Ravi Gupta (Sequoia) Opens Up About The Realities of Success | E164

Growth at rates like 20%, 40%, 80%, or 100% annually, which are considered normal in tech, are objectively insane from the perspective of traditional business—tech founders have become numb to extraordinary metrics.

“We have gotten numb to growth rates like 20%, 40%, 80%, 100%. I mean, this in any sort of day-to-day company outside of tech, these numbers are insane.”

When a pie is growing, organizational culture is oriented toward abundance, people are happy, and the leader can unite the group around shared upside; when growth stops, scarcity mentality kicks in, self-preservation becomes the priority, and people begin hoarding rather than expanding.

“when the pie is growing, we we live in this culture of abundance. Our mindset is surrounded by abundance. Yep. And so, it triggers our biology, like our biological instincts in a way that is growth-oriented... But the minute growth stops, it triggers scarcity. And what what do animals do in scarcity, right? Well, now it's about self-preservation. So, we hoard. And we... the culture actually changes, too, because now it's about over dividing the pie. I want to make sure I get my piece, and I want to make sure my piece is slightly bigger than yours.”

Earned success—the belief that happiness comes from achieving things through effort and practice, not from external validation or shortcuts—is a core belief to pass to children.

“earned success is the key to happiness. I really believe that... whatever you do, just make sure you feel like you're good at it, and make sure that you feel like you've earned some level of success in it. And that comes from trying. That comes from practicing. That comes from doing something hard.”

Growth is extraordinarily hard to restart once it stops; moving from flat or low single-digit growth back to double-digit growth is much harder than maintaining growth, and the intoxication of growth makes companies forget how to achieve it.

“growth is extraordinarily hard to come by once you've kind of stopped growing. It is so hard to get something to move up again. It is so hard... It's very hard to go from, you know, 2% growth or flat to 5% or 10%. And so, I think uh there's this Eric Schmidt quote of like growth solves all problems. It's not exactly right, but it's pretty close.”

Loss aversion prevents people from experimenting because experimentation requires risking what you already have; companies institute 'innovation budgets' separate from profit requirements, which constrains the ability to experiment effectively.

“you have the loss aversion, another element of human nature, of the only way sometimes to get it to go is you have to experiment, and you'd have to risk something that you already have. And so, people put in the constraint of, 'Well, I don't want to have I have a innovation budget. I have I want to keep my profits at this level. And all of a sudden you have some constraint that's actually quite hard to operate around.'”

Getting people to change behavior is extremely difficult; it requires a 10x improvement, not incremental improvements, because consumers quickly adapt and treat improvements as the new baseline.

“It is really hard to get somebody to change their behavior. This is this whole idea of it can't be 20% better, it can't be 40% better. It needs to be 10x better. It has to fundamentally change you know, your experience. And it's very hard to create things that are way better cuz we all talk to ourselves. Well, this is a little better here, it's a little better here, but nobody cares.”

Most short-term, reversible decisions don't matter and are overestimated in importance; the speaker doesn't care about many decisions and is comfortable letting others decide them.

“I think that most people dramatically overestimate the impact of most decisions, right? Like I think most short-term decisions don't really matter. And so the number of times that I will say I don't care about something is pretty high relative I think to most people.”

Most companies and leaders lose good people because they prioritize 'fairness' (compensation bands, leveling systems) over flexibility; when a great person is on the fence, they won't sacrifice organizational equity structures to retain them.

“somebody great will be like on the fence of staying, and you'll be like, well, could we do this on compensation? Could we do this on title? And they'll be like, well, the bands don't allow that. I'm like, you created the bands. What are we talking about? What The purpose of the bands is so that we win. That is a tool that we're using. Now, the band is preventing us from winning. What are we talking about? Right?”

The 'quality over quantity' principle is dangerously misapplied to young children; claiming that a few high-quality moments substitute for presence allows parents to justify being absent when unpredictable moments of deep connection actually occur frequently and require availability.

