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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“So obviously, this is a quote that came from, I think Jim Barksdale. But I remember the first time I saw it and I remember just the wording and why it sat with me, but it almost sounds silly when you first hear it. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And just, you know, anytime you see a quote with the same words three times in a row, it's really remarkable. But when I've thought about it, and it really came to life when I was at Instacart, right? It came to life for me when I was at Instacart because there are so many people pulling you in different directions about the thing that they want to talk about.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I just hate when I am wasting time when I'm away from them. I hate it. Because I'm like, no, I'm not even furthering the thing that I'm trying to be good at. This is just dumb. Why am I doing this? And so I think that my zealotry around focus is something that I think makes me feel better of like, no, I'm trying to move the ball forward.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really is very hard to know when that's going to happen. I think just sort of like being there provides a huge benefit because when they are wanting to do it, okay, you're ready for that serendipity. You're ready for that moment because you're there. And the other thing is, like you said, in knowing them by seeing them, you actually know what the heck to say and you've earned the trust with them to kind of provide the thoughtful feedback like there is a real thing. And I am just like you where I count the number of days that I have dinners. I count the number of days I'm on the road. I go to pretty serious lengths to avoid unnecessary travel. And one thing that I do firmly believe is I think focus is such a helpful aspect of trying to thread the needle.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but this is where, so I really like that because I think to your point on sort of the The When they Live With You versus When They Don't It's Again, it's very hard to predict when they're going to want to talk to you.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, that's the problem is that you don't really know anything about these people. But I think maybe Shane here, I'll tell you. And this is something that I, it feels weird to say out loud, right? But I think it is true. If what it takes to be the best in the world at the thing that I'm doing is to lose some of those aspects that we're talking about, then I don't want it. You know, I hope I can be. I am ambitious. I really want to go and try to do that. But, you know, it's not number one for me. Number one is the family. And it is sort of what Avni and the kids are going to say about the way I was and am with them. And so... And maybe I should say I'm kind of fearful that what you just said is true, but I'm not fearful enough to change it.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so maybe the reason I said I would fight with you on it is actually kind of a poor argument because the truth of the matter is the vast majority of people that I think about as best in the world, I would agree with you on most of the examples that I think of, I do think they tend to not be that well adjusted. The person that came to mind, who I obviously have no idea about, but from a distance is Steph Curry, where it does seem like he has a Real, you know, family life, and he is the best in the world at something. I think it might be a situation where the exception proves the rule or the truth of the matter is like, you know, I obviously don't know Steph Curry. And so maybe I thought that about.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So maybe that's the point. I think anything you're doing consistently shows up to people. It might take a long time, but it shows up. And that's in both directions.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot. I've definitely seen that up close. And I think the way it plays out, Shane, is that later. They say well gosh, like I wish I would have done something different before. And one of the things I think that's true is you can't go back and change it, but you can change it that day. And I do think that people react. People are pretty good at noticing if you're doing something every day. If you've changed something and you've really committed and you're doing it every day, right? You talk about this all the time in the various writing that you do, which is just the value of consistency.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard. You know, funny enough, when I was at Instagram, one of the values that we had was this is your baby. And the reason that came out was that people would a lot of times tell our founders, like that's like a statement of like, yeah, of course you care this much. This is your baby. And it was kind of a controversial value because of some of the people were like, wait a second. I don't like those words. And the point of it was sort of treat it like you care about it. Treat it like you're an owner. And it was like a lot more fun of a way to say it or a more interesting way to say it than like, you know, act like an owner. But anyway, I think that if you take that logic, though, of sometimes the company for somebody particularly who created it, you know, it feels like it is a family member almost. It feels like something that they hold dearly onto and their identity is tied up and all that. It's not crazy to think of like why it could take up a lot of your mindshare and it's hard to compartmentalize. I think that happens.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not sort of like the lightning bolt moments. It's just sort of a general drifting because the person finds you to be kind of selfish. You know, they don't feel like they're number one. And so I think that's the constant battle, at least as I've seen in the ones that are successful, as people kind of.