Juan Orbea

Valuation, growth, burn, and ambition are all a function of the size of the opportunity.

Instead, the most effective places to work are those that matter to your company but still have enough room to actually do work. What are priorities that will become critical in the future, where you can do great work ahead of time? Where are areas that are doing ok but could be doing great with your support?

As a senior leader, you have to maintain a hold on your ego to avoid investing into meaningless work at a grand scale. Taking the time to understand the status quo before shifting it will always repay diligence with results.

I think there are always circumstances that are involved too. And oftentimes with decision making, the circumstances, the soil in which decisions are made is a really critical and overlooked factor.

Worse, to be a successful preener requires a near invulnerability to criticism of your actual impact, and your true work will suffer if your energy is diverted to preening.

The first? Selling things online. Bezos was a trader with some exposure to internet companies, but this wasn't a years-long journey of discovery and understanding. This was a dude who read a stat on some random website, and thought "there's something here." Early on, most of that skepticism came from an inability for a startup to compete with large... See more