YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Dietzen

lines on the record: 37
first: 2022-02-28
most recent: 2022-02-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's interesting to think about the trajectory that I might have taken. When you look at life, it's like you're climbing a tree and you make these choices and you're getting out on ever smaller branches. I turned down some pretty amazing job opportunities. I had the chance to be early on at Microsoft early on at Amazon, earlier on at Google. I have no idea where I would have landed if I had chosen one of those companies as opposed to just four very early stage startups. I've had the luxury of having two of those startups really be Grand Slams in WebLogic and Pure Storage and gotten to work with the most amazing teams. So, you know, while I'm curious, I'm so gratified with the career trajectory that I've had and the many great people I've gotten to work with and the great markets I've gotten to play with playing.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say when I was in the seat, I would say it's a marathon, not a sprint. I would struggle to follow that. I am an obsessive competitor. Like I see things that I think need to be done, and I'm willing to take them on myself. So I would not necessarily do a great job of leading a balanced life, even though I strongly encourage the team to do it, right? Don't work anaerobically to where you're building a deficit. You've got to find ways to be productive, improve your productivity to make it sustainable.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, I'm currently not in a job, so I'm doing a lot more in board work and investing and mentoring. I'm trying to secure, help secure funding for one of my companies, helping coach CEOs on a couple of others. But it's much more about like, how can I contribute to making sure those companies continue on their track? And it's really exciting. And I get to do a bunch of work with Mr. Sfizer and the Sutter Hill team. They are on fire right now. I mean, they've got so many good things going. It's really fun and dramatic to see. How about then I've got some other companies outside that are working in range of different things. One is trying to change the technology for how video is delivered from the GPU to the screen because we're running out of gas. So there's an opportunity to change that architecture. I tend to play in the B2B space. I think those markets are a lot easier to predict and they're less oversubscribed than the consumer markets where I have far less expertise. My goal is to have fun and work with people that I love.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've gone back several times to the, I think it's the 20 immutable laws of marketing. That's one. First chapter of Innovators Dilemma is, you know, every time I read that, I get something new out of it. This is not necessarily relevant to entrepreneurship, but Israeli historian that did a book called Sapiens and then 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. This is Yval Harari. And I'm currently reading his second book. They're all fantastic. He makes complex things simple, but I would really encourage people want to get a broad perspective on the history and future of humanity. I think it's worthwhile reading”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing things, particularly in the early days. And so I think a lot of the culture came out of the leadership team modeling the behavior that we wanted to foster across the whole team.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's very interesting. You have this vision of children that they're going to want your leadership. And my own experience, at least, is the opposite, that my children were fiercely independent from birth, right? Like, you know, they're going to own what's going on around them and they want to take charge. You know, and I would say that's certainly the leadership style that I try to approach with. If you're micromanaging somebody, there's a mistake, right? Either you've hired the wrong person or you're in the wrong job, you're trying to manage somebody else. And so when things go wrong and they're inevitably going to go wrong, then you want to try to give people the help they need to be successful. But you shouldn't have to micromanage anyone. And I try not to micromanage my kids. Piece of parenting advice I got from a friend, he said, you know, I got my best parenting.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not about you, right? You're a tool just like everyone else on the team for the company's success. And so if you check your ego at the door and focus on what can I do to help make this team capable of achieving its goals, you're liberated from worrying about that. You can just do the best you can and hire people that complement your skills. Another classic mistake is hiring people that look like you and think like you, whereas you really want people that have complementary skill sets and experiences so that you can de-risk together.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly had insecurities in grad school. There was something called imposter syndrome. I was really successful as an undergrad in a strong program and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm great. And I got into grad school and I'm like, wow, these people are crazy smart and the professors are even smarter. Do I even belong here? What am I doing? And, you know, I think I had some of that in my first job too where I wasn't, I thought I was bright. I've never been the best technologist or the best business person at any of the companies I've been at, but I can straddle them effectively, right? I have a combination of business acumen and technical expertise that allows me to be a bridge. And I think that's part of what's allowed me to be successful. And I would say the other thing is over time, your instincts, you watch your instincts play out. Some of my early work, I second guess myself about things because there are people here that know more than me. But when I turned out to be right, you get ever more conviction to follow your gut. But then the most important thing I said earlier, which is it's all about the company.