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Moment by moment corrosive behavior of just sort of that's the thing that you want to talk about. That's the thing that has your attention. So like when Upni and I have fought about work taking up too much mindshare, it's not that all of a sudden I'm a jerk. It's that I'm not present. It's that the only thing that when she's talking about something, the thing that's going through my head is the thing that I'm thinking about and it's something related to work or the stuff that I'm talking about with her or with our friends is all stuff all about me. Or it's that like when I go to the I'll still go to the kids stuff, but I'm not paying attention. I'm looking at my phone. And so I think a lot of the things that the way it plays out is”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I think the first thing is it doesn't always like end in. Obviously. Schism, or an obvious break, like divorce or something like that. I think sometimes it ends up as just the relationships aren't the way that they would want them to be. I think the way it plays out, Shane is a lot of times it's sort of like the...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is there. If I really think about it. And so, anyway, I think quantity is kind of the main thing when it comes to family time. Tell themselves a story on this one that I think is not going to be great long term.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was somebody we spent a lot of time on like youth sports. We don't care if our kids do anything with sports. We don't care about it at all. But we end up driving all over Northern California on the weekends. And I had a friend who was like, what are you doing? Do you think your kids are going to do anything with sports? I was like, probably not. He said, why do you spend so much time? Why do you waste so much time on that? And he's smart. And I thought about it and I'm like, well, the truth of the matter is I love being at my kids' sports games. They're having fun. I love watching them. I actually really enjoy driving them to those events because kids kind of forget when they're in the car. They got nowhere else to go. And they're super chatty, right? And getting a lot of those in-between moments with them. What would I be doing if I wasn't doing that? Would I like be looking at my phone? What would I be doing? It's actually the thing I do want to do. And I love that the quantum...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it allows you to be gone more than I think you should. And it gives you an excuse and it gives you a reason that you can do that. And I think the truth of the matter is for young kids, you have no idea when the good moments are coming. You have no idea when the quality of your moments are coming. It might not be at the birthday party. It might not be when you go to Disneyland. It actually might be when you're just like sitting on the couch and they say something that makes you like, oh my gosh.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think with your kids when they're young, I think the quality over quantity is a very pernicious thought because it allows you to not spend that much time with them and be like, oh, it's all good. I'll just be there for a kick-ass birthday party. I'll be there. I'll take them to Disneyland and I'll create this incredible memory that they'll love.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wonder if that's an experiment that's not going to turn out to be right. Because so I think we're doing that in some ways and we're doing it pretty well, but not as well as we could relative to our grandparents, relative to the grandparents and our families. So that's another thing. And then I'll tell you the place where I think that the quality over quantity theory actually leads to some pretty bad behavior. Is that okay if I go there? Yeah.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. They come, they come every six or eight weeks. They spend a week or two with us. So we're like pretty good. But we made a pretty weird decision to go and live pretty far away from them. One of the things I wonder about is whether this, I think kind of American mentality of like go where your career takes you, go where the best professional opportunity is rather than living close to your family”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of people, not very much. Like, one of the things that I wonder about, and I wonder about this in my own life, I think my wife and I are very good on spending time together or spending time with the kids, spending time with our very close friends who are who live close to us. I think we're pretty good on that. We don't just kind of peanut butter it. And I feel like, you know, we have been thoughtful and affirmative in those decisions. But like my parents live in Chicago. My parents live in, you know, my brother lives in North Carolina. My mother-in-law, who were very close with my wife's mom, lives in North Carolina.