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> 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

by 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?)
monocasa 9y ago
And likewise, I can tell you from experience that nowhere near even 50% of the people brought in that supposedly have the ability to scale a company don't really know anything other than just enough pattern matching to cosplay as Jack Welch in front of investors, and how to minimize their blame when shit hits the fan.
- mbesto 9y ago
  > I can tell you from experience that nowhere near even 50% I know way more people whose money is on the line that will gladly take that bet.
- wokwokwok 9y ago
  This sounds like vague hand waving to me. What direct experience do you have with this to justify that claim? Obviously sometimes people brought in are nothing more than sacks of potatoes that make noises, but I think its insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved to believe even a significant proportion of people fall into that category. It's just a different set of skills to the ones for 'technical founder' and involve things like... organising, collaborating, compromising and socializing... you know, grown up things that leaders are expected to be able to do without screwing up. Scaling a company is lot more than just scaling the tech.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    I'm not sure how you jumped from 'similar levels of people brought in also don't have the skills to scale a company and simply optimize for the signals that the people who hire scalers look for' to 'scaling a company isn't a skill and the only things that matters are code.'
alexnewman 9y ago
I don't believe you unless you can give me a real statistic
dclowd9901 9y ago
Based on what? All of you here saying "they don't have what it takes" have yet to elicit one actual skill that a founder could not _learn_ as the company grows. There is nothing inherently special about someone who runs a small vs. big company, except for experience. I agree with the poster above: classism at its finest.
- briandear 9y ago
  Nobody is suggesting that a large company CEO is "special." It's a different set of skills, that's just a fact. And, the idea of a CEO of a rapidly scaling company to learn through on the job training isn't always a good one. People learn by making mistakes and the marketplace isn't very forgiving -- too many mistakes and the company is toast. There's nothing classist about it. You could train an army corporal to become a general. But you can't just take an army corporal all the way to the experience needed to become a general in a year or two. It takes generals 20+ years before they have the skills to lead thousands of soldiers. To suggest that any reasonably smart corporal can go from leading a squad to leading a division in a few years of on-the-job training is just ludicrous. If I'm wrong, then please provide some data. Actual data, not anecdotes. Nobody is saying that a corporal can't ever become a general. The suggestion of classism is implying that a corporal can't become a general because he's not of the right class. Of course a corporal can become a general (at least in the US Army) -- which is the very opposite of classism. We're just saying that a corporal doesn't become a general through a few years of on the job training and that a corporal doesn't become a general while on the battlefield. What I'm saying is that a good large-company CEO is gets those skills over years of experience. If a founder-CEO slowly scales, then perhaps on-the-job training would work. But when an org goes from 10 people to 1000 people in a few years -- it would take an extraordinarily lucky person to be able to handle that transition without prior experience.
- bhntr3 9y ago
  > There is nothing inherently special about someone who runs a small vs. big company, except for experience. I think the question is, given that someone can do one of those things really well, how likely is it that the same person can do the other really well too? It seems obvious that the kind of traditional business ceo that investors often want to find to replace a founder is not going to be successful as a starter. Let's just accept the common assumption on that one. I'd argue that what makes a great startup founder often makes a terrible leader for large corporations. I think every great founder has a reality distortion field (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field) which projects their vision, keeps them pursuing seemingly bad ideas in the face of insurmountable odds and allows them to overcome the biases and assumptions that dominate so many business decisions. Some leaders expand and adapt this to build great, crazy companies: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg (maybe). Often they also create a cult-like, maybe toxic, certainly messy corporate culture that still somehow succeeds. Others can't do this: Travis Kalanick, Elizabeth Holmes, Parker Conrad. They let their "startup founder, growth at all costs, thumb your nose at the rules" attitude destroy their company culture and embroil them in ridiculous, easily avoidable legal issues. In my experience, a corporation's culture is the manifestation of the most extreme personality traits of its leaders. There is a time, when crossing the chasm, that the exact traits that made the company grow rapidly and the founder extremely successful are the ones you want to suppress to create a stable, efficient and effective collaborative endeavor involving thousands of people: a corporation. I think (and this is due to some reflection on my own ideas) that if you reject the idea that there comes a time when a company should abandon "burning vision" in favor of stability, process, predictability, and broad appeal, you're actually rejecting the idea of a corporation as a hierarchical system of power deployed to efficiently organize the work of thousands of people. And I'd probably agree with that. The traditional corporation needs a traditional ceo but it's a damn shame that every revolutionary startup has to end up as a traditional corporation.
gerdesj 9y ago
"I can tell you right now that there is nowhere near even 50% of them who have the ability to scale their companies." You assume that they all want to scale. There is a place for us boring people. We are the ones who do something well and are reliable. We don't blow the profits on fancy cars and houses. We have shit loads of cash in the bank at all times relative to t/o. In 18 years of trading there was one month that me and my partners didn't pay ourselves - to cover employee salaries without creating an overdraft. Bugger scaling - I'm happy to sleep at night. Some of our customers are amongst those that you will almost certainly have heard of, regardless of which country you live in.
- dollar 9y ago
  Everyone is too busy believing they are different to hear what you are trying to tell them. Maybe after 20 years in the Silicon Valley meatgrinder they’ll hear you.
  - JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
    Growth for the sake of growth sounds awfully like a bad virus.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- timv 9y ago
  > You assume that they all want to scale. If they've taken outside investment based on a business plan of scaling, then it doesn't matter whether they want to scale. They either need to do it, or hand it over to someone who will. I love nicely sized companies that are profitable and long term viable without the need to chasing after constant growth, but you only get to do that if the investors agreed to it. That's much easier when the investors are just the founders.
sedachv 9y ago
> 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. What you just wrote does not contradict maerF0x0's assertion. If you can recognize what makes someone capable of scaling a business, and what makes someone incapable, then what prevents you from teaching those skills?
acroback 9y ago
I agree with you. I work for a Startup in valley, and I agree. Our founder CEO was fired recently. Why, you may ask? Because he was a really poor Manager, so poor that even Senior Engineers could see it clearly. Luckily board came to senses and replaced him with a proven CEO. Sad but that is the truth, to scale you need different skillsets and off course being a good Manager is just one of those.

