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# Lessons from Harry Glaser
- URL: https://www.antoinebuteau.com/lessons-from-harry-glaser/
- Published: 2026-06-30T17:19:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T21:42:29.000Z
- Description: Harry Glaser co-founded Periscope Data and led it through acquisition by Sisense, pairing practical data-tool building with candid reflections on a founder’s psychological toll. His experience connects infrastructure design, early team scaling, and managing rapid growth.
- Author: Antoine Buteau
- Tags: Profile, Tech Entrepreneurs & Founders Profiles

![Visual summary of operating lessons from Harry Glaser.](https://www.antoinebuteau.com/content/images/2026/06/lessons-from-harry-glaser-profile-infographic.webp)

## Lessons from Harry Glaser

Harry Glaser co-founded Periscope Data and served as CEO until its $130 million acquisition by Sisense. He pairs a practical approach to building data tools with unusually candid writing on the psychological toll of being a founder. This profile gathers his advice for designing data infrastructure, scaling early-stage teams, and managing periods of high growth.

### Part 1: Founder Psychology and Survival

1. **On Founder Validation:** "The biggest surprise first-time founders experience is the total lack of external validation in their day-to-day professional lives, and the root cause of giving up is the inability to cope with it." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Winning:** "Nobody cares. Just win. You'll be judged by the outcome alone, and I fundamentally don't care if you won by tripping and falling over the finish line, as long as you won." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Resilience:** "In my experience, the biggest cause of death in early stage startups is founders giving up." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Managing Energy:** "The days are long but the years are short; pacing yourself is a requirement for long-term survival in any startup." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On The Reality of Growth:** "Growth masks a lot of internal problems, but when growth slows down, every minor cultural crack suddenly becomes a wide chasm." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Founder Mode:** "Founders have a specific operating mode that requires deep context across all parts of the business, a mode that hired executives often struggle to replicate." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Handling Rejection:** "You have to build a psychological callous to rejection, because early on, everyone—investors, candidates, and customers—will tell you no." — [*Source: AppSelekt*](https://appselekt.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Delegation:** "The hardest transition for a technical founder is realizing that writing code is no longer the most impactful use of your time." — [*Source: Software Engineering Daily*](https://superdatascience.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Decision Fatigue:** "Make fewer decisions, but make them count. Save your mental energy for the inflection points that actually change the trajectory of the business." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. **On Self-Awareness:** "Glaser argues that founders need to separate their self-worth from the company's growth rate and get their own head, habits, and health back in order before they can steady the business." — [*Reference: When the growth slows*](https://www.harryglaser.com/when-the-growth-slows/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 2: Hiring and Team Building

1. **On Hiring Executives:** "When hiring an executive, you are buying a playbook. Make sure you actually want the playbook they are selling before you bring them on board." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Building the Initial Team:** "Your first ten hires dictate the culture for the next hundred. If you compromise on quality early, you will never recover." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Firing:** "Firing is a failure of the hiring process, but keeping a bad fit is a failure of leadership." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Co-Founders:** "Start with the right co-pilot. Your relationship with your co-founder is the foundation of the entire company, and any cracks there will eventually bring the whole structure down." — [*Source: AppSelekt*](https://appselekt.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Interviewing:** "Do not hire people who cannot clearly explain the impact of their past work. If they don't know why what they did mattered, they won't know why their work here matters." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Managing Managers:** "Transitioning from managing individual contributors to managing managers requires letting go of the details and focusing entirely on outcomes and coaching." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Compensation:** "Pay fairly and transparently. Inequities in compensation are a ticking time bomb for team morale." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Employee Retention:** "People leave because they stop learning or they stop believing in the leadership. It is your job to ensure neither happens." — [*Source: AppSelekt*](https://appselekt.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Promoting from Within:** "Internal promotions are great for morale, but you have to recognize when a role has outgrown an employee's current capabilities and bring in external experience." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. **On Reference Checks:** "The best signal in a reference check is what the person leaves out. Listen carefully to the hesitations and the silence." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 3: Data Analytics and Infrastructure

