Letting a pitch go by

When someone joins Adaptive, one of the things I tell her is that she should not worry too much about making a mistake. The reasons are that (i) we can fix pretty much any mistake, so long as we know about it*; and (ii) Jon and I make bigger mistakes than any of our employees ever could.

Today, I want to share one of those big ones.

Last week, I spent a lot of time on internal issues here at Adaptive (interviewing, improving leasing systems, etc.). The work needed to be done, so I don’t regret it.

But, while I had my head down working on internal matters, I let a good deal slip through my fingers.

It’s a small-to-medium size deal in an area we like. My back of the envelop calculation is that, because I missed it, Adaptive will end up being something like $250k poorer than it would have been.

Mea culpa.

*Side note: One of the very few things for which we would fire someone instantly is dishonesty / covering up mistakes.