Frank Slootman may be one of the most effective tech CEOs of all time. He has written several books about his no-nonsense operating style, from growing Data Domain from tiny startup to billion dollar acquisition in the early aughts, to now leading Snowflake which had the largest software IPO ever in 2020. It’s no secret among my friends how much I admire Frank’s approach; in fact, some have started referring to me as “Sklootman” – a comical nod to our similar names.

Frank’s most recent book, Amp It Up, tells the story of his career and offers a plethora of guidance for anyone who is operating a growing business today. You can buy the book here, and below are my top takeaways and quotes.

1. Clearly define a priority

“Priority should ideally only be used as a singular word. The moment you have many priorities, you actually have none.”

As with much of what Frank writes, it’s so simple, yet rarely executed well. We cannot prioritize when everything is a priority. This plagues so many organizations, from chasing the random whim of the CEO to overreacting to market news and quickly pivoting a strategy. The best run companies have a very small amount of clear priorities, and ruthlessly focus on executing them well, pushing everything else aside.

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I run every weekday morning at 7:30am. I run the same route, at the same time, every day. I don’t have to think much about it, nor do I agonize over whether or not today is a good day for a run. I just show up and go.

Routines are a remarkable thing. When they work, much of the mental load needed to make decisions simply melts away. Routines are the manifestation of systems created to achieve your goals. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear writes “you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” Indeed, for many of us, establishing a system that creates a recurring routine is the best path to accomplishing a goal, whether it be staying in shape, writing in your blog or hitting your sales target.

Upon further reflection, I recognized many more examples of “routines” that help reduce mental load and ensure I am on top of my objectives as a startup leader. Here are the top 10 routines that I’ve found particularly beneficial:

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Effective founders and CEOs may spend as much as 50% of their time on recruiting. As the organization grows, most of the time gets spent hiring world-class functional leaders and other high-impact roles. The investment in time is usually worth it: when that “functional seat” is filled, the CEO can step out of the weeds and focus on the broader business.

Despite the heavy time investment, we often get it wrong. As much as 70% of new executives fail in the first 18 months. Making a bad senior hire is a costly mistake. A poor fit can permeate throughout an organization, contaminating everyone they collaborate with, spreading misaligned cultural values, taking the team in the wrong direction, or worse.

Therefore, it’s worth digging into the tactical process used to interview and assess a senior level hire. While there are many articles dedicated to great interview questions, sourcing, etc, I focused this one on the nitty-gritty steps through an interview funnel for a remote-first startup. Here’s the breakdown of how my team has done it at Crystal:

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If you had told me in 2019 that in the following year I’d be hiring a VP Sales without ever meeting him in person, I would have burst out laughing.

Fast forward to 2020, and with the world in lockdown but business continuing, my team at Crystal doubled our headcount while operating completely remotely. Once the hires were made, we were left with the critical task of getting them up to speed and productive as fast as possible, all while working from home.

As I thought more about the task ahead, I recognized perhaps the most crucial difference between remote and in-person onboarding:

• In person, when your new employee has a complex question, it’s really easy and socially acceptable for them to walk over and ask you.
• Remotely, when your new employee has a complex question, they need to take the initiative to call you, or put the effort into wording it the right way in Slack.

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The news hit me like a load of bricks:

Our VP of Sales and Customer Success were leaving the company.

At the time, my startup was going through the growing pains that many do, including turmoil amongst the leadership team. With this leadership transition, there was now an immediate gap that would need to be filled in order to keep the company operating smoothly.

I was serving as VP of Growth, overseeing marketing and operations. I had developed a reputation as someone who is willing to take on whatever is needed, and while I may not have been qualified to have the responsibility on Day 1, I was willing to quickly learn. So, it wasn’t a surprise that as the rest of the leadership team gathered, we decided that I should absorb those functions for the time being.

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There’s a common frustration with startup offices:

They are too loud.

Anyone who creates things — whether it be coding, designing, or writing — recognizes the benefit of deep work. The term was popularized in a book by Cal Newport, and the premise is straight-forward: in order to complete a cognitively demanding task, you need to focus without distraction. While this concept has been called many things, such as “hitting flow” or “being in the zone” it basically means that if you want to get shit done, you have to focus on it.

Your professional future usually depends on your ability to get shit done, and that’s a problem, because many startups are inflicted by a plague that has crept up among the ping pong tables, open floor layouts and endless chat conversations. That plague is noise and distraction, and it can kill productivity. When I say noise, I don’t just mean physical noise of people talking loudly in the office (though that is certainly part of the problem), but I also mean digital noise, from Slack channels and email threads that suck away our attention into conversations that we often have no need to participate in.

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This is article #31 out of 50 in The Startup Marketing Playbook.

In the not so distant past, “marketing” was primarily focused on large scale media campaigns in print, billboards and television. The marketing role often mandated expertise in project management or some serious creative juice. Those skills are certainly still important, but now there are new skills that are critical for marketers to have: technical skills.

If you consider hiring a recent graduate from college looking to get into marketing, the following technical skills have become a requirement:

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As a startup grows, the company naturally divides into functions (marketing, product, etc). When this occurs, the team starts to spend more time with people in their function, making it difficult to understand each other’s unique contributions to the company.

For my team at Netpulse, we’re about 85 people between San Francisco and Europe. It’s pretty tough to get to know everyone and understand what it’s like to do their job. So our People Ops Manager, Valerie Ramos, devised an interested strategy: use Snapchat.

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