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There is a reason why most startups don't go big - burning vision is not even close to being the right formula for success. Running a company of 10 people is VE

There is a reason why most startups don't go big - burning vision is not even close to being the right formula for success. Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000. Just like precious few individual contributors are comfortable with and able to contribute meaningfully in this wide range of environments, it doesn't make sense that a CEO is somehow exempted from that. The day-to-day operations are in fact incredibly different and present unique challenges. Note: I'm not saying this is what's happening here, just responding to the general comment above.

maerF0x0 9y ago
> Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000 IMO thats a classist lie that keeps people in their place. Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.
- atonse 9y ago
  Ehh I'm not so sure. There are different levels of abstractions involved in a 10 person company vs a 1000 person company. At the 5000 employee level, you are probably dealing with a ton of abstractions that were filtered multiple levels up.
  - weego 9y ago
    Let's all admit that we don't know because we're not/have not been in that scenario rather than picking arbitrary milestones and making guesses
- fizx 9y ago
  It's probably a little bit like a Cessna pilot trying to land a 747. I'm sure the plane can almost land itself, and ground control can talk you through it, but wouldn't you rather have someone who has done it before?
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    Eh, most 747 pilots have probably flown a number of smaller planes before. Having a number of hours in a small plane in no way disqualifies you to fly bigger planes. Also in this case they aren't only the pilot but also the constructor of the "plane". (That said while most pilots started small not all Cessna pilots should go on to fly passengers or even cargo.)
    - alistairSH 9y ago
      It's your closing parenthetical that's the important point here.
    - PaulStatezny 9y ago
      > (That said while most pilots started small not all Cessna pilots should go on to fly passengers or even cargo.) Unless I’m mistaken, that was actually the point being made; you made it again for him. Your argument was going the other direction.
- matte_black 9y ago
  No way is it a lie. The kind of people who enjoy running a company with a ragtag group of 10 employees in the early days are rarely the kind of people who will be able to effectively run a 10000 employee operation. If you’re growing fast there is no time for on-the-job training as CEO. You need to be effective immediately or else you are only hurting your company’s growth.
  - mariushop 9y ago
    Oh my God, the company's growth? Then we MUST axe the CEO. He's just a human, after all. Don't want humans to hurt company's growth. Company's growth. Growth.
    - goatherders 9y ago
      When you take outside money then growth or profit become the only metrics that matter. That's how capitalism works.
    - ABeeSea 9y ago
      Exactly, it’s better to let an inexperienced CEO let the company burn through funds and shut down than to bring in someone experienced with managing large teams and implementing a strategy towards a vision. It’s a learning experiment.
    - meddlepal 9y ago
      If you're not growing you're dying.
      - parrellel 9y ago
        ...but, if you're growing too much, you might be cancer.
    - Domenic_S 9y ago
      Yeah, the problem is those humans have nowhere to grow. Would you be happy with the same salary, job title, etc for a decade?
- infecto 9y ago
  After working through a number of startups that grow from 10s to hundreds I don't think it is untrue. The argument is not what an individual is capable of learning and doing but personality fit. The founder who has a burning desire to unleash their idea to the world is generally not the same person who wants to grow the company at a larger scale. 1) I think the founder treats the company too much like a baby and sometimes the hard realities of the business are ignored. It is nice to have a fresh breath of air from leadership who have not been with the company from day 1. They have a different perspective that I believe can make a huge difference. 2) It is a different type of work. Perhaps the person can make the transition but I don't think that is normally the case. The challenges are different at size 500 compared to what t hey were at size 10 and I think a lot of CEOs who strive in the small scrappy environment do not really enjoy it at size 500. Sure they may trick themselves in thinking it is for them but I think it does more harm than good but it is also a learning experience for a lot of first time founders. Don't confuse me. I am not saying its impossible to successful founder/CEO at size 500+ but I don't think the type of person who founds a company really enjoys it.
- tomcam 9y ago
  What on earth makes it a “classist lie”?
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    The implication is that the (especially American) upper class is trenched on this belief that CEOs of large companies require a certain pedigree that may not be based on observable, empirical evidence but rather on a mythos to keep the upper class relatively "pure" and the number of rich CEOs controlled to (mostly) existing class members, while attempting to appear egalitarian ("anyone" can go to an ivy league school; "anyone" can fail upward; "anyone" can develop the skills to be a proper CEO, it's just "hard work" that a silver spoon makes "easier"). The relative rarity of CEO jobs at sizes deemed large helps ensure that empiricism is complicated because the sample sizes remain small, so what the truth here is, who can say? It's tough to science.