“for young kids, you have no idea when the good moments are coming. You have no idea when the quality moments are coming. It might not be at the birthday party. It might not be when you go to Disneyland. It actually might be when you're just like sitting on the couch and they say something that makes you like, 'Oh my gosh.' Right? There was somebody we spend a lot of time on like youth sports. We don't care We don't care if our kids like do anything with sports.”

Presence is more important than activity type; driving children to sports isn't valuable because they become elite athletes (they likely won't) but because car time is unstructured conversation time and presence time where connection happens naturally.

“The truth of the matter is I love being at my kids' sports games. They're having fun. I love watching them. I actually really enjoy driving them to those events. Because kids kind of forget when they're in the car. They have nowhere else to go and they're super chatty. Right? And getting a lot of those in-between moments with them.”

People who misuse pattern-matching from past success self-sabotage by assuming past knowledge applies to new problems; continuing to earn success in each new context is required.

“One way that folks self-sabotage is thinking your past knowledge is enough rather than treating the problem at hand like it's hard and deserves study. I think a lot of times people overly pattern match from the past, particularly in in investing business. Um and they sort of think that they have the ability to be right because they were right before. And it's like, no. Like, you got to go earn it each time.”

When two people disagree on a decision, rating how much each cares (1-10) resolves deadlock: the person who cares more decides; if both care equally (rare), debate continues; this prevents both capitulation and forced consensus.

“when they catch themselves arguing, they would basically they can't say seven, but they would rate how important it is to them on a scale of one to 10. Yep. And he's like very rarely was it ever a tie. Yes. And often I'd be like six and she's an eight and he's like, oh, well, then you decide, right?”

When faced with what seems like a bad set of options, exceptional decision-makers don't accept the premise; they reframe the problem and turn a bad situation into a good option through execution.

“I think the thing that I admire when people have that though is they kind of make it into a good option. So, when Amazon bought Whole Foods, that was a terrible moment for us at the time... We can't get Amazon not to buy Whole Foods... So, 43% of our volume is now gone... I think what we did a good job of was, okay, our only way out is if this is the impetus for other grocers to work with us... And it ended up being an amazing impetus.”

Google's success is not due to its compensation bands, leveling systems, and processes; those are bolted on around a genuine product advantage (ubiquitous use with advertising leverage). Cargo-culting Google's processes without the underlying competitive advantage is a mistake.

“people will be like, 'Well, we should use the the comp system or the leveling system that Google uses. Look at how big of a company Google is.'... Google is a giant company. It is a very successful company. It has a lot of processes... I don't think that's the reason Google's successful. I think the reason Google's successful is because they have a product that you have to use most of the time you use the internet and they effectively get to charge you a toll every time you use it.”

Quality over quantity applies to teams: roughly 5-10% of people deliver 90% of value, yet most companies don't act like those people are systematically more important; this misallocation of attention and resources is a mistake.

“if I think about the jobs you've had, okay, and you look at the percentage of people that delivered 90% of the value in the places you've worked. Right? What percentage would you put on it?... So, that's a pretty extreme thing... What company acts like 5% of the people deliver 90% of the value? Mhm. Very few. Very few.”

Willpower is limited; making the gym a daily non-negotiable (rather than conditional) removes the daily negotiation and converts it to a scheduling problem, which is easier than a motivational problem.

“every day is easier than some days. Because if I go to the gym some days, it ends up being a negotiation with myself... But if I go every day, there is no negotiation about whether I'm going to do it. So whether I'm going to do it is predetermined. So I go every day. The negotiation becomes when do I fit this in my schedule?”

When a couple shares the same optimization function (e.g., 'what's best for the family'), disagreements become vastly easier to resolve because both parties trust they're seeking the same outcome.

