Michal D. Cann & John L. (Jack) Wagner ·WASHINGTON BANKING CO ·21 AUG 2008
Walk Away Early: When a Bad Deal Protects Your Moat
Knowing when to kill a deal is as valuable as knowing when to sign one.
Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.
Topic
Succession, departures, and the question of who comes next.
10 letters · most recent first
Michal D. Cann & John L. (Jack) Wagner ·WASHINGTON BANKING CO ·21 AUG 2008
Knowing when to kill a deal is as valuable as knowing when to sign one.
Steven E. Fass & David T. Foy ·White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd ·10 APR 2006
Risk models are tools, not oracles — and the leaders who survive bad years are the ones who say so out loud.
Jack Dorsey ·Block, Inc. ·2 NOV 2023
When the company is growing faster than the business, the fix is a hard ceiling, not a pep talk.
Richard McCathron ·Hippo Holdings Inc. ·6 MAR 2024
Before going on offense, fix the math on the losses you can actually control.
Richard McCathron ·Hippo Holdings Inc. ·2 MAY 2024
Deliberately slowing growth in the short term can be the fastest way to reach sustainable growth — if you're cutting the right risks, not the right customers.
Reed Hastings & Netflix Leadership ·Netflix ·16 JUL 2020
Formalizing power someone already has is cheaper than losing them — and clearer for everyone watching.
Andy Jassy ·Amazon ·10 APR 2025
Most companies optimize inside the room they're standing in; the best ones keep asking why the door is locked.
Andy Jassy ·Amazon ·9 APR 2026
Durable companies don't bet on one straight line — they build the muscle to zig, zag, and start over without losing momentum.
Elon Musk & Ilya Sutskever ·OpenAI ·20 SEP 2017
The moment your funder's leverage looks like a path to absolute control, your co-founders stop building and start negotiating their exit.
Jonathan Bellack ·Google ·17 OCT 2016
Senior leaders are paid not for the insight that points at action, but for the plan a hundred people can actually execute.