Martín Escobari

How do you do a good reference?

For an investment, you do it with the family that has given you money to make investments.

And you say, João, we're about to invest $200 million in this entrepreneur.

you know his father, you know his grandfather, do you think we should take this risk?

And he's like, oh, no fucking way.

Because he has money with you, he tells you the truth.

If he didn't have money with you, he'd say, of course he'd say, I don't know, there's some noise, I would do my homework, or they're fine.

For hiring, there's another hack, which I learned, which is so important.

So much of life is getting the right people on the bus.

And when you're going to do a reference on a hire and you call the person and you say, hey, we're considering David for this role.

This role involves the following five challenges.

This is a very important decision from my company because we can't get this wrong.

It's also a very big decision for David because he's happy at his job.

And if he gets this wrong, if we get this wrong, we've wasted time and he's out of a job.

Help me assess if this is a good risk for me and David.

And if you can have an honest discussion, if you don't feel comfortable engaging like this, let's not talk about it, but that's what I need the reference for.

You'd be surprised.

People are like, well, for that risk, David, leave him there.

He's fine.

But that is a genuine way to answer it because what I described is actually true.