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had the privilege of being on boards before I became CEO. I think it's really helpful to see how the mechanics work, to see what's, you know, you like about how boards are being managed and what you want to change. It really caused me to be very, very careful about who's on the board, what are the dynamics of the board meeting like. I really like a very collegial open board meeting, but then you've got also be careful where you don't have like one person drowning out other board members. And so I think in managing the board, I would try to be careful to make sure that we were getting the input from the board members with the greatest expertise on a specific issue. And so I wouldn't leave a topic until I got particular board members if they were being quiet to speak up and share what I was looking for from their perspective. And so CEO's job is really to manage those board dynamics, you know, to build the board, to preserve that kind of great collegial, collaborative trust, but open environment where you can say anything.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, ideally, you just don't raise after a bad quarter. I always encourage people to be looking nine months out, right? You don't want to be at the 11th hour trying to make a race because then, you know, you're desperate. And so insulate yourself from that by, you know, raising early. I would also encourage we never took the highest valuation that was offered to us. We chose a fair and good evaluation in order to get the best possible board participation for the company. I would optimize that on upside after the raise. Like don't view the raise as the endgame. The raise is just one step along the way. And so look past the raise to what's going to happen afterwards and don't overpromise. This is another classic founder CEO mistake is offering a dramatic upside. Paint a great long-term vision, but be really pragmatic about what you can achieve in the coming quarters so you underpromise and overdeliver consistently.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Orange flag impure, right? My job as a servant leader is to try to raise that flag as high as possible. And so I'm going to do the best I can, but I'm not going to be worried about my own success. I'm worried about pure success. And that frees you up to really take ego out of the equation.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've seen lots of mistakes. One of the classics is just posing a problem to the board and then saying, what do I do? That's not the board's job. If you're a founder, CEO, your job is to propose a path and then rely on the board to help you course correct. So one side of the error is not coming in with a plan. Got a problem. If you're going to propose it to the board, you know, you're going to get a plan out of it. You're better off going in with a plan and letting the board course correct. I would say the other thing though that I see founders do is not share bad news with their boards. And then they really limit the amount of help they can get from their board. So they're so interested in trying to sell their board on only the good news that they don't actually present challenges and what they're worried about. And then, you know, the board's got to try to dig in and ferret that stuff out. You know, the latter problem is almost always tied to insecurity. I would say, you know, going back to why I wasn't nervous and pure in the early days, everything was about the”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Coach up your CFO, even help hire the best CFO. So it's almost like you can build board first and then use the board to help build your leadership team if you have the right sales, marketing, and financial expertise on your board.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so one thing as the CEO, make sure you give lots of airtime in board meetings to your leadership team and have them there for the open session. I would bring the whole of my leadership team in, most board meetings, and certainly everyone would present in their functional areas, right? When we're discussing sales, it's the salesperson talking, we're discussing engineering, it's the CTO and the VP of engineering talking. You know, I'm there to provide overall high-level goals. Like I would start every board meeting with here's the good news and here's the stuff we got to work on, that just simple one slide, what we're happy with, what we're most sweating right now. But then let each of the functional areas drive that. I think you want to go further and actually specifically identify board members to mentor the key functions, right? So, you know, especially for sales and marketing, it's really good to have a board member that can provide insight and even bring people with that expertise on the board, you know, as you're ramping toward public, being public, you bring in an audit chair somebody can.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On how to better do my job. And I think that's what you want to look for in a board you don't want really close friends that aren't going to be tough on you and press hard. I'm not looking for someone to micromanage on the board, but I am looking for someone, you know, to push back. And it's great if you can have people with good sales experience, marketing experience. It's almost like everyone on your leadership team has a shadow on the board. They mentor them and give them advice on how to approach their job. I really like to foster a lot of communication between the leadership team and the board as opposed to being like a funnel myself because then everybody benefits from the experience of the board.