is to try and get the most out of you in the long term, right? That is our job. And if that means treating you differently now, we are happily going to treat you too differently. It's not a science experiment. It's not an A-B test, right? You know, you guys are different. We're going to do it differently. I don't care if you're mad.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That to me is a version of choosing appreciation or choosing affinity in the moment rather than choosing the right thing. I think that applies to a lot of stuff. Like, my parents were very different in parenting me versus my brother.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you do that, you optimize for people liking you in the moment rather than respecting you in the long term. And I think that what I mean by that specifically is I think all you can really do as a leader of a company is have people believe that the decisions you're making are always in the best interest of the company. And I think anything you do that breaks that algorithm, anything, I think it might serve you in the moment and then it ultimately... Comes back to bite you because every leader I've ever really respected, every single one. I know why they're choosing what they're choosing. I know what the North Star is, and it doesn't change. And I think that, like you said on successful people, I think that sometimes they...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they sort of think that they have the ability to be right because they were right before. And it's like, no, like you got to go earn it each time. It's like thinking that because you were good at shooting threes in the past, you're going to be good at shooting threes today. It's like, no, you got to go do it today. It's not about what you did yesterday. And so I think that. Sort of A belief that something is beneath them in the work. Or having a belief that the past success will make it possible, I think, is a self sabotage I think another thing. That comes to mind is management is really hard. And I think that sometimes choose to be loved rather than respected. And I think that when you”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A very good friend of mine gave me a book called Ego is the Enemy. Came to mind when you said this. I think that One way that folks self-sabotage is thinking your past knowledge is enough rather than treating the problem at hand like it's hard and deserves study. I think a lot of times people overly pattern match from the past, particularly in an investing business.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, the speed of shipping, the speed of people actually creating new things and putting them out into the world, it seems to be very correlated with the ultimate success that a company has is like shipping velocity in the early days. And so I think I tend to apply that into the decision making. And I think that that is probably why I said it. Or I was just trying to sound smart with you, Shane, and use Velocity instead of speed. One of the two.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if this is correct. I'm not a linguist. When I think of velocity, I think of throughput. I think of sort of this concept of it's almost like I'm training the machine to make decisions I want as much feedback as possible so that I can input that feedback back into the machine so that the next one's better. And so somehow it's like I want that machine turning as many times as possible. I don't know if that's specifically like more correlated to velocity than speed, but the word that's in my head that keeps on coming to us throughput, throughput, throughput on the two-way door short term, I want throughput to like inform as much feedback as possible to inform the next one. And I just want to get a little better, a little better, a little better every time. One of the things that's interesting is”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're almost trying to help on that dimension. And then once a year, when you say, please hear me, I think, I know I don't know as much about this as you do, but I really still feel like this is something we should do. They pay attention, right? They don't always do it, but you've earned the right for them to listen because you don't say it all the time.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, and in that case, this happens all the time where a founder or someone you work with, they will ask you a question. And remember, you have very little context. You're not in the organization. You don't know what any of the people are thinking. And so first, to give a really strong opinion, it's pretty bold, right? Because you don't know a lot of what's going on. And they actually might know a lot more than you specifically about the content. So I think a fair amount of the time the answer when it comes to that is like, well, here are the things that I would be considering. Here are the dimensions that would inform my decision. But I actually know less about those dimensions than you do. So like the framework I use is this. If you use that framework, what would it come out with?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, cool. That sounds good. And they're like, well, what do you think? I probably wouldn't do it exactly that way, but that sounds as good as any other idea. Let's try it. And I think that you can gain a lot of trust with people, which you started this with by really telling them, like, I do trust you. I'm not going to be second guessing you after that. I want us to do it the way you're saying, right? And, you know, let's see, but I think that then you also have a framework that someone can understand. It's the same thing we were talking about earlier about the home personality versus the work personality. It's hard to create your algorithm to assume, to predict how they're going to behave, except if you do this, you actually can have a pretty good algorithm if someone can predict pretty well if I'm going to care.