“After we had kids, we basically never had an argument about that. Not once... Why? We have arguments about other things. We never had an argument about like, what do we go do? And the reason is actually simple. We actually both very clearly know what the optimization function is. Both of us have the same one. What is best for the family?... you can hear something that's kind of a cuckoo idea on its face, and you're like, no, I'm listening, because I know that we have the same goal.”

When people maintain two personalities across contexts, others feel they're getting an inauthentic version and this becomes an impediment to trust because it's unclear how to predict future behavior.

“you're sort of like why don't I get that person? Man, I would love to work with that person... you feel like you're not getting the real person, right?... it becomes an impediment to trust too in a way, right? Because it's like who am I getting? How do I predict what I'm getting?”

The 'reality distortion field' attributed to Steve Jobs is a misinterpretation; Jobs' actual approach was ambitious standard-setting for his team, not ignoring market feedback—he still paid attention to whether customers loved the product and whether it sold.

“I think that's actually been pretty negative overall to the like startup ecosystem because I think that people have heard that as Steve Jobs didn't embrace reality and Steve Jobs I actually think that his was quite different. That was a representation of ambition... He still was embracing reality as to whether or not people loved the product, right? He still was embracing reality as to whether or not it was selling and things like that.”

A medal is valuable only if it provides a 'memory dividend'—the ability to reflect back on genuine accomplishment—not because it is shiny or given for mere participation.

“the medal is valuable because I read something recently... it was talking about memory dividends. And the reason that the medal is valuable is if it provides you with a memory dividend, which something you can think back on as to, 'Oh my gosh, this is what this represents.' And if you get it for just going, then like come on.”

Reality is undefeated; the sooner you figure out what reality is and embrace it, the sooner you can do something about it—as opposed to thinking about problems abstractly without taking action.

“I have a couple of things that I say a lot at home, I say a lot at work, and I say a lot, you know, in any setting where someone will listen to me. But two things. One, reality is undefeated. Right? Reality is undefeated and the second is embrace reality. The the sooner you figure out what reality is and you embrace it, then you can do something about it, right?”

Every investment decision requires identifying 1-3 critical factors that must go right; maintaining maniacal focus on those factors is essential and this approach applies to leadership across contexts.

“every time you make an investment, you are kind of thinking, 'Here are the three things that need to go right in order for this thing to work.' And I think that that logic or that focus and that kind of belief, I think has applied when I worked at Instacart, it applies when I work at Sequoia, um and it is I feel like a pretty enduring lesson of, you know, what are the things that you're actually betting on?”

Good decision-makers are intentional about whose counsel they seek for which decisions rather than defaulting to group consensus; they match advisor expertise to decision domain and control information flow deliberately.

“they're actually pretty good at figuring out whose advice they want and whose advice they don't want. I think a lot of great decision makers, they they are not polite when it comes to the decision. They just decide whose opinion they care about and they're super targeted and thoughtful and it's different people for different topics, right?”

A quote on his desk from Michigan State coach Tom Izzo—'It's not because you've got to, it's because you get to'—reminds him that he chose his work, so he should make it worth the time away from family.

“I have a quote on my desk, and it's from Tom Izzo, the coach of Michigan State... And it says on there, 'It's not because you've got to, it's because you get to.' And it's a reminder of dude, you chose to do this job... You every day, you don't have to do it. And so if you're going to do it, remember like you you made the decision to go and spend your time away from your family doing this.”

Focus applies to personal life: time with people who matter should be the main thing, and making decisions consistent with that definition of success is how you avoid drift.

“it applied everywhere... it applies personally. Well your relationship with your wife and your children or relationship with your spouse and your children. Well, that seems like the main thing. Cool. How do you make sure that you actually are investing in that above everything else? Right? How do you make sure that the people that you're spending time with are the ones that you actually want to spend time with?”

It's easy to compromise on focus by saying yes because people feel good and you feel like you're listening; but each compromise is a small erosion of focus, and the cumulative effect destroys organizational clarity.

