Google Maps co-creator Bret Taylor explains why startup founders should write more

“I find writing to be a very clarifying mechanism to test your theories. We would write a letter to our board, rather than having a deck, and we’d share it with the whole company.”

At Quip (sold to Salesforce for $750M), the letter Bret and his cofounder would write included not just metrics, but also their strategy and how they were thinking about things:

“We’d often write something that we thought, and then we’d sort of call our own BS. Because when you write it down and you know it’s going to your whole company and you have trouble believing what you just wrote… [it’s] really clarifying.”

It’s easy to lie to yourself with a PowerPoint deck or a graph. And, as Bret explains, writing about things and sharing it with your employees and board is a great tactic to keep yourself honest and accountable. It also creates a culture of transparency.

Full video: Startup Grind Local “Startup Grind hosts Bret Taylor“ (Jan 2018)