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- Frank Slootman: “There’s lots of people in this world who are not really in the arena”
Frank Slootman: “There’s lots of people in this world who are not really in the arena”
Frank comments on why he opens his book with Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “The Man in the Arena” quote:
“There’s lots of people in this world who are not really in the arena. They are either observers, consultants, agents, or VCs that provide capital. But there are some people who are in the arena, and they are very very special people.”
Frank is frequently asked to speak at elite business schools, and when they invariably ask for his advice, he responds:
“You all have elite educations… you’ll have many job offers paying you big bucks. Your parents and your siblings will be incredibly proud of you. But they’re all consulting jobs for Bain, McKinsey, and companies like that… You’re going to have an easy path to pretty quick earnings, but you’ll never know whether you have what it takes [to build something new].”
In Roosevelt’s words, you’ll be “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Full quote from Roosevelt’s speech:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”