“it's at risk of breaking cuz it's also easy to say yes, people feel good. You you you feel like you're listening. A lot of times it can feel like you're being obstinate when you're not when you you know, it just feels easy to make that little compromise. And then the same thing, it's at risk of breaking all the time”

Parag simultaneously acknowledges fear that his commitment to family over absolute professional excellence might be holding him back, but recognizes he's 'not fearful enough to change it'—accepting the trade-off consciously.

“maybe I should say I'm kind of fearful that what you just said is true. But I'm not fearful enough to change it, you know?”

Advice from his father at the start of his first job—don't maintain separate work and home personalities because it will exhaust you and force you to live two different lives.

“He said, 'Listen, son. Don't have a work personality and a home personality. It'll just tire you out. And you know, you don't want to have to live two different lives.'”

Building a real business is extraordinarily hard; every business, if studied in detail, is fascinating and complex—not 'a dime a dozen' as entrepreneurs sometimes assume.

“I learned it is extremely hard to build a real business... I think that when you first get there, you think that those are just a dime a dozen and they exist all over the place. But, anytime you go and study one, you realize that every business is fascinating if you're willing to go down to the details. Every single one.”

Writing forces clarity and exposes weaknesses in thinking; many exceptional decision-makers maintain memos for themselves (not distribution) to test their reasoning and identify gaps.

“good ones... I think a lot of them write, and they kind of write for themselves. Because it reflects the It reflects the um It exposes the weaknesses of their process... you'll ask them something and they'll be like, 'Let me show you this memo I wrote.' And the memo won't have been distributed anyone. It'll just be for them.”

A child's sense of being cared for is built through everyday consistency and presence, not through grand gestures; founders who achieve professional success while neglecting family often experience relationship erosion not as a sudden break but as a slow, corrosive loss of presence and attention.

“the way it plays out Shane is a lot of times it's sort of like the uh moment-by-moment corrosive behavior uh of just sort of that's the thing that you want to talk about. That's the thing that has your attention... I'm not present. It's that the only thing that It's that when she's talking about something, the thing that's going through my head is the thing that I'm thinking about and it's something related to work... It's that like when I go to the I'll still go to the kids' stuff but I'm not paying attention.”

Choosing to be liked rather than respected as a leader is self-sabotage because it breaks the algorithm people use to predict your behavior; the only reliable thing people can use to trust you is that you consistently make decisions in the company's best interest.

“I think people sometimes choose to be loved rather than respected. And I think that uh when you when you do that you you optimize for people liking you in the moment rather than respecting you in the long term... all you can really do as a leader of a company is have people believe that the decisions you're making are always in the best interest of the company. And I think anything you do that breaks that algorithm, anything, I think it might serve you in the moment and that it ultimately comes back to bite you.”

If you can't articulate what outcome matters and why, you should defer to others and let them decide; when you have clarity on what outcome you're optimizing for, you can afford to lose most battles.

“in that case, like, you know, this happens all the time where a founder or someone you work with, they will ask you a question. And you have Remember, you have very little context... So, I think a fair amount of time the answer when it's comes to that is like, well, here are the things that I would be considering. Here are the dimensions that would inform my decision. But I actually know less about those dimensions than you do.”

The lesson from Jobs and similar high-standard leaders is not 'ignore market signals' but rather 'consistent relentless raising of the standard,' which means being willing to be disliked in pursuit of excellence.

“The things that are interesting are like if you tear apart the iPhone, even the switch even the board underneath is you know, clean and gorgeous and thoughtful. And I think that even the words on the back of the iPhone where it says, you know, 'Designed in California, assembled in China.' Like it doesn't say 'Made in China.' And so every choice that they made, I think represents those are cool stories about Jobs and the standard that he had and these sort of willingness to be disliked in the name of going to get excellence.”

Parental emphasis on success and aversion to laziness was a strong cultural signal in the household, deeply influenced by parents being Indian immigrants with a specific definition of what achievement looked like.

