Riccardo Busetti's Key Ideas from Amp It Up
by Frank Slootman

It is common for people to ask to get back to others within a week or more. Instead of expanding times, you should start compressing cycle times.

If we just change our mindset we can move so much quicker and this means working under a sense of energy and urgency.

Good performers crave a culture of energy.

Hiring is hard but firing is even harder. If we know that something or someone is not working out, why should we wait to pull the trigger? When there is doubt, there is no doubt.

Good leaders are honest, they explain that none of us are truly safe in our roles for any length of time. If this fact makes people uncomfortable, that's good. You need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because the only alternative is denialism.

Seek to exploit every ounce of potential you are entrusted with.

If you want to win big, imagine a radically different future that is not tethered to the past. This is why innovation always seems to come from the least expected places. They don't have a past to care about.

If you don't know how to execute, every strategy will fail, even the most promising ones.

Execution is hard, and great execution is scarce—which makes it another great source of competitive advantage.

Culture describes how people come together as a group on a day‐to‐day basis. It is not about making people feel good per se, it’s about enabling the mission with the behaviors and values that serve that purpose.

If you want to create a strong culture, you have to drive a more consistent set of behaviors, norms, and values and most importantly you have to focus on consistent and clearly defined consequences, day in and day out.

You know you have created a good culture when most of the organization is willing to defend and promote those values and call out deviations on a day‐to‐day basis.

The key takeaways while creating a company are:

• Attack weakness, not strength.
• Either create a cost advantage or neutralize someone else's.
• It's much easier to attack an existing market than create a new one.
• Early adopters buy differently than later adopters.
• Stay close to home in the early going.
• Build the whole product or solve the whole problem as fast as you can.
• Bet on the correct enabling technologies.
• Architecture is everything.
• Prepare to transform your strategy sooner than you expect.

There are two kind of people in companies, drivers and passengers.

Passengers are people that live with the "enough" attitude, meaning that they want to do only what is expected and nothing more.

Drivers on the other hand get their satisfaction from making things happen, not blending in with the furniture. They like to take ownership, drive initiatives, motivate people...

You should have a company full of drivers.

Nothing puts rocket fuel in your career tank more than what other people say about you. Bosses, peers, and subordinates will all have strong opinions about what you're like to work with.

Smart managers know that for anyone well beyond entry level, exhaustive referencing builds a clearer portrait of a candidate than any number of interviews.