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually saw that. There was the co founders of HubSpot gave an interview. And I think it was Darmesh who said this, but it was effectively the exact same thing. Hey, when they disagree, rate it 1 to 10. If you're a 10, cool. Feel such to do it your way. If we're both 10s, which does not happen very often, then let's debate it as long as it takes. And until we knock down, drag him out And then if it's in these areas, you decide if it's in these areas, right? But I really, that goes a long way with me because I think that. There is a human element to the decision making too, right? And I think that people have got to feel like their opinion matters. They got to feel like their opinion is valued. And I think that you actually can do that a lot by saying, sure, like you don't even need to tell them you disagree.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm like interested in velocity as much as anything else. And there are occasionally things that I care about, in which case, you know, I will. But I also think that you're more likely to listen to me if I don't always push for my way. And I'm kind of like, there are three things a year I really care about. Please listen. I'm telling you now this is one of them. And I also really believe in this idea of like reasonable minds can differ. That's fine. But on like really important ones, I want to have a voice that matters a lot. I want to consider it and I want to treat it like I care.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Term and two way doors, cool, like whatever happens is fine, and we'll figure it out. And then if it's, if what you just said is not right, then cool. We'll just fix it. And then if they're long term, they tend to be correlated with more one-way doors in nature. And then I pay a lot of attention. So the reason that I tell you on the investment thing that I pay a lot of attention is like, we're not going to not, once we invest in the company, right, we're in. We're in for 10 plus years. And it's not just in investing. It's sort of in anything where there's a big, important long-term decision. And so maybe to your point, I think I didn't say it because maybe by nature the only decisions that I think really that I'm super thoughtful about, you know, are the long-term one-way doors, the other ones I'm actually more.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I might be contrarian in this, but I think that Most people dramatically overestimate the impact of most decisions, right? Like, I think most short-term decisions don't really matter. And so the number of times that I will say I don't care about something is pretty high relative, I think, to most people. And I think, look, to be fair, Shane, that's different than a perfectionist. I am not a perfectionist. I am not. That's not like my Enneagram or whatever. And so some people are sort of like, the way you do anything is the way you do everything. Everything is important. And we got to get everything. We need to have a really tight process around all that. I am not like that at all. So many things where someone say, I don't care. It's fine. Whatever you want to do is fine. Whatever you want to do is fine. And so a lot of decisions I don't even care to make. And I'm perfectly happy with whatever somebody wants to do. And so, and they tend to correlate with things that are short-term and two-way doors, right?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why don't we just move the meeting after this? Or let's just not even put a meeting after this, or there's no constraint on our need to do it now. And just kind of thinking about that and not putting artificial stuff around.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing a ton of stuff, we'll be like, well, let's just not have the meeting until everyone's read it and internalized it and thought about it. And I think that maybe when I worked at McKinsey, this is my first job was at McKinsey, one person told me, like, you have to be willing to release your agenda and just kind of have the meeting that needs to be had because a lot of times people are just like, well, we're on point one. We got to go into point two. We got to move to point three. That's not the way that doesn't reflect reality of the difficulty or the importance of each thing, right? And so I think those would be a couple of examples that I think come to mind that I like a lot, which is”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's insane. So, our partner meeting times, they don't have an end time. There is no back end. They go as long as they go. And that, I think, is a really thoughtful small thing. They start in the morning because the same point we all think we're better in the morning and they go as long as they need to go. And sometimes if we're not getting to an answer, we won't be like, well, we got to make it today. We'll be like, guys, we're not getting somewhere. Let's break and let's meet again tomorrow morning on it. And I think the point of sort of realizing that you're not like a slave to your calendar, but your job is to make a good decision. That is one example that I really like because there's a real respect. Sometimes if the memo is distributed late, right? We generally try to send a memo that's thoughtful and deliberate and detailed on Fridays before our Monday decision meeting. Sometimes it's not possible. People get the memo out Sunday night because they have to.