High Growth Handbook Quotes

“The people who are thriving—at any level, junior to senior—tend to have people approaching their desk all the time.” —Keith Rabois”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“Sometimes that gets confused, though, because the group thinks they’re the decision-maker and that the goal is consensus. When really the goal is, “Let’s hash it out together. We may not all agree. One person will be the decision-maker, and then we will all commit to it.” If you don’t clarify what kind of decision this is, then groups really struggle because their expectations are not set correctly.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“There are many natural benefits and tailwinds that Silicon Valley enjoys, but I think this is one of the challenges we face. And if Silicon Valley is supplanted by another region, or even just more broadly by a general diffusion, I think this is one of the top contenders as to why that would be the case. It’s because we had too much wealth, we had too much early success, and it caused us to lose our hunger and our edge.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“When a company is in hypergrowth, you want to leverage the momentum and growth. It’s okay to slap on these Band-Aids when a company is in that phase. But the key thing to keep in mind is that you need to be able to hire quickly so those Band-Aids are replaced by people who can actually grow solutions that will scale.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“Similarly, on the attention-to-detail front, it’s easy to describe things in overly milquetoast terms without being really explicit, like: “If you work with us, you’re going to have to be okay with your work being repeatedly designated as inadequate, and okay with it being redone several times over.” These aren’t things that everyone is looking for. And you’re going to have to be okay with some people having that conversation with you and deciding that it’s not for them.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“great for the role, but he seems borderline or outright bad culturally. The right strategy is to not hire the person. “If there is a doubt, there is no doubt” unfortunately proves itself to be true over and over again.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“And then suddenly the company starts working, and the company itself becomes more of the product.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“The person who’s not scaling to the new level of complexity of the business and the size of the team and the different kinds of problems, that’s different—that’s not necessarily a mistake. You would possibly have made the same decision if you had the same information you have now. Whereas the mistake, if you had the same information, you would not go back and make the same decision. So that one, you definitely want to limit to one digit if you can. The scale and”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“One technique I learned, actually from Brian Chesky at Airbnb, is to go find the five best people in Silicon Valley that do that role, and just have coffee with them. And just chat. In that dialogue, I think you form an ability to benchmark the differences between an A+ and a B+, so that when you meet new candidates, actual candidates, you can triangulate against the people you’ve met that are clearly stellar.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“As you scale, you realize, “Huh, I really need more of these.” And the danger is getting too process-y instead of outlining the objectives so people understand, “Okay, we’re doing this for this reason.” It’s almost like you want to provide more context versus trying to exert more control. Because maybe in a very autocratic, hierarchical, bureaucratic structure you can exert control and you can micromanage. But most successful, high-growth, fast-moving companies are instead an environment of smart people who are all trying to optimize and do the right thing.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“Design: Design the optimal visual and user experience for the product. Engineering: Build the product. Suggest how the technical road map can drive product and vice versa. Product: Set the product vision and road map and ensure the company builds a product that the user needs. Make trade-offs and prioritize between design, engineering, and business concerns.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“I think there are five top responsibilities of a CEO: being the steward of and final arbiter of the senior management; being the chief strategist; being the primary external face for the company, at least in the early days; almost certainly being the chief product officer, although that can change when you’re bigger; and then taking responsibility and accountability for culture.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“You do not want to preserve culture; you want to collectively steer the right evolution of the culture.” —Patrick Collison”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“This means once a year you should take a real one- to two-week vacation, and every quarter you should take a three-day weekend. If you are working every day, I strongly suggest that you start enforcing a personal no-work day at least once a week.”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

“All startup advice is only useful in context, and I am a firm believer that the only good generic startup advice is that there is no good generic startup advice. So take what is written here with a grain of salt—it is very much one person’s experiences,”
― Elad Gil, High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People