AGP Ep 25: Arjen Lentz—Define success on your own terms: What does success look like for you?
Arjen Lentz has a long history in technology starting out in hands on technical roles and includes being employee #25 at MySQL. Arjen is now the founder of Upstarta and co-founder of OpenSTEM. Arjen focuses on quality of products and quality of life over and above money. These priorities also allow Arjen to ensure his companies make a positive social impact.
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Alpha Geek Podcast
AGP Ep 25: Arjen Lentz—Define success on your own terms: What does success look like for you?
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Show notes
- Arjen’s links
- @arjenlentz on Twitter
- Upstarta—Business advice for startups
- @Upstarta on Twitter
- OpenSTEM—STEM resources and programs for Australian schools
- Gross National Happiness
- Social impact in business
- Take #100in100 Challenge—100 posts over 100 days while raising money for a great cause
- Please subscribe, comment, share and review the episodes, it will make a big difference to our ability to continue with these. Thank you!
Credits
- Music by David Cutter
Topics/Transcript
Topics discussed
- Arjen Lentz, the Gentleman behind the Business.
- How to run the business, develop the product, and find equilibrium
- On Running a Company: Rule of the Economy of Scales
- Arjen Lentz’s Definition of Success
- On Measuring Business Metrics
- Arjen Lentz’s Definition of Leadership
- How to respond to failures?
- On Life’s Lessons and Finding Balance to Success
Quotable
- “I’m more like a generalist and I think that’s a really really useful skill to have. I find that a major advantage in the world”—Arjen Lentz
- “The fact that the product sells and gets used lots doesn’t mean it’s a perfect product”—Arjen Lentz
- “There’s no such thing as bug free software”—Arjen Lentz
- “You got to get money in the door but you also have to build good quality products”—Arjen Lentz
- “When you do things at a higher scale, things get cheaper or things work better”—Arjen Lentz
- “A key thing in running companies that you continuously find out how not to do things”—Arjen Lentz
- “Growth is not always the solution”—Arjen Lentz
- “Money tends to bring with it opinions”—Arjen Lentz
- “What is correct is very much dependent on one’s perspective”—Arjen Lentz
- “Change is annoying”—Arjen Lentz
- “[In teams] it’s important to have similar values in terms of what’s relevant”—Arjen Lentz
- “Define what success means for yourself”—Arjen Lentz
- “The goal of a job is not just to acquire money to live, there are other aspects to it to provide me with some kind of interest and enjoyment”—Arjen Lentz
- “Only I can make that change so I have to kind of step up and make it happen”—Andrew Ramsden
- “Rather than focusing on what’s correct, it’s important to focus more on what’s useful in this moment and what’s useful to take us forward”—Andrew Ramsden