Leadership & Culture · Just Thoughts #64 & #3
What Survives After You Leave
Nine transferable leadership lessons distilled from farewell letters written during four years at Slush — on ego, radical candor, communal rituals, and the art of repairing what's broken. Drawn from Just Thoughts #64 and Just Thoughts #3.
Too long; did read
- —Ego is the enemy of sustained excellence — pride without humility leads to decline.
- —The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi teaches leaders to find beauty in imperfection, using 'gold glue' to repair rather than discard.
- —Radical candor — pointing out weaknesses with care — is the greatest gift you can give anyone.
- —Culture is not defined by the CEO; it emerges from communal rituals everyone participates in equally.
- —Annual Ikigai-based self-reflection keeps purpose and goals in alignment.
- —Brand is people: you carry the culture wherever you go, and the organisation lives through its alumni.
- —Leadership sits below the org chart, not above it — your job is to support, not command.
The Nine Lessons
Ego Is the Enemy
"Be proud of what you achieved together, but remember: ego is the enemy."
The story behind it
After being compared to Mount Everest among startup events, the instinct was to celebrate. Instead, the team reminded itself of everything still undone — the hiccups, the inefficiencies, the near-misses.
The transferable lesson
Sustained excellence requires oscillating between pride and self-critique. Celebrate milestones, then immediately reframe them as baselines. Teams that rest on reputation stop earning it.
Lines Worth Returning To
"Love tells me I am everything. Wisdom tells me I am nothing. And in between these two banks, flows the river of my life."
— Nisargadatta Maharaj, cited in the letter
"It is in our brokenness, not despite our brokenness, that we discover what is possible."
— From the original letter
"This stack isn't a feed. It's a library. A place where thoughts don't need to perform in the present tense to be valuable."
— Nicolas Dolenc, Just Thoughts #64
Does this resonate?
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Everyone Writes Their Own Doctrine
Every Slush CEO eventually distils their experience into their own version of what they learned. Here are a few of them.