4 ms·
Another moral to this story that I haven’t seen mentioned yet: Don’t give unsolicited advice. Not only was this advice to buy a different company not asked fo
by awb 5y ago
Another moral to this story that I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
Don’t give unsolicited advice.
Not only was this advice to buy a different company not asked for, it was presented in a vague way: “They’re better than us”.
If I was the CEO of Yahoo on the receiving end of that, I’d be thinking a few things:
1) You don’t know my business well enough to be giving me unsolicited advice.
2) You’re passionate about subjective opinions: “They’re team is better than us.”
3) You appear to be lacking confidence by buying into this subjective thought that another team could be “better than” yours.
4) You don’t lead with the important information, about why you think they’re better: Are they more efficient? More experienced? More creative? More careful?
5) Your passion and attention is placed on the future rather than the present and the more important task that I’m paying you for which is integrating your business into our ecosystem.
The list probably goes on, but the phrase “They’re team is better than ours” raises a lot of red flags IMO.
Looks like it ended well in the end as they sold for 2x to Microsoft just 6mo later. A great example of “failing up”, which happens to a lot of successful entrepreneurs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- novaleaf 5y agoI don't think the introspection need be so nuanced. The instinctual "Why are you shit talking yourself? What did you just let slip that I don't know?!?" Is just as valid a red flag.
- md8z 5y agoOr it could just be a drunk person running their mouth and a nervous exec getting spooked. No need to overanalyze every word of conversation to look for red flags.
- DiggyJohnson 5y agoWell if the speaker is drunk, then its exactly excusable is it? Seems like I would rather take the parent comments point than wave it away as poor communication skills on the part of the listener, or intoxication of the speaker.
- quietbritishjim 5y agoMost clever people I know are self deprecating. Treating a sentence like that at face value is bizarre - it says more about the listener's people skills.
- raydev 5y ago> The instinctual "Why are you shit talking yourself? What did you just let slip that I don't know?!?" I'm not understanding your instinct here. My first thought would be "this guy I trust enough to spend 100m is super confident about another team too, even better to keep him around for further insights"
- omegalulw 5y ago> You appear to be lacking confidence by buying into this subjective thought that another team could be “better than” yours. I feel personally attacked !!
- 533474 5y agoWe don't know exactly how that conversation unfolded. Anyhow, they were lucky at the end