Why We Make Bad Decisions & How To Avoid Them | Annie Duke on SVIC Podcast #49

Annie Duke is an author, speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. Annie’s latest book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (https://amzn.to/4goiS7r), was released in 2022 from Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint. Her previous book, Thinking in Bets (https://amzn.to/3TA4VJP), is a national bestseller. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. During her career, Annie won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional poker player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023 Annie completed her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at UPenn. Join our free weekly newsletter so you don't miss all of the tech news: https://svic.substack.com/ Follow us: Threads: www.threads.net/@svicpodcast Twitter: https://x.com/svicpodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/svicpodcast Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@svicpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/svicpodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/svicpodcast Need consulting help on M&A or do you have questions about AI? Reach out to Jordan on intro - intro.co/JordanThibodeau?source=intro Show hosts Joe (Eng VP) and Jordan (M&A Deal Lead) worked at various companies from Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce, Slack, Carta, Splunk, Wealthfront, Adobe, and more. Chapters 00:00 - Two Ways We Make Bad Decisions 01:06 - Guest Introduction: Annie Duke’s Background and Books 02:35 - Alliance for Decision Education: Mission and Vision 04:52 - Decision-Making Biases: An Overview 06:17 - Resulting Bias and Hindsight Bias in Postmortems 08:10 - How Cognitive Shortcuts Lead to Errors 10:35 - Challenges in Recognizing and Correcting Bias 12:31 - Confirmation Bias: The Value of Outside Perspectives 14:38 - Using Base Rates to Make Rational Decisions 16:22 - Overcoming Sunk Cost Fallacy with Pre-Commitment 18:30 - Setting Kill Criteria and the Role of Pre-Mortems 22:13 - Sales Strategy: Identifying and Exiting Lost Causes 24:52 - Postmortems: Pitfalls and Team Dynamics 27:39 - Team Risk Management and Innovation Stagnation 30:08 - Avoiding Groupthink and Fostering Diverse Input 32:56 - Case Study: Google vs. OpenAI on Risk Tolerance 36:41 - The Remote Work Debate and Organizational Alignment 39:02 - Knowing When to Quit: The Value of Letting Go 43:06 - Slack’s Founding: Pivoting from Glitch to Success 45:37 - Opportunity Cost: Seeing New Paths After Quitting 49:02 - Decision Science for Youth: Empowering Agency 52:53 - Teaching Forecasting Skills to Teenagers 56:39 - Annie’s Upcoming Book: Interpreting Data Accurately 59:14 - Using Comparisons for Better Decision-Making 1:02:28 - Final Thoughts: Practical Tips for Better Choices 1:04:50 - Closing Remarks and Upcoming Content