An "A-Player" is someone amazing at what they do and never satisfied with the status quo. These are the kind of people that crank out an MVP that will need to b

An "A-Player" is someone amazing at what they do and never satisfied with the status quo. These are the kind of people that crank out an MVP that will need to be replaced as soon as you start to scale. They are (generally) terrible in teams, but necessary to keep a company from becoming complacent and thus slowly dying. A "B-Player" is someone competent. These are the people that do most of the work to make a solid product. A sizable company needs to be 80%+ B-players to be stable in the long term. On the other hand, a company of only B-players is prone to disruption from those better able to respond to the market. "C-Players" are the people who don't contribute much, or even drag down the company. They may be incompetent or have a poisonous attitude. Too many C-players will doom a company to failure. These definitions are how "A-Player" and so on are described to big corporations, so YMMV with startups and small companies.