Find Your People

What Sam is optimizing for in his career: spending all of his time with amazing people, get leverage on seeing what's around the bend, somewhere where patience and temperament are rewarded, build an ecosystem where trust is compounded, build fewer deeper relationships

I think I care about the value of recruiting more than almost anyone I know. I think getting in amazing people at the start, in the middle, at the end, all the way through, having an ever-raising bar that someone has to clear, it's not quite everything, but often it's close.

Sam looks for digital breadcrumbs from someone's past that hint at their trajectory: "And so to the extent people have written blogs or posted things on Twitter or created some artifact that I think of that they've sort of buried in time that I can go find, that's often amazing, because you get a chance to see people over a long period of time."

You don't have to be the smartest person in the group at all, maybe not even the most talented. But you have to have a way in which you can bring all these people together. I do think you're going to need some really, really, really pointy skill that you can lean into.

The way I think about coaching is very much how I think about parenting, and I think it translates in lots of other places, that your ability to drive change is about the quality of your relationship, not your hierarchy.

What Sam looks for in founders: breadcrumbs from their past that hint at their trajectory, outsiders with a unique insight, unusually strong in one area, cognizant of their weaknesses, understand where they need to focus right now, have a way to inspire and bring people together

I'm a deep believer that people are power law too, whether you're running a small company or whether you're running a big company, your ability to attract the best in the world I think is so incredible.

On interviewing: Whoever's sitting across the table from me is getting my utmost attention and I suspect I can learn something that they know about the world. And I'm not just trying to evaluate them. I'm trying to learn at the same time.

What Sam wants to learn in an interview: how you learn, how you perceive the world, what you're interested in and how much you know about it, whether you're aware of the limitations of your knowledge, something unique that you know about the world, who you are and how you see yourself, where you want to be, is this the best fit for everyone's inter... See more