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I'll give you an example from work now. So venture capital, in many ways, the decision-making business, right? There are going to be some, everyone knows the stats, but effectively, one, you make 40 or 50 investments in a fund, one of them is worth more than all the rest, right? Okay, so you got to get them right and got to get in the right companies, whatever. So the decision making apparatus is important. So, one of the things that's funny is at some places there'll be an important decision and someone will like, well, we got to hurry up because we have a meeting coming up after this. About how crazy that is for a moment, right? Of like having a time around how much time should you spend debating whether or not to make the most important decision of the year.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The information they need so that, yeah, there's uncertainty, but it's the uncertainty that can't be solved in the time period they got it. So those are some things that come to mind.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is they are very thoughtful about what uncertainty they're willing to live with and what uncertainty they're not. So I'll be more specific here. Every good decision maker is good at making decisions in the face of uncertainty, right? Otherwise, it's not a hard decision. One time, Michael Lewis wrote an article about the presidency. And effectively what he described it was he's like, look, it's a series of 5149 decisions or 50-50 decisions. Oftentimes they're life and death because otherwise they would have been made by somebody else. So they're like really hard, you know. The thing that I think really good decision makers do is they know how to get all of the available information by asking the right questions. And when someone's just sort of like, it's a hard decision, here's the two options. They don't just accept those are the two options. They'll be like, well, wait a second. On this one, let's go deeper. Did we evaluate this? Did we evaluate this? So they're almost good at efficiently getting.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the point of this is they don't confuse activity with insight. They don't just go do stuff, right? They do things that they think will help them make the right decisions. And then the last one, Chain, I think”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whereas on this one, somebody else might be the topic, and he's not worried if it's been three questions and he hasn't asked somebody something. You're on the board, you obviously are somebody whose opinion he values, cool. So that's another one I think they're very thoughtful about whose counsel they keep. I think the third one is they are aware of when their decision making, they're aware of concepts like decision fatigue and they sort of... They work around it. So they say, okay, look, I'm sure you've read the Bezos stuff of Bezos' point was like, my job is to make two or three good decisions a day. Well, what that means is I should structure my entire day around making sure that I'm in the right state of mind to make those decisions. My meeting should be at a certain time.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of great decision makers are not polite when it comes to the decision. They just decide whose opinion they care about and they're super targeted and thoughtful. And it's different people for different topics. Maybe there are some people whose counsel they keep for everything. But it's not a lot. And I'll give you an example of someone I work with who I think is a very good decision maker, Max Rhodes, who's the CEO and co-founder of Fair, this B2B wholesale marketplace that we're involved with. Max is extremely good at asking each of his board members or advisors a specific question that he thinks they will be useful on. He doesn't ask the whole board when he's making certain decisions. He goes and decides who is the right person to go ask. He goes and spends real time with them on that. And even in the board meeting, he's thoughtful about the order in which he asks for people's feedback, right? Because he's like, look, on this topic, this person is the one who I want to hear the most.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so one trait that I found for a lot of the good ones is you'll ask them something. They'll be like, let me show you this memo I wrote. And the memo won't have been distributed to anyone. It'll just be for them. And so I think that's one trait that is pretty interesting that is relatively consistent amongst people that I really admire is that they test their thinking for themselves. So they're very honest with themselves about where it's strong versus where it's weak, right? The second thing is they're actually pretty good at figuring out whose advice they want and whose advice they don't want.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. Yes, yes. I very much excited that we're talking about this because I think it's a big deal. And I take pride, I hope, in being somebody who is a good decision maker, right? So I think that the good ones, one I think a lot of them use writing, just like you've said. I think a lot of them write and they kind of write for themselves because it reflects the weaknesses of their process.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I don't think that at the moment it was a great option, but I feel proud, I think, as a team that we were able to turn it into one. So that's the only reason I hesitated on what you said. But I agree with it generally speaking because I think that there are just great decision makers are good at identifying one-way doors versus two-way doors and getting the one-way doors right, but then on the two-way doors, just realizing that speed is the main thing”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“43% of our volume is now gone. I think what we did a good job of was okay, our only way out is if this is the impetus for other grocers to work with us. That's the only way out of this problem. Okay, let's go make sure that we have left everything on the field to go get that to make that happen. So now every week we're gone. We're in Grand Rapids. We're in Lakeland, Florida. We are in Idaho. We are everywhere over and over and over again to meet them. And it ended up being an amazing impetus. We had a good pitch. over the next 12 months, everybody signed up with us.