High Growth Handbook

That’s number one. Number two is getting to the next product. We are in a product cycle business. Which is to say that every product in tech becomes obsolete, and they become obsolete pretty quickly. If all you do is take your current product to market and win the market, and you don’t do anything else—if you don’t keep innovating—your product will go stale. And somebody will come out with a better product and displace you. (Location 358)

I’m not a micro-manager and I won’t sweat your details unless I think things are off track and if I do, I’ll tell you my concern and we can work together to make sure I understand and plan together on how to communicate better or right the situation. That said, when I am new to a project/team I often get (Location 909)

Accountable and organized I take action items really seriously and I expect you to know what yours are, when they are due, and get them done. I don’t like chasing them but I do notice when things slip—it’s fine to renegotiate deadlines but I’ll be annoyed if it’s the day after the deadline.... I dislike being caught last-minute with people working hard on something we could have gotten ahead of—please help anticipate big work efforts and let’s be in front of them together. Similarly, I want us to be ruthless in priorities while we are resource-constrained. I need you all sane...and me too. (Location 915)

But really the only universal job description of CEO is making sure the company wins. And so deciding what the company is going to do and making sure the company gets that done—that’s the most critical part of the job. (Location 1902)

The trick to being effective at this is that you have to get really good at saying no and just not doing things. There are a lot of things that are urgent but not important. The hard part of being a good CEO is that you have to be willing to let some things fall apart. You don’t have enough time to do everything well. And in practice, what that means is that there are some urgent things that you just don’t do. Getting comfortable with that takes a long time. It’s hard. (Location 1922)

“Once you hire your first seasoned exec who works out, you will be grateful for her presence. All sorts of things will magically just get done. People will get hired, deals will get closed, process will tighten up. It can be a wondrous experience.” (Location 2086)