“my parents are from India, and I think that they have a very strong sense of what success looks like... there was a very clear message from them around like, 'Look, you got to get after it. There there is laziness was like a huge um ding in our household. It was just so offensive, you know, to be lazy.'”

Participation trophy culture fails to solve the actual problem, which is a child's disappointment about not winning and wanting to understand why; the solution requires parents having hard conversations about what would need to change to win next time.

“we've solved that by like, 'Okay, cool. We'll just give everyone a trophy.' It's like, 'No, the way you solve that is by going home and having the hard conversation with your child afterwards of if you want to win, why do you think we didn't win?'... The easy answer is, 'Well, sure. We'll give everyone a trophy.' But that doesn't solve the actual problem.”

If you can identify one of the 5% of people delivering 90% of value, you should spend an enormous amount of time to find and keep them; finding trajectory-changing people may be the entire job of a leader.

“if you can get one of those five, right? You should spend a crazy amount of time going to find them. Right? You should spend a crazy amount of time getting to know people who could possibly be one of those five... And actually, the entire point of being a leader might be to go find two or three trajectory-changing people for the company, rather than all of the other things that make you feel like you're making more linear forward progress.”

The job of the leader is to ensure the organization stays focused on what matters; sprawl and compromises on focus destroy the leader's primary obligation to the organization.

“this quote is exactly right. You have to keep focus on the thing that matters. And actually that is the job of the leader is making sure that the organization is focused on the thing that matters. And sprawl and uh just spending time in little compromises on that is a disaster. And it actually it it is a it destroys the obligation you have as the leader.”

Two-way doors (reversible decisions) should be made quickly for velocity and learning; one-way doors (irreversible decisions) require careful deliberation, and good decision-makers distinguish between them.

“I think the really good decision makers, what they do is they're very good at identifying the one-way doors versus the two-way doors, right? And on the one-way doors, their metric is, you know, speed. And they're sort of like, I need the feedback as soon as possible. Or sorry, on the two-way doors, their feedback mechanism is just like, I got to I got to optimize for speed.”

The refrigerator interview question (what do you do when equipment fails?), which values action-oriented problem-solving over analysis, is an excellent proxy for identifying people who focus on solving the actual problem rather than optimizing for complexity.

“she would say, 'Look.' She's interviewing somebody. 'Hey, you're um one of the managers in San Francisco and one of the people at the store in at the Safeway in Potrero Hill calls you and says, 'Hey, look. The refrigerator where we store the groceries... The refrigerator's not working, right?... And she said you'd get all these answers... she'd hire every time... the people... 'I'd go to Potrero Hill and I'd fix the fridge or I'd go and stop somewhere else and buy a new fridge and bring it there.'”

The number of conversations at companies about things unrelated to survival is remarkable; leaders could spend all remaining cash months on low-impact discussions without solving the actual problem.

“the number of conversations that people would have because they didn't know, right? About things that had nothing to do with that was remarkable. And I realized I could spend my whole I could spend 6 months, I could spend 11 months, I could spend all of our cash months left doing things that didn't matter to the one thing that actually was going to determine if we had a business.”

A founder who felt down got dramatically better mood and agency by shifting from thinking about a problem to working on it, even when only 1% progress was made, because action beats rumination.

“I have a friend who's a founder and he was he was down like 6 months ago... And we went and we had dinner and you know, it's not like the dinner ended and all of a sudden he was feeling great. But then 3 weeks later he sounded like a different person... 'instead of just thinking about the problem in the last few weeks, we've just started working on it'... 'we've only made like 1% progress. But he's like, it's so much better now that we're just working on it.'”

Instacart's core unsolved problem remains ensuring customers get all items they ordered or receive adequate substitutes that match their actual needs, which is difficult because grocery stores don't have perfect inventory and customer preferences for substitutes are often unpredictable.

“it's really hard to get everything you ordered every time. It's just It is It is a hard problem... A typical I order has 15 to 20 items in it... we have a very high chance of finding that specific item. But grocery stores don't always know exactly what's in it... people's algorithms for what they want to replace it with are not always the same.”