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great will be like on the fence of staying, and you'll be like, well, could we do this on compensation? Could we do this on title? And they'll be like, well, the bands don't allow that. Like, you created the bands. What are we talking about? The purpose of the bands is so that we win. That is a tool that we're using. Now the band is preventing us from winning. What are we talking about? Right. People, well, it's fairness. I'm like, it's not fair to the person who's excellent. So that would be one where I think the quality over quantity I think people really don't do it in the way that they should. I think the second thing that I'd put on that is I don't know what percentage of your time do you spend with the people that matter most to you”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It means if you can get one of those five, right, you should spend a crazy amount of time going to find them. You should spend a crazy amount of time getting to know people who could possibly be one of those five. And actually, the entire point of being a leader might be to go find two or three trajectory-changing people for the company rather than all of the other things that make you feel like you're making more linear forward progress. So I think 590 would be something that I would think about, right? I think about that a lot. And if you have one of those people, that's one of the five. Are you behaving? Are you aware of everything that could make them go? And are you in sync with them? Because I think that people spend a lot of time trying to appease the 95% that are delivering 10% of the value. Think about comp systems. Think about the number of times that you'll be in a company and somebody...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very few, very few. And so to me, one non intuitive thing is like think about, you know, in the company you work at, what percentage of the people deliver 90% of the value and think about whether you're actually acting like those people are treated that way. I don't mean in terms of money, I just mean in terms of respect, authority, love, you know, responsibility. Frankly, like, are you acting like if they left, it would be a big problem, all those kinds of things. And I think that 80-20 is conventional, 590, not conventional. But my experience is closer to yours. And that is one aspect where if you think about what that means time-wise,”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll tell you them and then I'll tell you the one place where I think that what I just said does not apply clearly, where quantity is more important than perceived quality. So I'll give you one where I think I'd break my own rule. I think one non-intuitive way is. Shane, if I think about the jobs you've had, okay, and you look at the percentage of people that delivered 90% of the value in the places you've worked, right? What percentage would you put on it? What percentage of the people do you think delivered 80 or 90 percent of the value in the places you've worked? So that's a pretty extreme thing. I would say the same thing 5 to 10%. Everyone talks about 80-20 and all this stuff. What company acts like 5% of the people deliver 90% of the value?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, and this is where it's so funny because, you know, what I would tell people when they would say, well, isn't the space competitive? I was like, yeah, of course it is. I was like, but guys, Instacart started in 2012. So at this point, the company's, you know, 10 and a half years old. I was like, we've made 10 and a half years of mistakes. This is hard. And I think that that is actually a huge advantage. And you think about what we were talking about earlier on businesses, businesses being fascinating, businesses being interesting, businesses being complicated. Instacart is a hard business. But it's a good business now that the company has done really well and learned a lot of lessons. But that's one thing that I think was missing. It's like less missing now, but it's definitely still not perfect.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you can imagine, oh, well, you should ask the person what exactly what do you want if this doesn't happen, if this doesn't happen?”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hard to predict exactly what somebody wants if you don't have what the thing that they ordered, grocery stores don't always know what's in it. And so Inskart's gotten so much better at this, but it still is not 100% of the time everything you ordered or something that you would want perfectly as the replacement. And I think that it's one of those, you got to enjoy climbing the mountain because, you know, the company keeps on getting better at it. But like, is not there? It's not perfect and it's still not perfect.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really hard to get everything you ordered every time. It's just, it is a hard problem. And I'll do the math, right? A typical order has 15 to 20 items in it. And we have a very high chance of finding that specific item. But grocery stores don't always know exactly what's in it, right? They don't always have a perfect thing. And people's algorithms for what they want to replace it with are not always the same. So I have a friend, one of my closest friends. He likes to eat grilled cheese for dinner. But if the grocery store doesn't have something that goes into grilled cheese, that would be kind of strange if they didn't have it. But you get what I'm saying. If they don't have one of the ingredients for grilled cheese, his algorithm for what he wants, if he doesn't eat grilled cheese, is a quesadilla. Well, that's not like, oh, the cheddar is not there. I want the medium cheddar. It's like, oh, if they don't have sharp cheddar, I want an entirely different dish. And it's very...”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, you know this. I love Instacart. The reason I went there was we used it a lot. And when I was meeting with the company, I asked my wife, what do you think of Instacart? And she said, oh my God, I love Instacart. And I said, okay. And she said, if you wanted to move, the first thing I would do is see if Instacart delivered to the new house. And I just remember thinking like, I mean, what an anecdote, right? Someone, the person you respect most in the world telling you that they wouldn't move unless this product delivered there. So the love for it existed seven, eight years ago. It exists now. I love it. In terms of something that was missing when I was there and is still missing,”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, it is an important part of the kind of self talk to have the willpower to do the thing that you need to do is don't waste this important time that you're using away from people that you care about. Because I do think time is precious and you got to be affirmative in how you spend it. And so it's kind of like every day make a decision that you've made it worth it.