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Mike Pfizer, who was the original CEO at Pure before, he and Anil really brought me into the job. This was after we'd had the good fortune to add people like Frank Slutman and Satish Star Mirage and Neil was already on the board and Mike Bolpe too. I had informally stack ranked the board members based on value per word jokingly told Mike, you're not at the top of the list. And it wasn't in any way to discourage his contributions were phenomenal. I don't even remember why I was delivering that. It was done in a humorous way. And he omitted this from his tweet, but I said, by the way, I'm at the bottom of that list, right? I talk a lot in board meetings. My value per word is the lowest. But it was a way to express the supreme good fortune I had as CEO to have multiple CEOs on the board in Anneo, in Frank. Mike Vulpe had been a CEO, Spizer had been a CEO, Satisha had been a CEO. So to have five CEOs on the board was really dramatic for me in terms of lots of advice.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And say, wow, I never felt like I got interviewed until I got interviewed at Pure because we would really challenge them. And periodically, we'd have folks that would say, oh, I'm too senior, I don't want to go through that process and be like, okay, then you're not a fit for our culture. Because if you're not curious enough and confident enough to want to try this process out, then we're happy to take the pass on you.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it's definitely hard. I think it varies considerably at stage and function, right? There are certain functions that you need to be the best in the world at, and there are other functions that you need to be good at. Engineering hires, in particular, especially early on are something I would sweat really, really deeply because, you know, the difference between a top 1% and a top 10% engineer is pretty dramatic. You know, it's like tenfold productivity. And so it's really, really crucial, you know, to get that. But then there are other functions inside the business that, you know, you don't necessarily need to be the best in the world at finance and accounting, right? You want to be good and you better be squeaky, clean, but you don't have to hire the top one-tenth of 1% like you need to do inside of engineering. And so I think you need to focus on the role. I think you want to be really aggressive in the interview process. We put people through the ringer. I mean, we've had multiple engineers that interviewed at places like Google and Facebook.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With customers. If you've just won over somebody's long term interest and they'll often turn around and try to convince you that they are a right fit for you. But you need to put yourself in the customer's shoes and say, can we make this customer successful? Are we convinced that we're ready to make them successful? And if the answer is yes, by all means go for it. But if the answer is no, say no.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a pretty simple recipe. Every sales meeting we had with customers, I would always insist on the customer talking first and every presenter from the company needed to be there to hear the customer's side and then ask questions and dig in and understand the customer's pain points and aspirations. If you truly understand where the customer is and what the customer is dealing with, then you have the ability to connect the dots with what your product and solution are and why they're a fit. One of the most empowering things you can do is say no to a customer, especially early on, unhappy customers are supremely painful. 10x more downside for an unhappy customer than upside for a happy customer. Salespeople don't like this, but I would say, no, we're not ready for you yet. You know, the sweet spot for what you need is probably still two years off for us. So let's stay in touch. We'll let you know when we're ready. You would not believe how credible that is.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I agree with that, but I think the reason you should get there is every manager should be having substantive one-on-ones with their employees pretty regularly. I mean, it doesn't have to be weekly, even bi-weekly, but probably once a month is minimum. I try to foster bidirectional feedback, not just manager, coaching, employee, but employee coaching manager, right? Because employees know what they want and need from great managers, especially high-quality employees. So if that feedback is working and flowing, then there aren't surprises. You know, the employee's been told over and over again that, hey, this isn't working out. We need X from you. Like sometimes I'm asked to come in and deliver the bad news to an employee. And if they're surprised, that's information for me that the manager hasn't been doing their job.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a very hard thing to do, and unfortunately, it's something you get practiced at over time. I strive to give some concrete constructive input why this isn't working out. But I also try to leave the employee plenty of room to save face and turn their own story into what happened and why. You've got to be really careful you don't damage someone's career. And I've had the good fortune to be a really, really elite startups with amazing teams. You know, it's like, okay, if you didn't make the top one percent or one half of one percent for a particular reason, maybe other things are going on in your life. That's okay. I mean, you've got so many opportunities in front of you. And I'm even willing in many cases to go to bath for somebody and say, you know, I think in this other job, they can be really successful at your firm. And so try to give them a soft landing. But, you know, give them concrete feedback too on what they could have done better with the opportunity.