2 types of people at a company

24 Aug 2024 · 1 min

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In this brief commentary, the speaker explains Keith Rabois's "barrels and ammunition" metaphor for team composition. "Ammunition" represents resources, ideas, or tools that a company may have in abundance, while "barrels" are the rare, execution‑focused individuals—often called 10x hires—who can turn those resources into completed initiatives. The speaker emphasizes that without enough barrels, a company cannot effectively push major projects forward, regardless of how much ammunition it possesses. Finding and hiring more barrels is presented as a critical strategic priority for scaling impact.

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There's 2 different types of people in a company. I highly recommend that you Google this. So Keith Rabois, Chief Operating Officer at Square, popular investor. He has this concept known as barrels and ammunition. When you think about your team, you can have all the ammunition in the world, but if you only have 5 barrels or 5 cannons, let's call it, you can only push 5 major initiatives through at any given time. And you know what the barrels look like at a company. They just make things happen. They're like magic. You give them something, they just jump on it and it just, it gets done. At the end of the day. And those people are very, very hard to find. The more barrels you can find, the better, which is— these are the 10x hires. Because again, you can have all the ammunition in the world, but if you don't have enough barrels to push these initiatives through, these are the resources that you're constrained by.