by mbesto 9y ago

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?)

monocasa 9y ago

And likewise, I can tell you from experience that nowhere near even 50% of the people brought in that supposedly have the ability to scale a company don't really know anything other than just enough pattern matching to cosplay as Jack Welch in front of investors, and how to minimize their blame when shit hits the fan.

mbesto 9y ago
> I can tell you from experience that nowhere near even 50% I know way more people whose money is on the line that will gladly take that bet.
wokwokwok 9y ago
This sounds like vague hand waving to me. What direct experience do you have with this to justify that claim? Obviously sometimes people brought in are nothing more than sacks of potatoes that make noises, but I think its insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved to believe even a significant proportion of people fall into that category. It's just a different set of skills to the ones for 'technical founder' and involve things like... organising, collaborating, compromising and socializing... you know, grown up things that leaders are expected to be able to do without screwing up. Scaling a company is lot more than just scaling the tech.
- monocasa 9y ago
  I'm not sure how you jumped from 'similar levels of people brought in also don't have the skills to scale a company and simply optimize for the signals that the people who hire scalers look for' to 'scaling a company isn't a skill and the only things that matters are code.'

alexnewman 9y ago

I don't believe you unless you can give me a real statistic

dclowd9901 9y ago

Based on what? All of you here saying "they don't have what it takes" have yet to elicit one actual skill that a founder could not _learn_ as the company grows. There is nothing inherently special about someone who runs a small vs. big company, except for experience. I agree with the poster above: classism at its finest.

