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We expect all AngelList managers to act as leaders, but we also believe that leadership can come from anywhere in the company, including individual contributors. We ask that all of our team members aspire to these expectations, regardless of tenure or role.
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We are inventing the future, not building a better version of the past. This means consistently challenging the status quo in search of 10x products that change the industry. This requires deeply knowing your customers, the business, and industry to understand your priors, then challenging the appropriate ones, rapid iterations, intuition, and reasoning from first principles to produce opinionated solutions that uniquely serve our customers.
We understand that excellence resides not just in a grand vision but in the meticulous execution of every task. This requires having the ability to operate at all levels of the company and actually doing it. We know when to switch from macro to micro, and always to sweat the details because we value craftsmanship and understand great work happens at the ground level. We understand everything starts and ends with the customer - we build empathy by either deeply understanding the customer or by being the customer ourselves.
We inspire pride in what we build and who we build it with by setting high standards and following through on our commitments. Holding ourselves accountable does not mean you cannot fail; rather it encourages taking calculated risks while being prepared to own up to mistakes. Restoration, not blame, is the goal. Operating with integrity and transparency builds mutual trust and respect with one another.
The default state of any organization is slowness. Urgency is the only antidote and it needs a source (the leaders) to power it. Our leaders inspire urgency and add positive energy to every interaction they have. They can tap into people’s motivations and shake them out of a rut, reframe an overwhelming situation, strengthen others’ sense of agency, and get them to think even bigger than they thought possible. Leaders don’t just inform, they sell. They don’t contribute to negativity. They are playful and non-judgmental, and they stimulate curiosity in others.
Our leaders empower their teams by first understanding, and then creating, the conditions for success. They take time to understand where each individual spikes and provide the right words with the right context at the right time to push others to achieve their maximum potential.