Instacart had 10+ years of accumulated mistakes and learning when the speaker joined; this deep institutional knowledge is a competitive advantage against new entrants who think the problem is simple.

“you know, Instacart started in 2012. So at this point, you know, the company is, you know, 10 and a half years old... the company has, you know, made 10 and a half years of mistakes. This is hard. Um and I think that that is actually a huge advantage and you think about what we were talking about earlier on businesses, businesses being fascinating, businesses being interesting, businesses being complicated.”

A practical framework for nutrition: there are 21 meals in a week; to lose weight, 19+ should be 'good' meals; to maintain, 15-19; below 15 leads to weight gain. This removes decision-making from most meals.

“there's 21 meals in a week. Okay? He goes, 'If you want to lose weight, 19 or more of them have got to be good meals. Okay? If you want to maintain your weight, 15 to 19 of them are going to be good meals. And if you're less than 15, you're probably going to gain weight.'”

Steve Jobs cared obsessively about the quality of every detail—including the back of products no one would see—because craftsmanship and beauty are intrinsic values, not means to an end of reputation.

“There was this beautiful cabinet that he saw, okay? And he loved it, and he thought it was gorgeous. And then he looked around the back of it, and in the back of it was plywood, and it was ugly. And he was so offended by this notion that the front of it was beautiful and the back of it was ugly because someone's like no one's ever going to see the back. And he's like, 'No, I see the back. The back should be beautiful, too.'”

In a memorable parenting moment, Parag's youngest son (Sovan, age 8) spontaneously rejected an offered medal from his older brothers, saying 'No, that's okay. I want to earn my medal,' demonstrating that the value of earned success had been internalized through exposure and observation rather than explicit instruction.

“Sovan, my 8-year-old, you You I don't say anything. My wife doesn't say anything. He looks at them and he says he smiles. He said, 'No, that's okay. I want to earn my medal.'”

An African proverb states that every morning a gazelle wakes up knowing it must outrun the fastest lion or die, and every lion wakes up knowing it must outrun the slowest gazelle or starve—both are motivated to run immediately because reality hits with high speed and high cost.

“every morning in Africa uh gazelle wakes up and knows that if he doesn't outrun the fastest lion, he's going to die. Okay, cool. So he wakes up running. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up and knows if he doesn't outrun the slowest gazelle, he's going to starve. So he wakes up running.”

The hard problem in investing and founding is not identifying what matters but signaling what you actually care about and getting your team to focus on it, because investors and wrong signals during bull markets made founders believe they were succeeding when they were actually building unsustainable businesses.

“But I think the duration of their perspective was not necessarily correct in that ultimately, you know, your business is going to be measured on the financial performance of it and the financial performance is a representation of how much customer love there is and how much what you've actually created. But I think the point, Shane, for me on getting people to embrace reality is 'Okay, cool. That signal that you're looking at is supportive of the point that we're doing great. What about all these other signals?'”

A hypothetical test: asking candidates to identify the most important thing in a complex scenario (rather than asking conventional questions) would correlate strongly with on-the-job performance because it tests the core decision-making skill.

“I'm formulating a hypothesis as we talk that if you were to give somebody a complicated scenario, and this was the only interview question, and the only question was identify the most important thing in this scenario, that that would correlate to outstanding job performance. I like that. Yeah, I you know... that would be a really good proxy for on-the-job actual performance.”

Time with people who matter most is a non-renewable resource; most people don't allocate enough to this category; the geographic distribution of family (having parents/relatives far away) is a significant tradeoff of American career mobility.

“I don't know what percentage of your time do you spend with the people that matter most to you? A lot of people, not very much... I made a pretty weird decision to go and like live pretty far away from them... I wonder if that's an experiment that's not going to turn out to be right.”

If the world's highest professional achievement requires sacrificing family presence and relationship quality, the speaker chooses not to pursue it; this represents a clear values hierarchy where family comes first.

