Why We Prefer Founding CEOs You’re just a rent-a-rapper, your rhymes are minute-maidI’ll be here when it fade to watch you flip like a renegade”—Rakim, Follow The Leader When my partner Marc wrote his post describing our firm, the most controversial component of our investment strategy was our preference for founding CEOs. The conventional wisdom says a startup CEO should make way for a professional CEO once the company has achieved product-market fit. In this post, I describe why we prefer to fund companies whose founder will run the company as its CEO. The macro reason: that’s the way most of the great technology companies have been built At Andreessen Horowitz, our primary goal is to invest in the great technology franchises. (*) While not technically cofounders, Andy Grove and Thomas Watson, Sr. were the driving force behind Intel and IBM, respectively. Two more quick data points before I move on to explain why this happens. The underlying reasons The innovation business These innovations are product cycles.
Raisons communes des échecs de startups What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology. “It’s fucked up when your mind’s playin’ tricks on ya” —The Geto Boys By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it, and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown. At risk of violating the sacred rule, I will attempt to describe the condition and prescribe some techniques that helped me. If I’m Doing a Good Job, Why Do I Feel So Bad? Generally, someone doesn’t become CEOs unless she has a high sense of purpose and cares deeply about the work she does. And to rub salt into the wound and make matters worse, it’s your fault. 1. 2. 1.
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups October 2006 In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question. It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed—if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed—and that's too big a question to answer on the fly. Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direction. In a sense there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. 1. Have you ever noticed how few successful startups were founded by just one person? What's wrong with having one founder? But even if the founder's friends were all wrong and the company is a good bet, he's still at a disadvantage. The last one might be the most important. 2. Startups prosper in some places and not others. Why is the falloff so sharp? 3. If you watch little kids playing sports, you notice that below a certain age they're afraid of the ball. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
My Life as a CEO (and VC): Chief Psychologist I’ve had a post in my head for months – maybe longer – about the role of a CEO. It originally appeared on TechCrunch as a guest post but just in case you missed it there. My primary role was “chief psychologist” and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. Both are basically people businesses. I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. He says it basically comes down to three key functions: Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholdersRecruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Matt Blumberg, who runs one of Fred’s portfolio companies, Return Path, follows up with an additional three: Don’t be a bottleneck (make sure you aren’t holding up people’s work)Run great meetings (don’t be a productivity drain on the company)Stay fresh (be mentally and physically fit & attuned to what is going on in the world) Howard Lindzon weighed in with his comments:
The fall of THQ THQ's staff saw the stock price falling. It was 2008 and the global financial crisis hit the video game industry hard. "As a stockholder, it was shocking to me that the stock went through relatively quick decline," says one former employee who asked to not be named. "But even when things weren't going well, I was optimistic." And he had reason to be. In the following years when competitors slowly regained their numbers, THQ's value kept dropping. First it lost a few cents per share each month. Six years earlier, THQ's shares were valued at more than $30 each. At its peak in 2007, the company owned more than 15 game studios, most of which were part of the well-oiled licensed games machine. By 2013, its shares had plummeted to 11 cents each. Many blame the company's fall on the licensed games well drying up. "There isn’t any one, isolated event that killed the company," says a former THQ executive who asked to not be named. The games left behind The market that disappeared Commitment issues
Nobody Cares This post is dedicated to the late Al Davis. Rest in peace. “Just win baby.”—Al Davis Back in the bad old days when I was running Loudcloud, I thought to myself: how could I have possibly prepared for this? As I was feely sorry for myself, I randomly watched an interview with famous football coach Bill Parcells. That might be the best CEO advice ever. And they are right not to care. All the mental energy that you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your current mess.
Why startups fail, according to their founders - Fortune © Time Inc. All rights reserved. Fortune.com is a part of the Time.com network of sites. Powered by WordPress.com VIP Email address or Password is incorrect Forgot Password? Want the Full Story? Privacy Policy Thank you for your interest in licensing Fortune content. 1.
Steve Jobs’s Real Genius Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in “Steve Jobs,” Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. Steve Jobs, Isaacson’s biography makes clear, was a complicated and exhausting man. Isaacson begins with Jobs’s humble origins in Silicon Valley, the early triumph at Apple, and the humiliating ouster from the firm he created. Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it.
Staying Credulous: On Not Letting Being 40 Get In The Way I turned 40 in March. I didn’t think of it much, and I don’t plan on buying a convertible sports car or otherwise engaging in a mid life crisis. These age milestones just aren’t as meaningful for most men as they are for some women. Besides, I still have the maturity level of an average teenager. But one thing I am very aware of is my growing skepticism of some of the crazy startup ideas I see. I have always been that guy, looking for the positive in any startup situation. There is some evidence that the most successful entrepreneurs are 40 or older. The companies that shape our culture – Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc. – are almost always started in a dorm room. It’s so easy to look at a startup and think of the ten startups before that tried to solve the same problem and failed. The wisdom that comes with experience seems like such a valuable asset to have. There’s no room in my world for that kind of nonsense.