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much more in the Frank Slootman school on this one. You make changes quickly in order to keep the team on track. If somebody can make a mistake, you don't want to lose trust just because of a mistake, but you need to go to them and talk about what happened and why and coach them up. So the same mistake isn't going to be made.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So through the interview process, I think is when you have to be building trust. Trust that this employee is among the best in the world at what they do. And of course, what they do is really important to the company. And so there's part of the interview process is all about forming those trust bonds bi-directionally. employee to the leadership team and leadership team back to the employee. I want trust to be there as you start and obviously you want it to grow over time. And trust does get lost. I mean, you're inevitably going to make hiring mistakes any business that's scaling fast is going to make hiring mistakes. And, you know, the number one advice from every CEO I've ever talked to is I was too late in fixing that. Not everyone makes an elite team. And I think too many people fall into the innocent until proven guilty model of employees. And I'm sorry, that's not the way it works. When you're a leader, if your bit flips on somebody, if you lose confidence, then you need to make the change. And I don't like pips. I think I'm.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would say my favorite response overall, though, was one really talented employee was having trouble with this and trusting the management chain. And I said, why? You've met these people, you like them, you say you're inclined to trust them. And he goes, you know, Dietz, it's because I come from the equivalent of a broken home. I've never had a management chain in my career that I could trust that was out for my best interest. And I said, well, let's fix that. Come join Pure.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A fair ask of you to negotiate. I mean, we've got all the compensia data about what everyone is making. We know what all your peers are making. And I can tell you, offering is very fair for your experience and, you know, the talent. We believe you're deeply talented among the best in the world at what you do. We want you on the team. This is a fair offer. And if you exceed our expectations, we will be the first to seek you out and give you additional responsibility and additional reward. And if you don't believe that, if you're not prepared to trust us, don't join the company. I've had the luxury of never having had to ask for a raise in my life. I had management chains that did the right thing. I think that's a sacred responsibility for the management chain is to dole out the rewards appropriately. So it's never squeaky wheel. It's always about who deserves it the most. And if you set that tone early, you get people to trust their management chain. It's a critical way to keep everybody playing for the gold ring and not worried about.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think trust is absolutely critical currency to foster and build the team. One of the simple things, first of all, is to never talk about yourself. You know, you don't use I, me when you're talking about something that the company is going to do. I see CEOs and other functional leaders in business make this mistake all the time where they say I me when they're talking about their team's execution. And it's always got to be we, us, right? Because you're building team success. As soon as one person starts talking about their individual accomplishments, it causes other people to go political too. The time for IME is when there's a screw up. And as CEO, it's always your fault. Taking responsibility for a problem, but then passing credit when anything goes well is a really simple recipe for building trust. Here's a more aggressive one that I've had great success with. When recruiting people, when they'll start to try to negotiate, I will shut them off and say, look, this isn't necessarily...”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so I think the morale, if you're not being realistic, the morale is fake, right? And so you're inflating things in a way that's not sustainable. The critical thing is to keep your eye on the long-term goals and make sure you're sharing what success looks like for the company in five plus years, right? You paint that picture of what the future can look like. But then at the same time, you have to be grounded in the reality of exactly where you are right now, today and what needs to happen and why your product isn't ready in a particular market. And I think it's completely comfortable to share that as long as the company stays focused on that long-term upside, then you've got the wherewithal to go through the valleys and fix the issues in front of you that are slowing you down right now.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're going to lose sometimes. And if you talk about the losses, then you can bring this entire smarts of the company to bear on making things better so you don't lose again for the same reason. That's the key. Don't repeat your mistakes.