Thanks for the ride
2015-05-21
Ben is a legendary entrepreneur and reading his book felt like taking the time machine. Back in the days of 56kbps modem dialing and Netscape made its IPO. He also gave some sound advice on leadership. Some of the good take homes
1. Putting two in the same box. It's a typical problem where you put two tigers in the jungle, so to speak in Chinese idiom. This slows down decision making and at complicated times make responsibility-taking hard. Should the operational manager be liable or the head of engineering take charge if people don't know who's in charged. As CEO, you need to make the line clearer the better.
2. Politics. Sometimes the most apolitical leader tend to breed the most severe political environment. Always reward based on performance not request, if a person asks for a raise, don't reward it right away even if you think he deserves it, this will breed asking-for-reward thinking instead of working for it. Set a task for him and if he or she achieves this then reward him or her base on merit.
3. People, product, customer. In this order. People is the biggest asset, if you take care of you people, they take care of the product, and you get satisfied customer.
4. Train your people. This is something i overlook in my startup. Always take time to train your people. If you do, you'll realize alot of things fall into place naturally.
5. If you need to let go of people aka lay offs, let the immediate manager do it, and as the CEO you nede to address everyone, and your message should be for the people staying. Not everyone remembers a particular work day but they will always remember the day they get laid off for a long time, so if the manager has the guts to hire him, you should expect that manager to have the guts to let him go, and as the CEO, stick around the company when the lay off happens (you get plenty of time at the bar that night, but not in the day)
6. Don't overhire. This is a luxury to have, but it's also sound that if you want to get a great hire, hire someone great that can perform immediately but not the super executives that will only perform six months later when the team is big enough. Many big player go into a small team but expecting to play just the big games, but in fact what you need is someone that can do something immediately. If you do hire a big player, or in sports a position player - he can only run a big team, or play in a sole position, then you need to make sure they can adjust to the situation well by letting them realize in advance.
For example if someone senior from a big company joins your startup, he is used to mode of receiving, everyday he is being bombarded by issues from different hierarchy - HR, engineering, operations and he is receiving the issues and solving them, but in a startup, you need to charge to problem, no one will run to you to solve things, at least not until it's too late.
7. If you need to eat shit, don't nibble. I write it only because it sounds cool, and right in many, but not all, occasions.
The reason I gave this book a 3 star was perhaps I was hoping to get more insights out of Ben Horowitz than sound entrepreneurial advice. The hard things about hard things is a good read nonetheless.
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