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I hesitated on are they always in good positions is there were definitely a couple of times where we felt like we did not have a great option at Instacart, right? And I've seen good companies that don't feel like they have a great option. I think the thing that I admire when people have that though is they kind of make it into a good option. So when Amazon bought Whole Foods, that was a terrible moment for us at the time, right? Our blood competitor who's known for annihilating everyone in their way buys our biggest partner who owns, who is responsible for 43% of our volume. And we are afraid we're going to go out of business, right? At that moment, we don't actually have a great set of options, right? We can't get Amazon not to buy Whole Foods. We can't get Whole Foods at some point not work with us, right?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that it is generally true. Look, I mean, you have a lot more experience actually than I do in thinking through this and talking to people. So the reason I find myself largely agreeing is I think the really good decision maker is what they do is they're very good at identifying the one-way doors versus the two-way doors, right? And on the one-way doors, their metric is speed and they're sort of like, I need the feedback as soon as possible, or sorry, on the two-way doors, their feedback mechanism is just like, I got to I got to optimize for speed. I got to make this one quickly. I don't care if it's wrong, if it's wrong, we'll fix it, right? One of my big things is you can bounce back from any mistake other than a mistake of integrity. If you don't make a mistake of integrity, you can really actually just like fix almost anything, right? And I think those same decision makers on the one-way doors, they're super thoughtful and they get them right. They get them right more often than they don't. And the only reason.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's amazing. But I know I know. And to your point, yeah, like I always, one of the things I tell people who I work with, you know, I'm like, guys, this is not gymnastics. There's no points for degree of difficulty. Let's just get to the right answer. Let's go. If it's hard, it's hard. Cool. But sometimes it's not hard. Let's just do the thing.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Systematic problem with our fridges, I would analyze the data, I'd look at the sales that we're going to lose in that store based on the fridge, and I would try to create a new algorithm that didn't have people drop it off in the store and all these answers. And then the people she'd hire every time would be like, I'd go to Protrero Hill and I'd fix the fridge, or I'd go and stop somewhere else and buy a new fridge and bring it there every time. And she's like, the answer is fix the fridge, right? Find a way to help us have a refrigerated thing as soon as possible so we can continue to run the business. And I always loved for a question because I thought it perfectly embodied what somebody would have to do and the kinds of problems they'd have to solve and the way that the action orientation that she wanted. And I think it's a version of what you just said because I've always thought that that was such a wonderful interview question. And now I can abstract it to what you just said.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there is this person who I worked with at Instacart who told me she was, you mentioned ops, she was an ops leader in San Francisco. And the scenario she would give is, and I thought it was an amazing question, effectively this, but she would say, look, she was interviewing somebody, hey, you're one of the managers in San Francisco and one of the people at the store at the Safeway in Protrero Hill calls you and says, hey, look, the refrigerator where we store the groceries because, you know, we would have a shopper picket and then put it in a refrigerator and then a delivery driver come get it from the refrigerator and then take it to someone's house. The refrigerator is not working. What do we do? And she said you get all these answers of people. Sometimes people have backgrounds that are academic in nature or whatever. I'd call all the rest of the stores and I'd figure out if there's a”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course. I'm going to do it. I'm going to take it. I'm going to experiment with it now for the next few months. So if I ever interview somebody soon, that's the question they're going to get. I'm going to come up with a scenario and be like, what's the most important thing?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like that. Yeah, I, you know, literally somebody, Alfred Linton, the other day asked me, you know, what is your favorite interview question? And I sent him to him. Honestly, I felt like it wasn't that good of an interview question after I sent it to him. And I would so much rather have asked what you just asked. And I'm going to take that because that is what I care about. I care about someone's ability to identify the thing and then to execute against the thing, right? And I like the hypothesis that you just, you know, formulated.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, I was going to say, one of the things that we do at Sequoia now is every Tuesday, every single person writes down their most important thing for the week. And we share it. We literally have it on a Google Sheet every person. What is the most important thing you are doing this week? And you can pick whatever unit you want, unit of time. But I really like that discipline of like, please write it down. Don't write down two of the purpose is to have one, you know, but I like that. But sorry, I interrupted you.