Tau 8th Annual Day · Speaker Spotlight
Ray Lane on Building Enduring Companies
Managing Partner at GreatPoint Ventures, Former Kleiner Perkins (Managing Partner) & Oracle (President & COO)
Ray Lane shared a decade of lessons on leadership, culture, and building companies that last. Below are the top 10 lessons that resonated most with our audience.
Trust is the aphrodisiac of leadership.
Technology changes, but leadership and company building are immutable.
Study great leaders of the past.
Lead from the coal face.
Spend a lot of time where your products are being used (not just where they’re purchased).
Be company builders, not just founders.
Focus on sustainability, not the next financing round.
Be a multiplier.
Hire the best people and constantly ask questions that allow them to make themselves better. Trust is the aphrodisiac of leadership.
Culture is defined by who you hire, promote, and terminate.
Culture is defined by who you hire, who you promote, and especially by who you terminate.
Don’t boil the ocean.
Focus on a use case that you can replicate and is easily scaled.
Spend 80% of your time defining the problem.
The solution will be obvious.
Your ability to pivot is critical.
Don’t cling to the past and embrace constructive destruction.
Hire for attitude and ownership.
Don’t hire for resumes.
Reward risk, candor, and speed.
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do, we hire them so they can tell us what to do.” – Steve Jobs
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do, we hire them so they can tell us what to do.