Joe Tsai attributes Jack Ma's success to his background as a teacher. This instilled key leadership traits: strong communication, an ability to identify talent, and the humility to be happy when your 'students' (employees) become more successful than you. This mindset is crucial for building a team of A-players who can surpass the founder's own abilities.

A key trait of effective tech leaders is the humility to solicit and immediately act upon external feedback. Google executive Schindler asking for and implementing Jim Cramer's suggestions for an NFL product shows a focus on rapid delivery and a lack of 'not-invented-here' syndrome.

Despite his own success, Daniel Ek maintains extreme intellectual humility. To master running large group meetings, a personal weakness, he spent a week shadowing Meta's CEO, taking notes and offering to get coffee just to absorb the culture and mechanics firsthand.

Reed Hastings' most formative leadership lesson came from finding his startup CEO secretly washing his dirty coffee mugs at 4 AM. When asked why, the CEO replied, "You do so much for us. This is the one thing I could do for you." This simple act of humility and service created profound, lasting loyalty.

Against his company's wishes, Kroc would tell restaurant owners to stock up on paper cups before a price increase. This prioritized the long-term relationship and built immense trust, proving he was on their side. It's a powerful lesson in choosing relationships over short-term transactional wins.

At his first company, Reed Hastings’ only management tool was to work harder whenever problems arose. This made him an uninspiring leader, but the product was so strong that the company grew despite his poor management.

While Sea has five core values, CEO Forrest Li identifies "We stay humble" as the foundational one that enables all others. Drawing inspiration from Steve Jobs' "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" speech, he believes humility is the prerequisite for learning, adapting, and executing with speed.

Reed Hastings' motivation for running Netflix wasn't a love for film but a love for solving complex problems. He frames himself as a "crossword puzzle solver," suggesting founder motivation can stem from intellectual curiosity over domain passion.

Forrest Li believes humility and ambition are complementary, not contradictory. By comparing Sea's success to the trillion-dollar valuations of Silicon Valley giants, he maintains humility. This perspective frames current achievements as just the beginning, fueling the company's ambition for far greater growth.