1. **On Data Access:** "The core problem in analytics isn't the tooling; it's that the people who have the questions often don't have direct access to the data." — [*Source: Software Engineering Daily*](https://superdatascience.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On SQL as a Standard:** "SQL remains the lingua franca of data. Despite all the new tools, if you want to understand data, you need to speak SQL." — [*Source: Periscope Data Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On the Modern Data Stack:** "The modern data stack is less about a specific set of tools and more about the philosophy of decoupling storage, processing, and visualization." — [*Source: Software Engineering Daily*](https://superdatascience.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Dashboards:** "A dashboard is only useful if it drives a decision. If a metric goes up or down and nobody changes their behavior, that metric shouldn't be on the dashboard." — [*Source: Solutions Review*](https://solutionsreview.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Data Culture:** "A true data-driven culture starts at the top. If the CEO makes decisions based on gut feeling despite the data, the rest of the company will do the same." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Speed of Analysis:** "Time-to-insight is the defining metric for an analytics team. An okay answer today is better than a perfect answer next week." — [*Source: Periscope Data Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Data Silos:** "Silos kill data utility. The value of data compounds when it is joined across different departments and systems." — [*Source: Solutions Review*](https://solutionsreview.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Self-Serve Analytics:** "True self-serve analytics is a myth for complex questions, but a necessity for basic reporting. Know which one you are building for." — [*Source: Software Engineering Daily*](https://superdatascience.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Data Engineering:** "Data engineers should spend their time building scalable pipelines, not fixing broken queries for the marketing team." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. **On Visualizing Data:** "The goal of data visualization is to remove cognitive load. The insight should be obvious within three seconds of looking at the chart." — [*Source: Periscope Data Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 4: Sales and Go-to-Market Strategy

1. **On Non-Technical Sales:** "You can build and train a non-technical sales team to sell technical products if you provide them with clear, repeatable playbooks and deep product support." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Sales Compensation:** "Your sales comp plan dictates your company's strategy. If you want a specific outcome, you have to directly tie the commission to that outcome." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Product-Led Growth:** "Product-led growth works best when the time-to-value is nearly zero. If it takes three weeks to see the benefit, you need a sales team." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Customer Objections:** "An objection is just a request for more information. Treat it as an opportunity to educate rather than an argument to win." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Pricing:** "Pricing is the most powerful and underutilized lever in a startup. Never set it and forget it; constantly test what the market will bear." — [*Source: AppSelekt*](https://appselekt.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Founder-Led Sales:** "In the early days, the founder must do the selling. Only the founder has the authority to make product commitments on the fly to close an important deal." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Sales Engineering:** "A great sales engineer bridges the gap between the customer's technical reality and the salesperson's value proposition." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Churn:** "Churn is a trailing indicator. By the time a customer cancels, the failure happened months ago." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Ideal Customer Profiles:** "Defining who you are not selling to is just as important as defining who your ideal customer is." — [*Source: AppSelekt*](https://appselekt.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 5: Diversity, Inclusion, and Culture

1. **On Inclusion First:** "From my perspective a lot of companies get it wrong when they put diversity before inclusion. I believe that if you focus on building an inclusive company then diversity will happen as a result." — [*Source: Scribd*](https://www.scribd.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Measuring Diversity:** "You manage what you measure. If you want a diverse team, you have to track diversity metrics at every stage of the hiring pipeline." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Culture Fit vs. Add:** "Stop hiring for culture fit. Hire for culture add. You want people who bring something new to the table, not people who replicate what you already have." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Unconscious Bias:** "Every process has bias. The goal is not to eliminate it entirely, which is impossible, but to build systems that actively counteract it." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Remote Work Culture:** "Remote work forces you to make your culture explicit. You can no longer rely on osmotic communication around the office." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Transparency:** "Transparency builds trust, but radical transparency requires context. Data without context causes panic." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Core Values:** "Your company values are not what you write on the wall; they are the behaviors you reward, promote, and fire for." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Psychological Safety:** "If people are afraid to point out when the CEO is wrong, you have failed at building a healthy culture." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Employee Resource Groups:** "ERGs are vital for inclusion, but they must be supported with real budget and executive sponsorship to be effective." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 6: Acquisitions and M&A