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. The wins are great. You need wins to encourage and provide enthusiasm, and people want to be part of a winner, so you should celebrate those victories. And I'm not saying there aren't lessons to learn in wins too, but in losses, there's almost always a lesson to learn unless your competitor buys the business, right? Competitors that are larger or have ancillary product lines that they can move money between, you're going to lose in those situations. And maybe that's a case where there isn't actually something to learn. But in general, there's almost in every loss there's something you can identify or multiple things you can identify about your product or about your engagement, your partnering strategy, and you should mine those insights and you should openly share them too. I think one of the problems entrepreneurs have is they're great at sharing the good news, the Ataboy out of gal we won, but they're less inclined to want to open up and dig in on the losses, and it makes everybody feel fragile and dishonest if you're not really mining the insight from those losses.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, encourage everyone to welcome competition. I mean, you actually need competition to build markets. If you're the only company in a space, it can be a lot harder. Competition certainly makes you better, right? It forces you to innovate faster and improve your product and see what they're up to. So I relish competition, but I would say I try to stay away from warfare analysis.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About the CEO job, you've got to build both below you and above you, right? You've got to build a leadership team, but you've also got to build a board to help ensure your success. And so having people like Anil Bustri and Frank Slutman and Mike Volpe and of course Mike Spizer and Satish Dharmiraj, a whole collection of your former interviewees on my board was incredibly helpful in de-risking Pure.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't nervous in the beginning because I knew right where Pure was. I mean, Pure was my fourth startup. I mean, I joined when it was about 12 people. And so I'd been down this road multiple times before. And, you know, I had a vision for how we should attack the market. You know, there were people that felt that the company should pick a particular niche and try to go dominate that. And I was much more excited about David poking Goliath right in the eye and just like making this fight, a big fight from the outset. that the technology is wholly got to change. You know, the solutions that were being used in the market were 25, 30 years old based on mechanical disc. I would say, hey, these are competitors richly deserving of competition. Let's change the architecture and bring it to them and take that big fight right out of the gate. So I had a plan and the board liked it. And I mean, that was ultimately the reason they took the chance. I had incredible, you know, support and advice. A new boostery told me, you know, the hardest fit.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think early on it was not a draw. My dad worked extremely hard. It's where I got my own work ethic because it kind of just wears off on you, I think, when you're growing up. But I used to not see him for days because he would be gone to work before I would get up in the morning and I had a job after school, so he might be asleep before I got home. He worked really hard, but he wasn't in technology. So, you know, the upsides of that hard work was he built a successful business. But I would say the return on his time invested was not ultimately what I was hoping for. And so I just got really lucky getting pulled into technology at where I went to school, Carnegie Mellon, computer science faculty were just insanely gifted and talented and was so incredibly exciting. And I just got sucked in.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A CEO before, but I'd done the go to market side and I understood product development. So they elected to take a chance on me. And obviously I'm extremely grateful they did.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell me, how did you come to the CEO role at Pure and how did that come into play? So let me go back a little further. I ended up earning a PhD in computer science back in the day because I used to think I wanted to be a professor. But I got a little disillusioned with two things. One, professors had to work really, really hard. And second, probably the bigger issue is they were really crazy smart. I was smart, but I wasn't professor smart. And my dad was an entrepreneur, so somewhere through the PhD program, I hatched this scheme that I should try to be an entrepreneur. I had the good fortune to get a really great mentor in my first job, and I moved into a CTO-like position. And I'd been a CTO and a president before. I'd never done the CEO job. But I was really excited about what Pure was up to. I had come to the conclusion that Flash was going to replace all the mechanical storage in the data center. I got connected through Mike Spizer and through a Neil Busri with the early Pure Storage team. And I fell in love. And the job opening they had was CEO. I hadn't.”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually had chats before both with Mike and with Satish at Radpoint. So thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, my sincere pleasure. Those are two fabulous characters that have meant a great deal to both my personal life and my career. Honored to follow in their footsteps. Wouldn't start with a little bit on you. So obviously, kind of the most recent incredible success story was the Seven Years that you spent as CEO”
2022-02-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make When Scaling, Management 101 on Trust Building, Morale Maintenance and Hiring & What We Can Learn About Parenting From Nature Programs with Scott Dietzen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source