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is one where I have a quote on my desk, and it's from Tom Isa the coach of Michigan State, and I'm a Duke fan, but I thought this is a pretty good quote. And it says on there, it's not because you've got to, it's because you get to. And it's at the top, they have that quote at the beginning of the Michigan State locker room or the wait room. And I think it's this reminder of, dude, you chose to do this job. Yeah, sure, it's a hard job, whatever. But you chose to do this. Every day, you don't have to do it. And so if you're going to do it, remember you made the decision to go and spend your time away from your family doing this. And I think, again, like I come back to the family point, it's like make it worth it. If you're going to be gone from the kids, from your wife, from people you care about, make this worth it. Otherwise, what are you doing? And I think reminding yourself that, you know, you wanted this and you have affirmatively chosen this.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remove the willpower by not having the ability to make a decision on as many of them as possible. So that is one thing I try to think about on the physical side. And it's similar to you of like everything as a discussion, you just try to have fewer negotiations almost on that. On the work front of sort of like doing the right stuff”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're probably going to gain weight. And it was really simple. And so for me, that is actually the thing that I think about for food all the time. I do account. I'm like, okay, I got 21 of these. And what I try to do is remove any sort of decision on 10 of them, Monday through Friday, breakfast and lunch, just do the same thing every day, right? And then ideally, I do it on the weekdays too. I can avoid, ideally I avoid a work dinner, right? Or avoid eating at a restaurant or something like that. Because what I'm trying to do is get as many in the house as possible before the weekend. Right. Because the baseline would ideally be that my Friday night and Saturday night are the ones that I can, even if we don't even go out, which is I can do with the kids, whatever, those are the ones where they're not good meals. But I'd say framework-wise, I try to almost.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I like your answer so much better than mine. And so I'm going to do an addendum because I actually think more of the physical part to me is actually food than working out in terms of the discipline. And so I think to your point, though, in probably my favorite book, How Will You Measure Your Life, Clay Christensen has this quote of, you know, it's easier to follow your principles 100% of the time rather than 98% of the time because you don't know what 98% of the time to follow them, right? It can always be a negotiation as to what's the two. And so I think your point on the everydayness is a big deal. So yeah, my physical fitness answer on exercise is pretty mediocre. I think the food one, I have a more of a framework, which is I work out with this trainer twice a week, and he told me one time, he said, look, there's 21 meals in a week. He goes, if you want to lose weight, 19 or more of them have got to be good meals. If you want to maintain your weight 15 to 19 of them are going to be good meals. And if you're less than 15,”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Playing sports with them. I love being active with them. And frankly, it's kind of like meeting them where they are, which I know is like a little bit of a statement that doesn't really sound like it means anything. But I actually think it's a real thing. It's sort of like what they want to do, I kind of want to go do with them. And a lot of times what they want to do is run around. And I like being able to do that. And so the willpower there comes from sort of, man, you don't want to be one of those parents that can't do stuff with their kids, right? At any age. And I think a fear of like, I do, I want to do everything I can to live a long time. And I'm sure that if I was more Zen, I could say like, oh, you know, I'm be fine whenever it goes, it goes. But I'm not like that. I really do want to live a long time. I like life”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would segment it into different components because I do think there are different answers for me on different things. So let's take a look, physical exercise. You know, some people love exercising. They love it. They say all these wonderfully poetic words about it. I don't particularly enjoy it at all, right? I like the result of it. But a lot of the willpower comes from there of I really do want to like live a long time so I can see my kids when they're older and spend time with my grandkids and all that kind of stuff. And I want to be able to do things with them now. And I'm afraid of, you know, not being able to do active things with the kids. And so a lot of times I just sort of, a lot of the willpower there comes from a want to do stuff with my kids and my family forever long time.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I felt something. And so I just started, so I wrote the whole thing on my notes section. And that was cool. Like, otherwise, I would have been like, oh, I just put the thought in my head and then I would have never written it otherwise. But I was taking a red eye and I was, you know, I was a connecting red eye and was in between the connection. And I wrote it there. I'm really happy it exists because I wrote it when I felt it. And I have it for me. And it was something that I think was good advice. If you feel it, just stop what you're doing and go right.