1. **On Selling a Company:** "Selling a company is an emotional rollercoaster. You have to detach your personal identity from the entity you built." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On M&A Strategy:** "Acquisitions rarely work out if the cultural alignment is ignored in favor of financial synergies." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Integration:** "The hardest part of an acquisition isn't the deal; it's the integration. Merging two engineering cultures is notoriously difficult." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Deal Velocity:** "Time kills all deals. If an acquisition discussion is dragging out, the probability of it closing drops exponentially." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Post-Acquisition Roles:** "Founders often struggle post-acquisition because they go from having complete control to being a middle manager in a larger machine." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Due Diligence:** "Due diligence will uncover every shortcut you ever took. Build your company from day one as if someone is going to audit it tomorrow." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Earnouts:** "Earnouts are structured to align incentives, but they often lead to misaligned priorities if the parent company changes strategy." — [*Source: SaaStr Podcast*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Communicating with the Team:** "During an M&A process, say nothing until the ink is dry, but once it is, over-communicate the rationale to your team." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On Legacy:** "Your legacy isn't the exit price; it's what the people you hired go on to do next." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 7: AI, Machine Learning, and Engineering

1. **On AI Practicality:** "Glaser's practical AI focus is concrete: build agents that handle business data analysis and data science work for customers instead of chasing abstract sci-fi narratives." — [*Reference: Harry Glaser about page*](https://www.harryglaser.com/about/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On AI Conscience:** "In his Data Driven NYC talk, Glaser warns that AI builders need to think harder about the moral and ethical implications of the software they ship and resist easy ethical compromises." — [*Reference: The Conscience of AI talk*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1rsXyet9%5F4&ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On Deploying Models:** "Building a machine learning model is the easy part. Deploying it into production and maintaining its accuracy over time is where companies fail." — [*Source: Modelbit Blog*](https://deepnote.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Technical Debt:** "Technical debt is a tool. Borrow heavily to find product-market fit, but pay it back aggressively once you start scaling." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Data Science Workflow:** "Data scientists should not have to learn Kubernetes to deploy a model. Infrastructure should be abstracted away." — [*Source: Modelbit Blog*](https://deepnote.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On AI Agents:** "AI agents for data analysis will eventually handle the rote querying, shifting the human role to defining the strategic questions." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Website*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Engineering Speed:** "Ship early and often. The cost of a small mistake in production is lower than the cost of moving too slowly." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Tooling Choices:** "Pick boring technology for your infrastructure. Save your innovation tokens for your core product features." — [*Source: Modelbit Blog*](https://deepnote.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On ML Observability:** "If you deploy a model and don't monitor its drift, you are flying blind. Models degrade the moment they interact with real-world data." — [*Source: Modelbit Blog*](https://deepnote.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)

### Part 8: Philosophy of Technology and Work

1. **On The Tech Ecosystem:** "Our relationship to technology is broken. I am done with ecosystems. I am returning to the days when we selected a device, and then an operating system, and then several applications, hacking them together to suit our needs." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. **On Open Source:** "Open source is not a business model; it is a distribution strategy. You still have to figure out how to capture value." — [*Source: Software Engineering Daily*](https://superdatascience.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. **On The Attention Economy:** "The most scarce resource in modern business is not capital; it is the focused attention of your engineering team." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. **On Hardware Constraints:** "We have become sloppy developers because hardware is cheap. Returning to constrained environments often produces better software." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. **On Simplicity:** "Complexity is a tax you pay on every future feature. Always fight for simplicity in your architecture." — [*Source: Modelbit Blog*](https://deepnote.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. **On Mentorship:** "A good mentor doesn't give you the answers; they give you a better framework for thinking about your problems." — [*Source: AppSelekt*](https://appselekt.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. **On Building for the Long Term:** "Optimize for the decade, not the quarter. Decisions made to hit short-term metrics usually harm long-term viability." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. **On Focus:** "Startups don't die of starvation; they die of indigestion. Pick one thing and do it better than anyone else in the world." — [*Source: Medium*](https://medium.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. **On The Purpose of Technology:** "At the end of the day, technology should serve human needs, not dictate them. If a tool makes your life harder, replace it." — [*Source: Harry Glaser's Blog*](https://harryglaser.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)