LIFE-CHANGING LEADERSHIP ADVICE

FROM SILICON VALLEY BILLIONAIRES

The number of billionaires who

live in Silicon Valley

Sergey Brin

David Cheriton

David Filo

Reid Hoffman

Yuri Milner

Laurene Powell Jobs

Larry Page

Richard Peery

Robert Pera

Jeffrey Skoll

Andreas Von BechtolsheimRomesh Wadhwani

Jerry Yang

Mark Zuckerberg

John Arrillaga Carl Berg

Jim Breyer

Scott Cook

Helen Diller

Sanford Diller

John Doerr

Larry Ellison

Ken Fisher

Charles Johnson

Rupert Johnson II

Vinod Khosla

Gordon Moore

John Morgridge

George Roberts

Eric Schmidt

Charles Schwab

Kavitark Ram Shiram

Thomas Siebel

John A. Sobrato

Mark Stevens

Meg Whitman

Riley Bechtel

Stephen Bechtel

Marc Benioff

James Coulter

Ray DolbyJack Dorsey

Doris Fisher

John Fisher

Robert Fisher

William Fisher

Gordon Getty

Michael Moritz

Dustin Moskovitz

John PritzkerRiley Bechtel

Thomas Steyer

Peter Thiel

The chance of becoming a billionaire

1 in 785,166

The cost of potentially life-changing

leadership advice from these billionaires

$0

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Before we continue...

“There is no perfect fit when you’re looking for the next big thing to do. You have to

take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way

around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”

Sheryl Sandberg - Facebook

We are biased towards people who never give up, who never quit; and that’s

something you can’t find on a resume. We look for courage, and we look for genius.

There’s all this talk about how important failure is. I call it the failure fetish. ‘Failure is

wonderful, it teaches you so much, it is great to fail a lot,’ they say. But we think

failure sucks. Success is wonderful.

Marc Andreessen – Andreessen Horowitz

Do something that you love. We spend a lot of time at work. I’ve probably spent 150

hours over the last couple of weeks. And so you have to find something that you love

and I think you need to do it with people who you really enjoy. I get tremendous

satisfaction from the team – the joy of collaboration from figuring things out together.

And so I think teams and the people that you work with are incredibly important.

Meg Whitman – Hewlett Packard

Companies full of people looking after themselves will, by default, make their

companies better too. In this sense, leaders don’t need to lose hope; they just need

to play the game better.

Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn

Andy Grove wrote a very important book in the ’80s. it’s called ‘Only the paranoid

survive!.’ I think you have to be both overconfident and paranoid at the same time almost

schizophrenic in your personality. Overconfident about your ability to solve a problem.

Paranoid that everything will get you, so you’re constantly looking for the problems.

Vinod Khosla – Khosla Ventures

There is nothing else that kills ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I

never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am

anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my

approbation and lavish in my praise.

Charles Schwab - Charles Schwab

I’ve been put in a position I’ve never dreamed of. I’ve got to conduct myself

accordingly. There’s pressure. But we don’t walk around here saying, ‘We’re going

to be rich.’ This is my idea of a good time. I visit with customers. They’re using

products with my name on them. I want to be doing this when I’m 65. I want the

very same job.

Thomas Siebel – Siebel Systems

When I explain our company values and the foundation to prospective employees,

they realize that they have an opportunity to do much more than change the way

businesses manage and share information. When you take a workforce of smart,

creative, dedicated people and say “take this company time to serve your community,

and bring along your coworkers, customers, and partners” great things happen.

Marc Benioff – Salesforce

It’s always a bad idea to set one’s employees too much against one another. You

want to find ways to differentiate people’s roles. Frame it this way: If you were a

sociopathic boss who wanted to create trouble for your employees, the formula you

would follow would be to tell two people to do the exact same thing. That’s a

guaranteed formula for creating conflict. If you’re not a sociopath, you want to be very

careful to avoid this.

Peter Thiel - Paypal

My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not

someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

Elon Musk - Tesla

My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities,

and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good

of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead,

not follow that.

Larry Page - Google

All my days are themed. Monday is management. Tuesday is product, engineering,

and design. Wednesday is marketing, growth, and communications. Thursday is

partnership and developers. Friday is company and culture. On the days beginning

with T, I start at Twitter in the morning, then go to Square in the afternoon. Sundays

are for strategy. Saturday is a day off.

Jack Dorsey - Square

When I meet with the founders of a new company, my advice is almost always,

‘Do fewer things.’ It’s true of partnerships, marketing opportunities, anything that’s

taking up your time. The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few

really matter to your success.

Evan Williams - Twitter

Create a culture inside your company that

values feedback, transparency and

continuous communication

What can you do, today, to become a better leader?

Do a better job listening to your employees

early and often

In other words...

According to Gallup, companies who collect

regular employee feedback have turnover

rates 15% lower than companies using

annual surveys

Here’s something you may not know…

Are you in frequent communication with your

team and do you give them guidance on

what’s expected of them?

PeopleSpark Can Help

Don’t lose your best people. Check-in with your team

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