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have found that it's been good advice for me is Choose the topics that you actually care about. Don't try to write about what you think someone else will think is interesting. Write about something that you actually care about. And it'll either be interesting or it won't, but at least you'll find that you want to write about it. Find the thing that you're compelled to write about. And so I think that was good advice. And then the last one that actually is one that I've taken very seriously is if something comes to mind you want to write stop what you're doing and go right. you know, get out of the meeting. go and sit down, write it down, write it down, write it down. One of the things that I wrote that I'm most proud of is actually it didn't get a lot of attention or anything like that. But and it shouldn't have because it's very like niche thing. But I wrote it on my notes section on my phone in the airport.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there's been a few because I was almost scared to write for a while because I assumed that it was hard for me and easy for everyone else And therefore, I just wasn't very good at it. And, you know, the logic, even as I say it out loud, is pretty dumb. But a lot of what I've heard is just sort of embrace the fact that it's difficult. It's difficult for everyone, right? Even the best writers, it doesn't just come out. They just do so many drafts. They do so many versions. And they just kind of hammer it every day. I'm sure you've heard the Stone Cutter's Credo, right? you know, pounding the rock. A lot of what I think great writers do is they just sit down and they write every day. So that was one piece of advice, which was if you want to get good at it, just keep going over and over and over again. I think another thing that”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the best pieces of advice I got in writing was from Mike Morritz, who's obviously this beautiful writer. But he said, after you think you have a version, read it out loud. Read it out loud. See how it sounds. And he's like most of the time you'll be horrified. And read it out loud and edit and edit and edit until you like how it sounds. But it really does demonstrate the quality of the thinking when you can read it out loud and feel good about it. And I think on your point, if it could be written by ChatGPT, then maybe it's not that good. Maybe you should try to write something better or more insightful. And I think that the ones that I am proud of, I think probably would be harder to write by that right now. And maybe the ones that could have been written by that aren't as insightful as I thought.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Use it a lot more. It is really hard to get somebody to change their behavior. This is this whole idea of it can't be 20% better. It can't be 40% better. It needs to be 10x better. It has to fundamentally change your experience. And it's very hard to create things that are way better because we all talk to ourselves, well, this is a little better here. It's a little better here. But nobody cares. One of the big things that's so fascinating is, again, Bezos says this in one of his letters, but consumers are divinely discontent. You can give them something amazing, and then it's just normal. People really do just like find things to be normal. So it's hard to innovate. I think that's the other thing.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Version. Another element of human nature. The only way sometimes to get it to go is you have to experiment and you'd have to risk something that you already have. And so people put in the constraint of, well, I don't want to have, I have an innovation budget. I want to keep my profits at this level. And all of a sudden you have some constraint that's actually quite hard to operate around. And I think the other thing is look, at the most fundamental level, it's really hard to get people to use something. If you really think about what growth means, it means you're going to get somebody new, right, to use the product.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's so fascinating. I think you're totally right. I never thought about it like that. But you're right. Everyone is people are so much happier when it's growing, right? And you actually can solve a lot of problems by being like, folks, if this all works, we're all going to be great, right? Don't worry. There's enough to go around, right? To your point, we'll grow the pie. And I think related to what you said, there's another human nature point, which is, you know, when you move away from growth, the way to improve the business is to optimize it. It's to optimize it, optimize it so that you can get a little bit more profitability, a little bit more profitability, right? And you sort of start focusing on and you bring in people that are much more oriented towards optimizing, optimizing, optimizing, and you become good at that. The problem is that actually has almost nothing to do with creating. It has almost nothing to do with actually going and making something attractive to more people. And so you have a different set of people in the org. And then you also have the loss of.