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Podcast Notes Key Takeaways
Being a CEO is “the worst job that you’ll ever love”
As a CEO you’re always selling
You’re selling to investors, employees, the press, and customers
The best legal protection for a CEO is to take important legal decisions with the Board
“In a startup, if you don’t have 10 new initiatives a day, as an executive, your whole company is standing still, nothing is happening” Ben Horowitz
How too much money screws up a company
Entrepreneurs usually have many different ideas
Constrained by money, they only pursue their best two
With plenty of money, they pursue many more and stretch too thin
There are two processes that you want to put in place early on: hiring and promotions
It’s critical to have consistent, transparent, and fair processes for avoiding internal conflicts
If you don’t have clear processes, there will be hundreds of difficult decisions to be made
Common mistakes of early-stage startups
Expanding to other countries
Hiring many executives
Working on different products
Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org
This week on Boss Talk: Why aren’t there more academic CEOs? Should early stage companies hire junior or senior engineers? What are the common mistakes high growth companies make, especially when expanding into new markets? Plus: balancing pay equity with retainment, CEO legal risk and protection, and growing through acquisition.
Boss Talk is the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff… boss stuff. Live every Tuesday 5-6pm on Clubhouse.
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