Maxims
Frank Slootman
- Most companies don’t die from starvation; they die from indigestion
- Execution is the strategy
- Culture is what you tolerate
- Focus is saying no to almost everything
- Speed is a feature
- Great companies are run, not discovered
- Clarity drives velocity
- Don’t confuse activity with progress
- The best people want to be on winning teams
- You have to raise the bar continuously
- If you want excellence, you have to insist on it
Richard Zeckhauser
- When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, go to an extreme case
- When you are having trouble getting your thinking straight, go to a simple case
- Don’t take refuge in complexity
- When trying to understand a complex real-world situation, think of an everyday analogue
- The world is much more uncertain than you think
- Think probabilistically about the world
- Uncertainty is the friend of the status quo
- Good decisions sometimes have poor outcomes
- Some decisions have a high probability of a bad outcome
- Errors of commission should be weighted the same as errors of omission
- Don’t be limited by the options you have in front of you
- Information is only valuable if it can change your decision
- Long division is the most important tool for policy analysis
- Elasticities are a powerful tool for understanding many important things in life
- Heterogeneity in the population explains many phenomena
- Capitalize on complementarities
- Strive hard not to be envious – see your friend’s success as your gain
- Eliminate regret
- Make pleasure-enhancing decisions long in advance, to increase the utility of anticipation.