What I read/listened-to the week of 02/19?
What I read
The traits we look for in (product) engineers at PostHog
- For example, this one: Small Differences and Consistent Compounding
Jeff Dean (Google): Exciting Trends in Machine Learning
- Elad Gil is a technology entrepreneur as well as an investor and advisor to many of the biggest startups of the past decade. This is an excellent post on the open questions he has about AI.
- Get outside and walk, both literally and metaphorically.
- Membership-renewal rates are upwards of 90%. Costco’s return on capital is nearly 20%, more than twice as high as Walmart’s, even though its sales are less than half. And staff turnover is just 8%.
The Spend, Spend, Spend Strategy Behind Temu’s Rapid Ascent in America
- The discount marketplace was the fifth-largest advertiser in the U.S. by digital-ad spending in the fourth quarter of 2023, driving up ad prices by outbidding rivals and luring away shoppers from dollar stores, Etsy, and even Amazon. “Analysts say Temu is disrupting U.S. e-commerce with tried-and-true competition tactics used by Chinese companies, which involve earning razor-thin profits or losing money in exchange for market share.
How Zapier Automates Billions of Tasks
- Zapier Architecture Overview (5 minutes)
What I listened to
Building a world-class sales org | Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)
with the quite long podcast:
• How far you should go without a salesperson
• Signs it’s time to hire salespeople
• Why you need to hire two salespeople
• How to compensate your salespeople
• How to interview salespeople
• When to hire a VP of Sales
• How to prevent their flaming out
• How to scale your sales org
• How to improve the relationship between your sales and product teams
Have a great week ahead!
