High Growth Handbook Hardcover – July 17, 2018

I’m a fan of Elad’s writing (many of these article started as blog posts), and the advice in this book is worth a read.

But as a product, I suggest avoiding the hardcover version. The typography is so small that I can’t just lean back and read it. I recognize it’s odd to focus on such a thing for a book review, but this fact made the book unusable for me.

This book feels like a collection of recommendations on how to hire for every single jobs in a high growth company (COO, VP of X/Y/Z). Some good advices for sure but I would have love something more focused on strategies, improvements, processes, mistakes, things to avoid than just hiring hiring hiring. It may be because I haven't run a High Growth companies (yet?), I guess the few people who do (and have a big budget) will probably enjoy this book a lot. For anyone running a small/early startup and looking at emulating some behaviour/decision I don't think you will get the amazing insights I was after...

Elad has produced perhaps the most comprehensive resource for scaling an organization from one to one thousand people, sharing the experience of his own professional adventures in scaling companies, in conjunction with wisdom shared during interviews of some who have successfully scaled organizations. I bought this looking for assistance in scaling two startups working to lead the global energy industry, and as I currently live outside of Silicon Valley, there are no easily accessible relevant credible experts to consult.

Elad recommends utilizing the book as a reference, and I think it would be most useful to those who read sections personally relevant to their careers, since reading this book in its entirety is a bit like reading about how to win the Super Bowl, where few have the inherent capacity to run the playbook and team to a championship ring.

The following provides a brief synopsis of a portion of my notes, including at least one idea shared by each interviewee, with unattributed notes derived from Elad's insights shared during interview interludes, while trying not to provide more information than I as an author would want given away about my books:

- A founder and chief executive, in order to focus on scaling the organization, rather than constantly taking on work that may be of interest and in an area of personal expertise, acts as a router and facilitator, sending items to the most appropriate individuals who are then accountable for them.
- A founder, when hiring, can reduce bias and failings among interviewers, and hire top people in an unfamiliar field in conjunction with preparation assistance from someone who has a track record of success in that field, by writing components including a job specification, interview questions along with expected answers, specifications of work product to create, and an evaluation matrix, that is used with all candidates
- A structured standardized onboarding process retains and maximize effectiveness of new employees.
- If a founder has a board, seats are generally assigned permanently to an investment firm rather than investor, and members should meet criteria detailed in a written specification, identify how value will be consistently provided to the founder, and must be aligned with the founder on vision and goals, or it could result metaphorically in a divorce where you have to make steep payments or lose the kids and the house.
- Culture, including shared and reinforced values and vision, drives cohesion, recruiting, and retention.
- An experienced Chief Operating Officer hired at the appropriate time can execute the founders vision and take responsibility for areas of the business where the founder doesn't have interest or provide unique value.
- Any reorganizations should be thoughtfully researched and structured, but executed swiftly, assigning functional areas to executives based on factors including bandwidth and skill.
- Business development people should have a record of being personally responsible for deal results, with the ability to understand and negotiate complex and favorable deal terms.
- A seasoned executive with specific functional expertise can bring in processes and structures that enhance scaling and team effectiveness, and can be identified in conjunction with existing outside top performers in that role.
- Product managers grow a product by combining research of customers, competitors, and distribution channels, to develop a vision and strategy, synthesized into a product specification, which is then communicated to -- and executed upon through collaboration with -- a cross functional team.
- Founder stock sales are important for investors to allow when an investor wants the focus to be a large long-term payout, while employee stock sales should be limited in total dollar value to prevent a demotivating lifestyle change.
- Investors generally specialize in company stages based on the ability to meet capital requirements and offer stage appropriate expertise.
- Acquisitions can be done for product, revenue, team, or synergy, where the valuation benefit to the acquirer should exceed the purchase price of the company.
- Naval Ravikant explains that venture capital has traditionally been a bundle of money, control, and advice, but founders should attempt to decouple them, by obtaining money without offering control, and getting advice from the best possible people. If a founder has a board, the founder must personally manage and synchronize the board, the board must be small in number to maintain information synchronization and minimize founder time consumption, members should be individuals the founder wants to work with for the life of the company, members must be there to support not run the company, and investment terms should allow for board seats to be removed otherwise.
- Marc Andreessen emphasized that scaling involves recalibrating focus from product to distribution, and hiring people suitable for the next 6-18 months, rather than executives whose recent experience doesn't match current needs.
- Aaron Levie emphasized that scaling requires a CEO recognize that not every problem needs to be solved personally, just that every problem needs to be solved, and that people should be hired that allow for the founder to focus on providing his or her unique value.
- Ruchi Sanghvi explained that if and when hypergrowth occurs, it's fine to temporarily patch problems, rather than making permanent corrections, in order to maintain hypergrowth, and to hire people needed to maintain that growth, rather than those might be best in the long term since requirements may change during growth.
- Mariam Naficy emphasized allocating resources to product market verticals based on expected growth, while recognizing that complexity can inhibit scale.
- Sam Altman stated the leading cause of scaling failure among founders is a failure to properly hire then delegate.
- Claire Hughes Johnson emphasizes weekly 1 on 1 meetings with each direct report, provides a written guide to working with her, and recommends a founder prepare a guide for working with him or her specifying areas of interest that leverage the founder's time, and that for decision making to scale it should be mapped by type of decision type rather than hierarchy.
- Patrick Collison emphasized that culture should be collectively steered to support company success, clearly communicated to prospective employees, current employees should embrace the culture as it changes or leave, and to maintain culture when hiring for satellite offices, the lead is as important as immediate reports, and interviewing and onboarding should include relationship building at headquarters.
- Shannon Stubo Brayton emphasized the importance of managing internal and external communication consistency to maintain brand identity.
- Erin Fors emphasized that public relations and communications create credibility, communicate purpose, humanize the company, improve recruiting and morale, and obtain clients when the limiting factor is brand awareness.
- Joelle Emerson explained that diverse teams enhance innovation, that the limiting factor in identifying diverse candidates is hiring through employees' networks, thus requiring external outreach, and then the limiting factor in extending offers to diverse candidates is not having a consistent structured interview process to filter out subjective bias, and then the limiting factor in retaining diverse candidates is not maintaining an office environment welcoming to all.
- Keith Rabois emphasized that executives should be hired who are known to attract talent, are able to retain talent by being someone talent can learn from, develop and execute a hiring plan that minimizes operational ramp up bottlenecks, have a number of direct reports that allows weekly one on one meetings with each, and facilitate collaborative weekly team meetings, and separately explains that preparing a company to go public creates discipline around operations and finances, and a company can go public when achieving predictable quarterly results.
- Hemant Taneja explained that because important services in society have been scaled to the breaking point, including healthcare, education, and financial institutions, it has created the opportunity to build new socially beneficial technologies that scale while maintaining quality by being built to support individual users with individual success metrics.

Elad has written an extraordinary reference for growth stage companies - and for entrepreneurs who want to be well positioned for being in growth stage at a future time. As a founder and startup junkie, I’ve seen plenty of great material on starting a company (Paul Graham essays, Lean Startup, Four Steps to the Epiphany, Zero to One, etc.). Perhaps because there are much less entrepreneurs that have achieved this level of success - but I’ve not seen nearly as many materials on running/planning for growth stage.

With that lens, I’ve read this book end to end and have learned a few takeaways that have fundamentally changed how I think about startups: (1) most founders I know think very deeply about building product for great markets, but we don’t spend nearly as much energy on thinking about building great channels; (2) it’s important to build dynamic boards that evolve over time depending on their ability to offer value to the company; (3) hire specifically for the next 12-18 months during the hyperstage growth periods of a company; (4) it can be a competitive advantage to RAISE prices rather than to lower prices.

Oh and lastly - don’t hand out envelopes full of cash or buy giant chrome pandas.

Elad has one of the most impressive resumes you'll ever see. There is an endless supply of business books written by "business coaches" that provide nothing more then motivational quotes and generic business advice. Elad's High Growth Handbook provides practical, immediately implementable advice for any startup, regardless of company stage. Product management, roles, organization structure, recruiting & hiring... and so much more. This will be on my desk for years to come.

This book is an incredibly insightful manual of practical advice.

Elad's interviews with Marc Andreessen, Ruchi Sanghvi, & Mariam Naficy were particularly great.

Highly recommend this book to all founders who have hit, or who aspire to hit, product-market fit.

(Disclaimer: most of the advice in this book is relevant only to companies who are post-product-market fit, which is probably fewer than 1% of "startups".)

This is one of the most inspiring and valuable books that every founder must read. Hiring and retaining talents is essential to any startups and Elad's book shows you how to do it in a simple, memorable way. I really enjoyed reading it and I recommend it to anyone who is looking to build/work in startup.

This book is incredibly instructive as we work to implement key growth strategies gleaned from this book.