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of, like, growth solves all problems. It's not exactly right, but it's pretty close. Growth is incredible. And then the last thing, well, not the last thing, but one other thing that I think I found valuable from KKR that I think ports over is Every time you make an investment, you are kind of thinking, here are the three things that need to go right in order for this thing to work. And I think that that logic or that focus and that kind of belief, I think has applied when I worked at Instacart. It applies when I work at Sequoia. And it is, I feel like a pretty enduring lesson of, you know, what are the things that you're actually betting on? What are the things that need to be right for this to become what you hope it becomes? And then my personality is to be maniacally focused on those one to three things.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The second thing that this will relate to why I tried to join a tech company is that growth is extraordinarily hard to come by once you've kind of stopped growing. It is so hard to get something to move up again. It is so hard. We have gotten numb to growth rates like 20%, 40%, 80%, 100%. in any sort of day-to-day company outside of tech, these numbers are insane. And it's quite intoxicating when something is growing. It's so fun. And I think that one of the things that you look at in private equity is like, if you can get something to grow, if you can find a management team that can help you grow a business, it's amazing. But it's very hard to go from, you know, 2% growth or flat to 5% or 10%. And so I think there's this Eric Schmidt quote.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're right. No one has ever really asked me about my time at KKR. And I was there a long time. So, what did I learn? One, I learned it is extremely hard to build a real business. I think that when you think about the companies that KKR will try to buy or invest in, there are businesses that have generally been around a long time, and they produce a lot of profits, right? But I think that when you first get there, you think that those are just a dime a dozen and they exist all over the place. But anytime you go and study one, you realize that every business is fascinating if you're willing to go down to the details every single one. Any business that you want to go and learn about, if you go and learn the details, you will find it fascinating. So that was one lesson, which is that every business is hard and every business is fascinating if you go deep.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing great. What about all these other signals? And I think that, you know, you have to earn the trust of somebody, like you said, to be able to share that perspective. But I think that idea is one that I think is really important to make sure that people have.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the magic, and then they ultimately ended up doing it. So I think that consistent raising of the standard, that's the lesson from these folks. And so I think going back to your point on reality of talking to founders, I think it's helping them see the right signals because sometimes, especially in the environment, and look, you know, investors, all of us, we sent many of the wrong signals for a couple of years where people were rewarded. And so they could look at something of like, what are you talking about? My business keeps on getting valued higher and higher and higher. I'm doing the right stuff. But I think the duration of their perspective was not necessarily correct in that ultimately your business is going to be measured on the financial performance of it. And the financial purposes are representation of how much customer love there is and how much what you've actually created. But I think the point, Shane, for me, on getting people to embrace reality is, okay, cool. That signal that you're looking at is supportive of the point that we're.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so every choice that they made, I think represents those are cool stories about jobs and the standard that he had and these sort of willingness to be disliked in the name of going to get excellence. There's a story about Alexa with Bezos that's similar where they came back and said, look, the latency is going to be this. And I don't know what the unit was, but Bezos effectively said, well, I want it to be one-fifth of that. And they said, that's impossible. We can't do that. He said, well, then we're not going to ship it.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. The better example to me of Jobs is have you ever heard the anecdote about him when he looked at a cabinet? It's an amazing anecdote. So there was this beautiful cabinet that he saw, and he loved it. And he thought it was gorgeous. And then he looked around the back of it. And in the back of it was plywood. And it was ugly. And he was so offended by this notion that the front of it was beautiful and the back of it was ugly because someone's like, no one's ever going to see the back. And he's like, no, I see the back. The back should be beautiful too. If you want to try to make something beautiful, it should be beautiful from every angle, right? If the purpose of this is it's supposed to represent craftsmanship and beauty, don't go halfway and make the back ugly. To me, the things that are interesting are like if you tear apart the iPhone, even the board underneath is clean and gorgeous and thoughtful. And I think that even the words on the back.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He still is embracing reality as to whether or not it was selling and things like that. And so I think that one aspect is sort of reminding people that the Steve Jobs example, which is incredible in so many ways, you kind of have to dig underneath that. The reality distortion field wasn't that he wasn't listening to market signals, right? It was that he was ambitious for his team of we can do better. We can do more. We can do more, right? Go ahead.”
2023-04-18 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Ravi Gupta: The Realities of Success · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT