The PayPal Mafia is the best founding team in history, building companies (Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc) with a combined market cap of $2T+. What made them great?
A relentless focus on execution instead of planning.
David Sacks, COO of PayPal, said after joining: “I had to unlearn everything I learned at McKinsey.”
Why?
At PayPal, Sacks noticed that everyone discussed but never actually acted upon action items from long planning sessions.
So he devised a system called: “The List.”
“The List” was a simple list prioritizing issues and action items. Every morning, Sacks assigned items to team members. No formal procedures, just “do it.”
One morning, a marketing manager wanted to discuss “strategy” for a branding campaign. Sacks replied: “Fix the fraud first,” and handed him a task from The List.
Something as simple as “The List” drastically improved Paypal’s speed and output.
Business schools teach you about management frameworks. But the truth is: not only do they not help; they slow things down.
Didn’t learn management frameworks? That’s ok. The best people are too busy executing.
P.S: Build AI workflow automations with VectorShift
A relentless focus on execution instead of planning.
David Sacks, COO of PayPal, said after joining: “I had to unlearn everything I learned at McKinsey.”
Why?
At PayPal, Sacks noticed that everyone discussed but never actually acted upon action items from long planning sessions.
So he devised a system called: “The List.”
“The List” was a simple list prioritizing issues and action items. Every morning, Sacks assigned items to team members. No formal procedures, just “do it.”
One morning, a marketing manager wanted to discuss “strategy” for a branding campaign. Sacks replied: “Fix the fraud first,” and handed him a task from The List.
Something as simple as “The List” drastically improved Paypal’s speed and output.
Business schools teach you about management frameworks. But the truth is: not only do they not help; they slow things down.
Didn’t learn management frameworks? That’s ok. The best people are too busy executing.
P.S: Build AI workflow automations with VectorShift
