Find Your People

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.

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

All interviewing should be a matchmaking game of who they are and how they see themselves and where they want to be and is this is a fit. And if this isn't the best fit, isn't it in everyone's interest to get to that as soon as possible? Not six months after you're hired or six years down the line, you feel like you wasted a big chunk of your life ... See more

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.

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

Personally, I'm often looking for people who are quite pointy in one way or another, who are really unusual at one item here or there, and are cognizant of their weaknesses. And then the ones I really like are often open about their weaknesses and are keeping them their weaknesses, because they think it's an infinite game that you don't quite under... See more

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.

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.

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."