Quote

You generally know when someone asks you to do something- am I more writing, or am I more editing? The editor is the best metaphor for your job.

Keith Rabois

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Keith Rabois
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: March 17
Businessperson
Executive Management
Investor
Edison Township
Metaphor
Generally
Asks
Jobs
Someone
Best
Editor
Writing
Editing
Something
Editors

More quotes by Keith Rabois

Image
Your goal over time is to use less red ink every day.
Keith Rabois
Image
Don't accept the excuse of complexity. A lot of people will tell you, this is too challenging, this is too complicated, yeah well I know other people simplify but that's not for me, this is a complicated business. They're wrong. You can change the world in 140 characters.
Keith Rabois
Image
The real thing you do is you ask a lot of questions.
Keith Rabois
Image
What you actually want to do with every single employee, every single day is expand the scope of their responsibilities until it breaks.
Keith Rabois
Image
If people start going to a desk, some one individual employees desk and they don't report to them... it's a sign that they believe that person can help them. So if you see that consistently, those are your barrels. Just promote them, give them more opportunity as fast as you can.
Keith Rabois
Image
Force yourself to simplify every initiative, every product, every marketing, everything you do.
Keith Rabois
Image
Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don't get that much more done, you actually sometimes get less done.
Keith Rabois
Image
Any executive, any CEO should not have 1 management style. Your management style needs to be dictated by your employee.
Keith Rabois
Image
Ultimately, I don't believe that you can build a company without a lot of effort, and that you need to lead by example.
Keith Rabois
Image
Building a company is basically taking all the irrational people you know... Putting them in one building and then living with them 12 hrs a day at least.
Keith Rabois
Image
I don't believe ever in shared office spaces. Peter talks a little bit about this, every good startup is a cult. It's very hard to create a cult if you're sharing space with people.
Keith Rabois
Image
So that's your job too, to clarify and simplify for everybody on your team. The more you simplify the better people will perform.
Keith Rabois
Image
As the company scales, everybody is not going to get invited to every single meeting, but they're gonna want to go to every meeting.
Keith Rabois
Image
It's easy to shortcut when you get busy explaining the why's of the world, but it's very important to try.
Keith Rabois
Image
Create tools that enable people to make decisions at the same level, ideally, of fidelity that that you would make them yourself.
Keith Rabois
Image
The people that work with you should generally come up with their own initiatives.
Keith Rabois
Image
Possibly the most important thing you do is actually edit the team.
Keith Rabois
Image
If the Martians took over eBay it would take 6 months for the world to notice.
Keith Rabois
Image
The most important job of an editor is simplify, simplify simplify, and that usually means omitting things.
Keith Rabois
Image
Being a venture capitalist to me is like being more of a psychologist. So if you come to my office we have two chairs with a table in the middle. And we sit down and it's like, Tell me your problems.
Keith Rabois