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Analyzing Business Landscape Through Quantitative and Qualitative Insights
Exploration of quantitative and qualitative aspects in understanding business dynamics and identifying key areas for improvement and success through data analysis and stakeholder engagement.
Alyssa Henry is the former CEO of Square, a financial services company providing products and services used by over 4 million merchants. Formerly at Amazon, Alyssa led the development and growth of Simple Storage Service (S3) at AWS. Alyssa now serves as an Independent Director at Intel and Confluent.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:
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Referenced:
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Where to find Alyssa Henry:
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Where to find Brett Berson:
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Where to find First Round Capital:
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:20) Lessons from Microsoft and Amazon
(08:29) Noticeable consistencies in the human condition
(10:50) Differences in culture at Amazon, Microsoft and Square
(13:27) Why “customers come first,” even above employees and community
(14:01) Why fast-followers can be less customer-focused
(15:50) The challenge of commercializing research projects
(18:58) Joining Square and “building a picture” of the org
(24:55) Knowing what to replicate from past companies
(27:45) Questioning norms in new companies
(28:41) The importance of effective communication systems
(31:31) How to operationalize company values
(33:38) Why shared beliefs are crucial for good company culture
(37:05) Building Minimal Remarkable Products at Square
(38:13) How to scale an aesthetic
(42:46) Org design lessons from Square
(50:06) How to align different teams behind business priorities
(52:57) Lessons learned from fierce competition
(57:39) The “fast follower” vs “pioneer” playbook
(61:05) The original thinking behind AWS
(66:08) The unlikely origin of Amazon CloudFront and other products
(73:47) How Jeff Bezos influenced Alyssa
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