Marc Benioff says startups should refound their companies around what the market needs now and deliver it twice as fast. Cut unproductive work, adopt an AI-first mindset to double productivity without hiring more people, and prepare for 2-10x more competition. Not everyone on your team will want to change.
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That's what Marc Benioff said. Most of you are below the scale of Salesforce and Dropbox. So go back, sit with your team and say, what would we build today? And how can we do it twice as fast? And just go find a frigging way to build it. Whether it's putting a little bit of your team in a separate group, right? Whether that works or not, whether it's dropping some stuff, whether it's measuring it. I don't have all the answers, but instead of fighting the 2023 battle, figure out what you would build today. Look at all the competitors, all the industry, look where the puck's going and find a way to refound your company. That's mojo. And if you have a good team, a lot of them will get it. It turns out they'll get excited about this meeting. A lot of the good folks will be like, yeah, let's refound this frigger in 2025. Yeah, maybe growth slowed to 40%, but let's build what the market wants today, not be a Debbie Downer about how it's changed. And maybe the mediocre folks in your team will grumble and maybe they could find another place to work. I don't know. But that's my view today. I want to break now. There's still a 10x ARR club. Be in it. Find it. VC is all about AI. We can talk a little bit more about this tomorrow if you're not in it. IPOs are back. Chime, others are all coming. The bar is 50% at $500 million. So I ran out of time on this piece. We can do some more tomorrow. PE may not bail us out and we're all going to do the same with the same amount of headcount. Maybe this is the last one I do want to break. We all have to work harder. We have to be twice as productive. We have to be AI first. And I'll tell you one last thing. Everybody's freezing headcount. Everyone. It doesn't mean they're not hiring. It means they're moving on from underproductive people through voluntary and involuntary attrition, and they're bringing new people. But this vibe from Duolingo, do it first with AI and do it second with an upgrade, this is everybody's vibe on WhatsApp and behind closed doors. Everyone's gonna do more, but you can't do more with 50— you don't get 50% headcount anymore. So not only do you have to do twice as much, not only do you have 2 to 10 times more competitors, but you're gonna have to do it with the same headcount. You're gonna have to do it with the same headcount.