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The reason Google's successful, I think the reason Google's successful is because they have a product that you have to use most of the time you use the internet and they effectively get to charge you a toll every time you use it and I think all that other stuff is like bolted on around it but people I think there's a lot of correlation versus causation that people use to suggest things and I think frankly it's hard to disagree with people a lot”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Oh, you don't care about social responsibility? And it's like, no, no, of course, of course I care about that. And I actually, I think the climate is a huge problem. I don't think that we are the people who are best suited to solve it with this company. And I think for this company, the best thing we can do is be a great company, right? And I think I also think I'm also more nervous about companies' ability to maintain their ability to be great. And I think people misattribute things a lot. Like, you know, a lot of people will be like, well, we should use the comp system or the leveling system that Google uses. Look at how big of a company Google is. We should borrow a lot of Google's processes. And it's just to me, it's crazy because I understand the logic. Google is a giant company. It is a very successful company. It has a lot of processes. It has a lot of leveling and compensation bands and whatever. I don't think that's...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we shouldn't have. That was not the right answer for the company at that time. And I think that, so it's at risk at breaking because it's also easy to say, yes, people feel good. You feel like you're listening. A lot of times it can feel like you're being obstinate when you're not, you know, it just feels easy to make that little call. You know, I'll get invited to an interesting dinner. I'll get invited to an interesting thing that is away from home. And it's just like, oh, just one night. That's okay. There's 364 other nights. But so I'd say I find it to be a constant battle, but it is something I take pride in and that I think that it's like in my soul. It's something I really believe.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's at risk of breaking all the time for me, right? Because so when I was at Instacart, it would break when people were unhappy that our goals were too commercial. All we talk about is the GMV of the business. All we talk about is the metrics. What about this other thing? And somebody would say, what are we doing for climate? Climate is a big deal. What are we doing for climate? You want to tell people it will help with recruiting some great engineers if we are really forward thinking on climate, right? And so you can talk yourself into, well, it'll help us if we have the best people in the world and the best people in the world sometimes care about these things. And gosh, like maybe we should have a climate program.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you're spending time with are the ones that you actually want to spend time with. And it just, I saw it everywhere. And so the reason I say, Shane, it became important to me was because I felt like it was a dramatic, it was a huge unlock for how I wanted to live my life personally and professionally. And then it also fit with this book I referenced earlier of the Clay Christensen book, How Will You Measure Your Life? And I think so much of that was sort of being able to answer that question and making sure your decisions every day fit with that with that answer of how you actually go about measuring your life. In terms of your question of when it breaks.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This quote is exactly right. You have to keep focus on the thing that matters. And actually, that is the job of the leader, is making sure that the organization is focused on the thing that matters. And sprawl and just spending time and little compromises on that is a disaster. And it actually destroys the obligation you have as the leader. So I'd say like the it became real to me when I was one of the few people responsible for the outcome of a company. And then I started seeing it that it applied everywhere. It applied everywhere. Okay, well it applies personally. Well, your relationship with your wife and your children or the relationship with your spouse and your children that seems like the main thing. Cool. How do you make sure that you actually are investing in that above everything else? Right. How do you make sure that the people...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so specifically at Instacart, when I got there, we were losing a lot of money on every delivery. I was very concerned that we were going to go out of business. And there was a genuine fear of our business is not going to exist. And so truly an existential concern that I thought was well placed and fully informed by the data, right? We had less than a year of cash. It was getting worse every day. We were losing money on every order so its volume wouldn't help us. There was an existential and imminent threat. And the number of conversations that people would have because they didn't know, right? About things that had nothing to do with that was remarkable. And I realized I could spend my whole, I could spend six months. I could spend 11 months. I could spend all of our cash months left doing things that didn't matter to the one thing that actually was going to determine if we had a business. And that moment was like, wow, this.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT