Amp It Up is not a good business book. It is, in book terms, quite bad: there is no through-line, no overarching theme, no clear message. It reads as if Frank Slootman has cornered you in a room for an hour and just started talking about whatever came to mind. He bounces from stint to stint at varying resolution; he re-introduces concepts and quotes multiple times as if he hadn't mentioned them before; he diretly contradicts himself multiple times. It's a mess.

The thing is — ghostwriting horrors aside — it's actually opinionated, which sets it aside from many other books in the semi-autobiographical hagiography genre. I respect Slootman for treating the reader with enough respect and honesty to say things like "yeah, just fire the executive team; it's faster than figuring out who'se worth keeping" — which is not to say that I think that advice is great, but it's at least not mealy-mouthed.

It's a short book, and its one that is not really worth reading over the essay-length LinkedIn post that sparked its publication. But it took me all of like four hours to listen to, and has the same level of value as an above-average podcast.

★★

Highlights

No strategy is better than its execution.

The paradox is that any business that’s large enough to have functional silos must pull together as if these organizational delineations barely exist.