    - briandear 9y ago
      What's interesting about what you said is that if one were to look at the CEOs of the Fortune 500, this idea of classism breaks down. CEO of IBM: Ginni Rometty -- grew up in a single parent home, with a mom that worked multiple jobs. Ginni got in to Northwestern and studied computer science and electrical engineering. She certainly didn't have any upper-class advantages. She went to public school. Geisha Williams, CEO of PG&E (part of the Fortune 500) -- daughter of Cuban refugees -- literally arrived in the US with nothing, her father was a political prisoner in Cuba before being released. He worked multiple jobs to support his family. Geisha started her career as a residential power auditor and worked her way up to CEO. Hardly a "silver spoon" story. Rex Tillerson (former) CEO of Exxon -- one of the largest companies in the world. Picked cotton and worked as a janitor before getting accepted to the University of Texas with a band scholarship. He joined Exxon as a production engineer and then worked his way up to CEO over the next 30 years. Hardly an "elite." Tim Cook -- son of a dockworker and a pharmacy worker. Went to Auburn University (hardly an Ivy League, "elite" school.) He worked at IBM from 12 years working his way up to the director of North American fulfillment while earning a Duke MBA at essentially night school. I could tell these stories all day. There certainly are some elites who do go on to be CEOs, but there are even more CEOs and self-made millionaires that aren't Boston Brahmins or cousins of the Kennedy family. This whole "classism" idea is promoted by three types of people: a. those who are actually ignorant about American business and its leaders. Spend some time actually learning the backgrounds of American business leaders and you'll see more "State U" than "Harvard U." b. those from other countries where a public school girl from a broken home would never become CEO of IBM or a redneck janitor on a marching band scholarship could never become CEO of Exxon -- these are often Europeans where, in places such as France -- if you aren't a male who went to a Grande Ecole, you will never be CEO of a major French company. CEO of Groupe PSA (France's largest car maker) -- Carlos Tavares, graduate of Ecole Centrale Paris. CEO of Renault? Also a Grande Ecole graduate. Former CEO of Airbus? Louis Gallois, also from a Grande Ecole. CEO of LVMH? Bernard Arnault, another Grande Ecole graduate. The "egalitarian" French have nothing but elites leading their top companies. In the US, the most valuable company's CEO? Tim Cook -- Auburn University -- a state school. Rex Tillerson? University of Texas. CEO of Walmart (the top company on the US Fortune 500 by revenue) -- University of Arkansas and University of Tulsa. CEO of United Health? Dave Wichmannm, Illinois State University with an Accounting degree -- not even an MBA and he's the CEO of the number 6 company in the United States. CEO of United Airlines? Oscar Munoz, the oldest of 9 kids in a Mexican-American family in California and the first to graduate college in his family. Some elite. What "classism" helped Munoz? He's the CEO of the world's largest airline. c. the type of person that is angry at their own life, their own bad decisions or their own lack of success that they want to create a political narrative that supports the "evil capitalism" trope. This is the type of person that feels like they have been wronged by life and society and rather than looking at their own failings, instead attempt to blame some boogeyman. Maybe their daddy didn't love them enough. I don't know. But these are negative people that claim conspiracy when there is none. They themselves just don't think they're good enough and they need an excuse to justify it. Now, if we were talking about politics -- THEN I might agree that classism has some influence. When we have a brood of Bushes, a variety of Clintons and an infestation of Kennedys, then it's pretty clear classism does have a real impact. But in the C-Suite -- I would argue that the evidence suggests that classism isn't a factor at all, instead it's about hard work, tenacity, luck and intelligence.
- mbesto 9y ago
  > Any reasonably smart CEO Sorry but this is extremely naive and I'm sorry that your naïveté has caused you conclude things which are simply not true. This is a very strong assumption, and a lie that is peddled by the media (Zuck is the greatest example of this) to create a novel story. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just a dangerous assumption. For the record, I've interviewed over 75 software founders (CEO/CTO) and I can tell you right now that there is nowhere near even 50% of them who have the ability to scale their companies. Furthermore, there is a reason many of my clients (PE investors) replace management teams who cannot scale businesses and when they do, they reap financial awards as a result. So my conclusions are based on following the money...
  - derefr 9y ago
    Of course it’s less than 50%; that doesn’t mean that it’s a negligible proportion, either. Analogy: (far) less than 50% of military officers have what it takes to be a general/admiral/other “logistics at scale” type. But yet still, military officers with experience commanding in smaller engagements are the only good source of those high-level strategists. If people couldn’t grow into roles requiring more responsibility of them, militaries would be “making” admirals and generals from scratch. Does that sound feasible? If not, then why would one be able to “make” a Fortune 500 CEO out of anything other than an existing, experienced SMB CEO?
    - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
      A really good analogy. And it is worth noting that in the UK British Army, junior officer training is nearly a year long course, and then promising Colonels go through a Higher command training course to prepare for Generalship. Maybe, just maybe, Harvard Business School is the place for teaching better than 50% to do well and expand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Command_and_Staff_Course https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Command_and_Staff_Cou...
  - Pyxl101 9y ago
    What do you think are they key deficiencies in most founders that prevents them from being able to scale their businesses? I'd be very curious to hear. (Are they unwilling to delegate and trust others to make decisions? Overly focused on trying to be involved in and influence everything?)
- curun1r 9y ago
  One need only look at Soloman's posting history on this site to see why he was the right person to lead Docker during its inception and the wrong person to lead Docker long term. It was clear in the discussions over Docker that Soloman was passionate about the technology he'd created and had a very particular vision for its future, which was often at odds with the way that posters here saw Docker and wanted it to evolve. But Soloman seemed to lack the ability to be diplomatic about it and showed some poor judgment in what he said publicly. That led to quite a few public spats that reflected poorly on Docker. It's absolutely true that some people can evolve from a leader of a small company/team/project into a leader for a much larger one. But it's also absolutely true that not everyone can and that the skills to lead that larger endeavor are significantly different from the skills needed to get something off the ground. It's likely that Docker would never have gotten off the ground without someone like Soloman to take a very opinionated stance and drag people towards his vision. But if Docker is to continue to succeed, it now needs to expand its reach learn to be what people need rather than convincing people that they need Docker. Not being on the inside, I can't say for sure whether Soloman is capable of evolving into a leader that can move Docker in this direction, but the superficial view from the outside suggests to me that this was probably the right decision. It's no knock against him as either a leader or a technologist, it just feels like it's not the best fit going forward and his efforts would be better spent on something new that pushes a new vision forward.
  - brightball 9y ago
    I remember when he took the time to hop on my dinky little blog and comment on one of my early Docker posts. I didn't even realize who he was until I saw the name next to the keynote speaker at the first Dockercon. :-)
- rowyourboat 9y ago
  A lot of research has gone into describing this "classist lie". It is not simply something that the parent stated as a truism. Organizational theory seems to suggest that founders are, as a general rule, not the best CEOs for a maturing company. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_life_cycle and its sources.
  - shrimp_emoji 9y ago
    >Stage 5: Decline : This stage initiates the death of an organization. The decline is identified by the focus on political agenda and authority within an organization,[4] whereby individuals start to become preoccupied with personal objectives, instead of focusing on the objectives of the organization itself. This slowly destroys the functionality and feasibility of the entire organization.[3] Wow. What if the organization begins in Stage 5?
- Tloewald 9y ago
  To be really good at something it is necessary (but not sufficient) to be interested in it. Running a company of 10 people is an experientially different thing than running a company of 1000, just like collaborating is an experientially different thing from doing stuff on your own and playing video games is different from using Excel. Being interested in one is no guarantee of being interested in another.
- briandear 9y ago
  A classist lie? What are you talking about? Statistics are pretty clear in the failure rate of founder-CEOs when they scale past certain sizes. Even Zuckerberg -- if it weren't for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook wouldn't have survived as well as it did. Zuckerberg didn't know the first thing about running a large organization, I might argue that he still doesn't -- but when a company can basically print money, there's a huge margin of error afforded to Zuckerberg-type leaders. If Zuck where competing in the energy business, banking or autos, he'd have been long since buried. Steve Jobs also wasn't particularly good (managing a large org) during his first stint at Apple -- it took a lot of maturity and learning at Next and Pixar before he was really ready to lead Apple. Mark Benioff is another founder-CEO that did really well -- however, he was an Oracle Vice President before starting Salesforce. He was both incredibly smart but also had experience within a large organization. > Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way. Citation needed. The list of successful founder-CEOs who have scaled to huge orgs is a very short list.
  - maerF0x0 9y ago
    All of these people had to learn their way up the scale. I see little reason a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale too.
    - zbentley 9y ago
      > a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale OK, but many (most, if others' claims in this thread are to be believed) of them don't do so. That contradicts your original claim, unless you want to say that many/most CEOs are not "reasonably smart", which is dubious at best and armchair quarterbacking at worst.
      - maerF0x0 9y ago
        This is a good point. What's the pragmatic difference between can and does. Others have pointed out a good point too that many CEOs are so busy focusing on other things that they fail to do the learning they need to, effectively falling behind the needs of the company. I mostly am rejecting the knee jerk reaction of "Company has grown 100x and now requires a new CEO" ... Who knew this would spark so much discussion?
- ndh2 9y ago
  The question is not whether or not they can learn, but whether or not they did.
- mcguire 9y ago
  History seems to disagree. Growth has killed many companies.
AcerbicZero 9y ago
I disagree with the number of employees making things drastically different. 1, 10, or 10,000, it doesn't matter as long as the leader has the fundamental organization skills need to control groups of people. It's easier to hide the lack of organization in smaller groups, but the end state will be the same regardless. "Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization."
- watwut 9y ago
  With 1 to 10 people you know what exactly who does, his weak and strong points etc. They also know you personally and possibly trust you. You also manage by talking to people personally and you have direct control over pretty much everything you decide to. You see impact of your decisions pretty fast and directly. It is easy to make exceptions and situational decisions. With 1000-10000 you never seen most employees faces. You have no idea what they do whole day. They don't know you either and likely don't trust you. You manage by making general rules and by talking to few people directly under you. You dont see impact of your decisions directly, you have to guess from hints and long time.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  Yes, this is the point though. Managing a company of 10,000 is harder than one of 10.
tzhenghao 9y ago
I agree. I've seen time and time again founders having a certain vision but lack a strategy for getting there. You then get a whole other set of customers that are very different than your early adopters. The priorities in company day to day operations will change as the company morphs into a larger, faster growing business. You then get a whole other set of customers that are very different than your early adopters, and that present unique challenges and different approaches in tackling them.
gerdesj 9y ago
"There is a reason why most startups don't go big" I think you are absolutely correct. I am the MD (CEO elsewhere) of an IT consultancy that is 18 years old. We have around 20 staff and t/o ~£1.5M. I like to sleep at night, I do have ambitions but they'll never be cool. Our business model will never set the world on light but we are one of many companies that you will never hear of that keeps the world turning. We are the boring lot that worry about backups and security. We host some customer systems at our place and run a near comprehensive monitoring system that generally warns us pre failure. We also have a few other skills around the place. There are other reasons why startups don't go big and that is by design. I do not want my firm to go big. If we hit around 50 staff then I will break it up into bits (budding). Did I mention that we are boring? I like boring.
- gekawar 9y ago
  Yep! Boring is always best. :)
- tonysickpony 9y ago
  I like what you said here. Keep a business for 18 year old is a success, and I can only imagine is challenging in many ways, could be boring in few. I have seen greedy consultant companies cutting corners here and there. Caring about backups, security and monitoring is great attitude in my opinion. Keen to hear more story about your venture.
  - gerdesj 9y ago
    Napoleon Bonaparte (might have) famously described Britain as a "nation of shopkeepers". I spend a lot of my time trying to live up to that ideal! I'll try to keep this brief ... I was (1997-2000) a contractor in the IS department for the really large aerospace company in Yeovil, Somerset, UK (it's changed hands a few times). I eventually got to the team doing server management, app delivery etc ie third line. IS was due to be "facilities managed" and two of my colleagues approached me to be the MD of this thing they'd cooked up. The idea was we would go external and resell ourselves as a unit back through the on site supplier of IT/IS services. The supplier chosen by said aerospace company used to have a short name that matched the name of a famous sauce from these shores - it's brown (the sauce) and starts with H. We rented a small unit down the road (proper rural around here) and had an old PC that ran Win 98 as a file server etc etc. We put in a ISDN BRI link (2x 64Kbs-1) for internets. We had one customer. We moved on gradually and learned. Our first employee stayed for around eight years and then moved on - still in touch. Employees 2 and 3 (poached off a local travel agency - terrible pay there but we could better the pay despite being a little setup: E2 stayed for 10 years and moved on and sadly played silly buggers with customers - nothing too detrimental but still a bad taste left behind. E3 still with us, complications recently but all good now. By 2013ish we now have around 15 odd employees. We have moved to a bigger pair of units in the same area that we started from. We now have modern systems involving (small) racks, virtualisation etc. The norm for most companies is to rent but I wanted to own my premises. My thinking was that we could do more stuff. We looked for a while and ended up buying (story short!) an NHS clinic in Yeovil which is the largest town in the area. We now have five internet connections - a leased line (100M) and four FTTC (ADSL 80/20) and a pair of pfSense HA routers running on Dell R310s (to be ditched soon - they can't do AES-NI) with a lot of IPSEC VPNs and OpenVPNs and 10ish internal VLANS. We have a proper computer room with proper gear. We also have a lot more customers these days. We are now ISO 9001 and 27001 registered and lots more stuff. Every day I love going to work. Don't get me wrong - it's still hard. I came into work the other day and found an employee in tears. I sent them home (obviously, I can't say too much here). Two of our employees have moved on and then come back again (one of them was once a lover of one of my business partners). Thanks to our past involvement with a large firm whose name is saucy, we have several customers these days that you will probably have heard of. One thing that I think we have is that we have three Directors - a Triumvirate if you like. Any two can gang up on one - it works very well. I'm a very lucky person. I'll never be a millionaire but I'm very comfortable as far as I'm concerned. I'm a shopkeeper and fucking proud of it. Cheers Jon

maerF0x0 9y ago

> Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000 IMO thats a classist lie that keeps people in their place. Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.

atonse 9y ago
Ehh I'm not so sure. There are different levels of abstractions involved in a 10 person company vs a 1000 person company. At the 5000 employee level, you are probably dealing with a ton of abstractions that were filtered multiple levels up.
- weego 9y ago
  Let's all admit that we don't know because we're not/have not been in that scenario rather than picking arbitrary milestones and making guesses
fizx 9y ago
It's probably a little bit like a Cessna pilot trying to land a 747. I'm sure the plane can almost land itself, and ground control can talk you through it, but wouldn't you rather have someone who has done it before?
- reitanqild 9y ago
  Eh, most 747 pilots have probably flown a number of smaller planes before. Having a number of hours in a small plane in no way disqualifies you to fly bigger planes. Also in this case they aren't only the pilot but also the constructor of the "plane". (That said while most pilots started small not all Cessna pilots should go on to fly passengers or even cargo.)
  - alistairSH 9y ago
    It's your closing parenthetical that's the important point here.
  - PaulStatezny 9y ago
    > (That said while most pilots started small not all Cessna pilots should go on to fly passengers or even cargo.) Unless I’m mistaken, that was actually the point being made; you made it again for him. Your argument was going the other direction.
matte_black 9y ago
No way is it a lie. The kind of people who enjoy running a company with a ragtag group of 10 employees in the early days are rarely the kind of people who will be able to effectively run a 10000 employee operation. If you’re growing fast there is no time for on-the-job training as CEO. You need to be effective immediately or else you are only hurting your company’s growth.
- mariushop 9y ago
  Oh my God, the company's growth? Then we MUST axe the CEO. He's just a human, after all. Don't want humans to hurt company's growth. Company's growth. Growth.
  - goatherders 9y ago
    When you take outside money then growth or profit become the only metrics that matter. That's how capitalism works.
  - ABeeSea 9y ago
    Exactly, it’s better to let an inexperienced CEO let the company burn through funds and shut down than to bring in someone experienced with managing large teams and implementing a strategy towards a vision. It’s a learning experiment.
  - meddlepal 9y ago
    If you're not growing you're dying.
    - parrellel 9y ago
      ...but, if you're growing too much, you might be cancer.
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    Yeah, the problem is those humans have nowhere to grow. Would you be happy with the same salary, job title, etc for a decade?
infecto 9y ago
After working through a number of startups that grow from 10s to hundreds I don't think it is untrue. The argument is not what an individual is capable of learning and doing but personality fit. The founder who has a burning desire to unleash their idea to the world is generally not the same person who wants to grow the company at a larger scale. 1) I think the founder treats the company too much like a baby and sometimes the hard realities of the business are ignored. It is nice to have a fresh breath of air from leadership who have not been with the company from day 1. They have a different perspective that I believe can make a huge difference. 2) It is a different type of work. Perhaps the person can make the transition but I don't think that is normally the case. The challenges are different at size 500 compared to what t hey were at size 10 and I think a lot of CEOs who strive in the small scrappy environment do not really enjoy it at size 500. Sure they may trick themselves in thinking it is for them but I think it does more harm than good but it is also a learning experience for a lot of first time founders. Don't confuse me. I am not saying its impossible to successful founder/CEO at size 500+ but I don't think the type of person who founds a company really enjoys it.
tomcam 9y ago
What on earth makes it a “classist lie”?
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  The implication is that the (especially American) upper class is trenched on this belief that CEOs of large companies require a certain pedigree that may not be based on observable, empirical evidence but rather on a mythos to keep the upper class relatively "pure" and the number of rich CEOs controlled to (mostly) existing class members, while attempting to appear egalitarian ("anyone" can go to an ivy league school; "anyone" can fail upward; "anyone" can develop the skills to be a proper CEO, it's just "hard work" that a silver spoon makes "easier"). The relative rarity of CEO jobs at sizes deemed large helps ensure that empiricism is complicated because the sample sizes remain small, so what the truth here is, who can say? It's tough to science.
  - briandear 9y ago
    What's interesting about what you said is that if one were to look at the CEOs of the Fortune 500, this idea of classism breaks down. CEO of IBM: Ginni Rometty -- grew up in a single parent home, with a mom that worked multiple jobs. Ginni got in to Northwestern and studied computer science and electrical engineering. She certainly didn't have any upper-class advantages. She went to public school. Geisha Williams, CEO of PG&E (part of the Fortune 500) -- daughter of Cuban refugees -- literally arrived in the US with nothing, her father was a political prisoner in Cuba before being released. He worked multiple jobs to support his family. Geisha started her career as a residential power auditor and worked her way up to CEO. Hardly a "silver spoon" story. Rex Tillerson (former) CEO of Exxon -- one of the largest companies in the world. Picked cotton and worked as a janitor before getting accepted to the University of Texas with a band scholarship. He joined Exxon as a production engineer and then worked his way up to CEO over the next 30 years. Hardly an "elite." Tim Cook -- son of a dockworker and a pharmacy worker. Went to Auburn University (hardly an Ivy League, "elite" school.) He worked at IBM from 12 years working his way up to the director of North American fulfillment while earning a Duke MBA at essentially night school. I could tell these stories all day. There certainly are some elites who do go on to be CEOs, but there are even more CEOs and self-made millionaires that aren't Boston Brahmins or cousins of the Kennedy family. This whole "classism" idea is promoted by three types of people: a. those who are actually ignorant about American business and its leaders. Spend some time actually learning the backgrounds of American business leaders and you'll see more "State U" than "Harvard U." b. those from other countries where a public school girl from a broken home would never become CEO of IBM or a redneck janitor on a marching band scholarship could never become CEO of Exxon -- these are often Europeans where, in places such as France -- if you aren't a male who went to a Grande Ecole, you will never be CEO of a major French company. CEO of Groupe PSA (France's largest car maker) -- Carlos Tavares, graduate of Ecole Centrale Paris. CEO of Renault? Also a Grande Ecole graduate. Former CEO of Airbus? Louis Gallois, also from a Grande Ecole. CEO of LVMH? Bernard Arnault, another Grande Ecole graduate. The "egalitarian" French have nothing but elites leading their top companies. In the US, the most valuable company's CEO? Tim Cook -- Auburn University -- a state school. Rex Tillerson? University of Texas. CEO of Walmart (the top company on the US Fortune 500 by revenue) -- University of Arkansas and University of Tulsa. CEO of United Health? Dave Wichmannm, Illinois State University with an Accounting degree -- not even an MBA and he's the CEO of the number 6 company in the United States. CEO of United Airlines? Oscar Munoz, the oldest of 9 kids in a Mexican-American family in California and the first to graduate college in his family. Some elite. What "classism" helped Munoz? He's the CEO of the world's largest airline. c. the type of person that is angry at their own life, their own bad decisions or their own lack of success that they want to create a political narrative that supports the "evil capitalism" trope. This is the type of person that feels like they have been wronged by life and society and rather than looking at their own failings, instead attempt to blame some boogeyman. Maybe their daddy didn't love them enough. I don't know. But these are negative people that claim conspiracy when there is none. They themselves just don't think they're good enough and they need an excuse to justify it. Now, if we were talking about politics -- THEN I might agree that classism has some influence. When we have a brood of Bushes, a variety of Clintons and an infestation of Kennedys, then it's pretty clear classism does have a real impact. But in the C-Suite -- I would argue that the evidence suggests that classism isn't a factor at all, instead it's about hard work, tenacity, luck and intelligence.
mbesto 9y ago
> Any reasonably smart CEO Sorry but this is extremely naive and I'm sorry that your naïveté has caused you conclude things which are simply not true. This is a very strong assumption, and a lie that is peddled by the media (Zuck is the greatest example of this) to create a novel story. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just a dangerous assumption. For the record, I've interviewed over 75 software founders (CEO/CTO) and I can tell you right now that there is nowhere near even 50% of them who have the ability to scale their companies. Furthermore, there is a reason many of my clients (PE investors) replace management teams who cannot scale businesses and when they do, they reap financial awards as a result. So my conclusions are based on following the money...
- derefr 9y ago
  Of course it’s less than 50%; that doesn’t mean that it’s a negligible proportion, either. Analogy: (far) less than 50% of military officers have what it takes to be a general/admiral/other “logistics at scale” type. But yet still, military officers with experience commanding in smaller engagements are the only good source of those high-level strategists. If people couldn’t grow into roles requiring more responsibility of them, militaries would be “making” admirals and generals from scratch. Does that sound feasible? If not, then why would one be able to “make” a Fortune 500 CEO out of anything other than an existing, experienced SMB CEO?
  - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
    A really good analogy. And it is worth noting that in the UK British Army, junior officer training is nearly a year long course, and then promising Colonels go through a Higher command training course to prepare for Generalship. Maybe, just maybe, Harvard Business School is the place for teaching better than 50% to do well and expand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Command_and_Staff_Course https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Command_and_Staff_Cou...
- Pyxl101 9y ago
  What do you think are they key deficiencies in most founders that prevents them from being able to scale their businesses? I'd be very curious to hear. (Are they unwilling to delegate and trust others to make decisions? Overly focused on trying to be involved in and influence everything?)
curun1r 9y ago
One need only look at Soloman's posting history on this site to see why he was the right person to lead Docker during its inception and the wrong person to lead Docker long term. It was clear in the discussions over Docker that Soloman was passionate about the technology he'd created and had a very particular vision for its future, which was often at odds with the way that posters here saw Docker and wanted it to evolve. But Soloman seemed to lack the ability to be diplomatic about it and showed some poor judgment in what he said publicly. That led to quite a few public spats that reflected poorly on Docker. It's absolutely true that some people can evolve from a leader of a small company/team/project into a leader for a much larger one. But it's also absolutely true that not everyone can and that the skills to lead that larger endeavor are significantly different from the skills needed to get something off the ground. It's likely that Docker would never have gotten off the ground without someone like Soloman to take a very opinionated stance and drag people towards his vision. But if Docker is to continue to succeed, it now needs to expand its reach learn to be what people need rather than convincing people that they need Docker. Not being on the inside, I can't say for sure whether Soloman is capable of evolving into a leader that can move Docker in this direction, but the superficial view from the outside suggests to me that this was probably the right decision. It's no knock against him as either a leader or a technologist, it just feels like it's not the best fit going forward and his efforts would be better spent on something new that pushes a new vision forward.
- brightball 9y ago
  I remember when he took the time to hop on my dinky little blog and comment on one of my early Docker posts. I didn't even realize who he was until I saw the name next to the keynote speaker at the first Dockercon. :-)
rowyourboat 9y ago
A lot of research has gone into describing this "classist lie". It is not simply something that the parent stated as a truism. Organizational theory seems to suggest that founders are, as a general rule, not the best CEOs for a maturing company. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_life_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_life_cycle and its sources.
- shrimp_emoji 9y ago
  >Stage 5: Decline : This stage initiates the death of an organization. The decline is identified by the focus on political agenda and authority within an organization,[4] whereby individuals start to become preoccupied with personal objectives, instead of focusing on the objectives of the organization itself. This slowly destroys the functionality and feasibility of the entire organization.[3] Wow. What if the organization begins in Stage 5?
Tloewald 9y ago
To be really good at something it is necessary (but not sufficient) to be interested in it. Running a company of 10 people is an experientially different thing than running a company of 1000, just like collaborating is an experientially different thing from doing stuff on your own and playing video games is different from using Excel. Being interested in one is no guarantee of being interested in another.
briandear 9y ago
A classist lie? What are you talking about? Statistics are pretty clear in the failure rate of founder-CEOs when they scale past certain sizes. Even Zuckerberg -- if it weren't for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook wouldn't have survived as well as it did. Zuckerberg didn't know the first thing about running a large organization, I might argue that he still doesn't -- but when a company can basically print money, there's a huge margin of error afforded to Zuckerberg-type leaders. If Zuck where competing in the energy business, banking or autos, he'd have been long since buried. Steve Jobs also wasn't particularly good (managing a large org) during his first stint at Apple -- it took a lot of maturity and learning at Next and Pixar before he was really ready to lead Apple. Mark Benioff is another founder-CEO that did really well -- however, he was an Oracle Vice President before starting Salesforce. He was both incredibly smart but also had experience within a large organization. > Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way. Citation needed. The list of successful founder-CEOs who have scaled to huge orgs is a very short list.
- maerF0x0 9y ago
  All of these people had to learn their way up the scale. I see little reason a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale too.
  - zbentley 9y ago
    > a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale OK, but many (most, if others' claims in this thread are to be believed) of them don't do so. That contradicts your original claim, unless you want to say that many/most CEOs are not "reasonably smart", which is dubious at best and armchair quarterbacking at worst.
    - maerF0x0 9y ago
      This is a good point. What's the pragmatic difference between can and does. Others have pointed out a good point too that many CEOs are so busy focusing on other things that they fail to do the learning they need to, effectively falling behind the needs of the company. I mostly am rejecting the knee jerk reaction of "Company has grown 100x and now requires a new CEO" ... Who knew this would spark so much discussion?
ndh2 9y ago
The question is not whether or not they can learn, but whether or not they did.
mcguire 9y ago
History seems to disagree. Growth has killed many companies.

AcerbicZero 9y ago

I disagree with the number of employees making things drastically different. 1, 10, or 10,000, it doesn't matter as long as the leader has the fundamental organization skills need to control groups of people. It's easier to hide the lack of organization in smaller groups, but the end state will be the same regardless. "Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization."

watwut 9y ago
With 1 to 10 people you know what exactly who does, his weak and strong points etc. They also know you personally and possibly trust you. You also manage by talking to people personally and you have direct control over pretty much everything you decide to. You see impact of your decisions pretty fast and directly. It is easy to make exceptions and situational decisions. With 1000-10000 you never seen most employees faces. You have no idea what they do whole day. They don't know you either and likely don't trust you. You manage by making general rules and by talking to few people directly under you. You dont see impact of your decisions directly, you have to guess from hints and long time.
madeofpalk 9y ago
Yes, this is the point though. Managing a company of 10,000 is harder than one of 10.

tzhenghao 9y ago

I agree. I've seen time and time again founders having a certain vision but lack a strategy for getting there. You then get a whole other set of customers that are very different than your early adopters. The priorities in company day to day operations will change as the company morphs into a larger, faster growing business. You then get a whole other set of customers that are very different than your early adopters, and that present unique challenges and different approaches in tackling them.

gerdesj 9y ago

"There is a reason why most startups don't go big" I think you are absolutely correct. I am the MD (CEO elsewhere) of an IT consultancy that is 18 years old. We have around 20 staff and t/o ~£1.5M. I like to sleep at night, I do have ambitions but they'll never be cool. Our business model will never set the world on light but we are one of many companies that you will never hear of that keeps the world turning. We are the boring lot that worry about backups and security. We host some customer systems at our place and run a near comprehensive monitoring system that generally warns us pre failure. We also have a few other skills around the place. There are other reasons why startups don't go big and that is by design. I do not want my firm to go big. If we hit around 50 staff then I will break it up into bits (budding). Did I mention that we are boring? I like boring.

gekawar 9y ago
Yep! Boring is always best. :)
tonysickpony 9y ago
I like what you said here. Keep a business for 18 year old is a success, and I can only imagine is challenging in many ways, could be boring in few. I have seen greedy consultant companies cutting corners here and there. Caring about backups, security and monitoring is great attitude in my opinion. Keen to hear more story about your venture.
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Napoleon Bonaparte (might have) famously described Britain as a "nation of shopkeepers". I spend a lot of my time trying to live up to that ideal! I'll try to keep this brief ... I was (1997-2000) a contractor in the IS department for the really large aerospace company in Yeovil, Somerset, UK (it's changed hands a few times). I eventually got to the team doing server management, app delivery etc ie third line. IS was due to be "facilities managed" and two of my colleagues approached me to be the MD of this thing they'd cooked up. The idea was we would go external and resell ourselves as a unit back through the on site supplier of IT/IS services. The supplier chosen by said aerospace company used to have a short name that matched the name of a famous sauce from these shores - it's brown (the sauce) and starts with H. We rented a small unit down the road (proper rural around here) and had an old PC that ran Win 98 as a file server etc etc. We put in a ISDN BRI link (2x 64Kbs-1) for internets. We had one customer. We moved on gradually and learned. Our first employee stayed for around eight years and then moved on - still in touch. Employees 2 and 3 (poached off a local travel agency - terrible pay there but we could better the pay despite being a little setup: E2 stayed for 10 years and moved on and sadly played silly buggers with customers - nothing too detrimental but still a bad taste left behind. E3 still with us, complications recently but all good now. By 2013ish we now have around 15 odd employees. We have moved to a bigger pair of units in the same area that we started from. We now have modern systems involving (small) racks, virtualisation etc. The norm for most companies is to rent but I wanted to own my premises. My thinking was that we could do more stuff. We looked for a while and ended up buying (story short!) an NHS clinic in Yeovil which is the largest town in the area. We now have five internet connections - a leased line (100M) and four FTTC (ADSL 80/20) and a pair of pfSense HA routers running on Dell R310s (to be ditched soon - they can't do AES-NI) with a lot of IPSEC VPNs and OpenVPNs and 10ish internal VLANS. We have a proper computer room with proper gear. We also have a lot more customers these days. We are now ISO 9001 and 27001 registered and lots more stuff. Every day I love going to work. Don't get me wrong - it's still hard. I came into work the other day and found an employee in tears. I sent them home (obviously, I can't say too much here). Two of our employees have moved on and then come back again (one of them was once a lover of one of my business partners). Thanks to our past involvement with a large firm whose name is saucy, we have several customers these days that you will probably have heard of. One thing that I think we have is that we have three Directors - a Triumvirate if you like. Any two can gang up on one - it works very well. I'm a very lucky person. I'll never be a millionaire but I'm very comfortable as far as I'm concerned. I'm a shopkeeper and fucking proud of it. Cheers Jon