This Dutch guy is the most impressive entrepreneur you’ve ever heard of
What is Frank Slootman's secret?
Frank Slootman is the most impressive entrepreneur you’ve never heard of.
Last week, he stepped down as CEO of data startup Snowflake — a company he led as a CEO from being a scrappy startup with less than 10 employees to being a company with a market cap in excess of $50B. When Snowflake IPO’d in 2020 under his management, it was one of the biggest IPOs in software history.
That alone would be an impressive feat, but…
Snowflake was his 3rd billion dollar exit!
He grew Data Domain from near-nothing to a $2.4B exit, then grew ServiceNow to a cool$18B valuation (now $158B), and then grew Snowflake to a $70B valuation.
That's a track record worth bragging about.
Damn.
Anyway.
What is the lesson here?
What is his secret?
Well, I’ve dug in and done a deep dive into his philosophy and management style.
Here’s a couple things stand out:
1. Hire A-players
Slootman is notorious for his uncompromising focus on talent. He only wants the best of the best on his teams. He's willing to keep key roles vacant until he finds someone truly exceptional, rather than settling for a B or C player. While this can be painful in the short-term, Slootman believes it's the only way to build an elite, high-performing organization for the long haul.
The lesson? Don't compromise on talent. The difference between good and great is wider than you think. Hold out for A-players who raise the bar. This advice is echoed by the likes of Peter Thiel — easier in theory than in practice though!
2. Push them really hard
Here’s where it gets interesting. Hiring top talent is the first step, not the last. Slootman believes that once you’ve got the right people, you then need to put intense pressure on them to perform.
He sets audacious goals, creates a culture of accountability, and expects Herculean efforts from his team, under the mantra "Get better or get beaten."
This is not for the faint-hearted. But while a pressure cooker environment isn't for everyone, high performers tend to thrive when challenged to do their best work. A-players tend to rise to the challenge.
3. Focus — "An inch wide, but a mile deep"
You got the best people, putting their best work in. But what do they work on? Frank says: only the most important things. Focus. Center all those highly prized resources on doing very few things extraordinarily well.
At Snowflake, that meant pouring all resources into building the best data cloud. No distractions, no side projects, no shiny objects. Just an obsessive focus on being the best at one thing.
Personally, I think I could learn here. Resist the temptation to chase every opportunity.
Less is more. Pick your battles wisely and then go all-in on them.
An inch wide, a mile deep.
4. Drive relentlessly for action
In any interview you watch, he keeps emphasizing how much you need to push people. You want to cultivate speed as a competitive advantage. Develop a distaste and intolerance for inaction.
Frank is very much a “it’s gonna happen because I’m gonna make it happen” kind of guy.
Again, not a style for everyone.
But I don’t think Elon Musk, Peter Thiel or Jeff Bezos would disagree with him. Hard work matters.
What you get, is Snowflake, one of the fastest-growing B2B companies in the world.
I see patterns here that I observed when we worked with TikTok: an extreme sense of urgency and speed of execution, combined with relentless focus.
That creates a pressure cooker.
The kind of thing that gets a really bad rep, but maybe for the wrong reasons.
Frank believes that A-players want a challenge.
They want to be pushed.
They want to see what they are capable off.
They want to drive at full speed. And then they want to be compensated accordingly, which is only fair.
How does your company measure up? What can you do to accelerate growth?
Here’s to raising the bar,
—Pieter