Difference between an A team and an A+ team by Paul English

“ The difference between an A team and an A+ team is the difference between a million in revenue and a billion in revenue. “

Excellent interview with Paul English, co-founder of Kayak. My favorite parts:

• When asked “Why do you start companies”, Paul has one of the best answers I’ve ever heard: I start companies because it gives me an opportunity to create teams.
• The difference between an A team and an A+ team is the difference between a million in revenue and a billion in revenue.
• When Paul started Kayak, one thing that was very important to him was building something that his friends could use. Before Kaya, when people asked “What do you do?”, his response was “I work in an operations research group at data general, and we’re studying advanced processes for doing disc drive manufacturing.” Clearly, unlikely to be fascinating to most people. With Kayak he wanted it to be different. I have had almost precisely this experience. For my current startup, I wanted to work on something that when random strangers asked me what I did, I wanted a decent chance that the answer would be relevant to them
• The Red Phone: Paul found the most obnoxious, loud-ringing red phone he could find and plugged it in right in the engineering office. About 30% of the time, when a Kayak web visitor saw a support phone number on the website, it was the number of that phone. The idea was to build a culture that was centered around the customer