“if what it takes to be the best in the world at the thing that I'm doing is to lose some of those aspects that we're talking about, then I don't want it... Number one is the family and it it and it is sort of what Avni and the kids are going to say about the way I was and am with them.”

Bill Campbell (legendary executive coach) represents the highest professional standard in terms of how he cared for people and what he meant to them; aspiring to his level of impact is valuable even if unattainable.

“the person I admire the most professionally, at least from a distance, is Bill Campbell. The way that people talk about what he did for them and how much he cared for them and, you know, what he um meant to them. That is an impossible standard that I will never ever ever reach, but that to me is a pretty amazing professional like hero to have.”

The principle 'keep the main thing the main thing' originated from Jim Barksdale and became real for the speaker at Instacart when facing an existential cash crisis; recognizing the single critical thing determines whether you survive.

“this is a quote that came from I think Jim Barksdale. Um but you know, I remember the first time I saw it and I remember just the wording and why it sat with me, but it almost sounds silly when you first hear it. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing... when I was at Instacart, right? It came to life for me when I was at Instacart because there are so many people pulling you in different directions about the thing that they want to talk about.”

There are no points for degree of difficulty in problem-solving; simplicity and effectiveness matter more than complexity; the best solution is often the most straightforward one.

“this is not gymnastics. There's no points for degree of difficulty. Let's just go let's just get to the the right answer. Let's go. If it's hard, it's hard. Cool, but sometimes it's not hard. Let's just do the thing.”

Climate or social responsibility initiatives can be justified via recruiting talent or signal-posting, but if they're not the main thing, they distract from actual survival and should be rejected by leaders.

“somebody would say, 'What are we doing for climate? Climate is a big deal. What are we doing for climate?' And you want to tell people like it will help with recruiting some great engineers if we are really forward-thinking on climate, right? And so you can talk yourself into, well, that it'll help us if we have the best people in the world... gosh, like maybe we should have a climate program. Uh but we shouldn't have. That was not the right answer for the company at that time.”

Parag wrote one of his pieces he's most proud of on his phone's notes app during a layover on a red-eye flight because he felt the impulse to write, which would never have happened if he'd deferred the idea.

“One of my one of the things that I wrote that I'm most proud of is actually it didn't get get of attention or anything like that. But, um and it shouldn't have because it's very like niche thing. But, I wrote it on my notes section on my phone in the airport ... I was taking a red eye and I was, you know, I was a connecting red eye and it was in between the connection. And I wrote it there.”

At Sequoia, every person writes down their single most important thing for the week on a shared Google Sheet and shares it with the full team, enforcing the discipline of identifying one priority and making progress transparent.

“every Tuesday, every single person writes down their most important thing for the week. And we And we share it. We like literally have it on a Google Sheet. Every person, what is the most important thing you are doing this week?... The purpose is to have one”

Parag is not a perfectionist—he's comfortable being indifferent about many decisions and saying 'whatever you want is fine' on two-way doors, which differs from people who believe 'the way you do anything is the way you do everything.'

“but I think that most people dramatically overestimate, I'm not a perfectionist. I am not I am not. That's not like my any gram or whatever. And so there's some people are sort of like the way you do anything is the way you do everything. Everything is important and we we got to get everything. We need to, you know, have a really tight process around all that. I am not like that at all. So many things if someone say, 'I don't care. It's fine. Whatever you want to do is fine.'”

The speaker is uncertain whether achieving world-class excellence while maintaining family presence is actually possible; he observes that most elite performers in any domain have sacrificed family relationships.

“I hold this thought which which doesn't conflict with that, but sort of wrestles with it in an interesting way, which is I I I believe you can be the best in the world at anything and be a well-balanced person... the vast majority of people that I think about as best in the world, I would agree with you on. Right? Most of the examples that I think of uh I do think they tend to not be that well-adjusted.”