briandear 9y ago
Nobody is suggesting that a large company CEO is "special." It's a different set of skills, that's just a fact. And, the idea of a CEO of a rapidly scaling company to learn through on the job training isn't always a good one. People learn by making mistakes and the marketplace isn't very forgiving -- too many mistakes and the company is toast. There's nothing classist about it. You could train an army corporal to become a general. But you can't just take an army corporal all the way to the experience needed to become a general in a year or two. It takes generals 20+ years before they have the skills to lead thousands of soldiers. To suggest that any reasonably smart corporal can go from leading a squad to leading a division in a few years of on-the-job training is just ludicrous. If I'm wrong, then please provide some data. Actual data, not anecdotes. Nobody is saying that a corporal can't ever become a general. The suggestion of classism is implying that a corporal can't become a general because he's not of the right class. Of course a corporal can become a general (at least in the US Army) -- which is the very opposite of classism. We're just saying that a corporal doesn't become a general through a few years of on the job training and that a corporal doesn't become a general while on the battlefield. What I'm saying is that a good large-company CEO is gets those skills over years of experience. If a founder-CEO slowly scales, then perhaps on-the-job training would work. But when an org goes from 10 people to 1000 people in a few years -- it would take an extraordinarily lucky person to be able to handle that transition without prior experience.
bhntr3 9y ago
> There is nothing inherently special about someone who runs a small vs. big company, except for experience. I think the question is, given that someone can do one of those things really well, how likely is it that the same person can do the other really well too? It seems obvious that the kind of traditional business ceo that investors often want to find to replace a founder is not going to be successful as a starter. Let's just accept the common assumption on that one. I'd argue that what makes a great startup founder often makes a terrible leader for large corporations. I think every great founder has a reality distortion field (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field) which projects their vision, keeps them pursuing seemingly bad ideas in the face of insurmountable odds and allows them to overcome the biases and assumptions that dominate so many business decisions. Some leaders expand and adapt this to build great, crazy companies: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg (maybe). Often they also create a cult-like, maybe toxic, certainly messy corporate culture that still somehow succeeds. Others can't do this: Travis Kalanick, Elizabeth Holmes, Parker Conrad. They let their "startup founder, growth at all costs, thumb your nose at the rules" attitude destroy their company culture and embroil them in ridiculous, easily avoidable legal issues. In my experience, a corporation's culture is the manifestation of the most extreme personality traits of its leaders. There is a time, when crossing the chasm, that the exact traits that made the company grow rapidly and the founder extremely successful are the ones you want to suppress to create a stable, efficient and effective collaborative endeavor involving thousands of people: a corporation. I think (and this is due to some reflection on my own ideas) that if you reject the idea that there comes a time when a company should abandon "burning vision" in favor of stability, process, predictability, and broad appeal, you're actually rejecting the idea of a corporation as a hierarchical system of power deployed to efficiently organize the work of thousands of people. And I'd probably agree with that. The traditional corporation needs a traditional ceo but it's a damn shame that every revolutionary startup has to end up as a traditional corporation.

gerdesj 9y ago

"I can tell you right now that there is nowhere near even 50% of them who have the ability to scale their companies." You assume that they all want to scale. There is a place for us boring people. We are the ones who do something well and are reliable. We don't blow the profits on fancy cars and houses. We have shit loads of cash in the bank at all times relative to t/o. In 18 years of trading there was one month that me and my partners didn't pay ourselves - to cover employee salaries without creating an overdraft. Bugger scaling - I'm happy to sleep at night. Some of our customers are amongst those that you will almost certainly have heard of, regardless of which country you live in.

dollar 9y ago
Everyone is too busy believing they are different to hear what you are trying to tell them. Maybe after 20 years in the Silicon Valley meatgrinder they’ll hear you.
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  Growth for the sake of growth sounds awfully like a bad virus.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
timv 9y ago
> You assume that they all want to scale. If they've taken outside investment based on a business plan of scaling, then it doesn't matter whether they want to scale. They either need to do it, or hand it over to someone who will. I love nicely sized companies that are profitable and long term viable without the need to chasing after constant growth, but you only get to do that if the investors agreed to it. That's much easier when the investors are just the founders.

sedachv 9y ago

> 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. What you just wrote does not contradict maerF0x0's assertion. If you can recognize what makes someone capable of scaling a business, and what makes someone incapable, then what prevents you from teaching those skills?

acroback 9y ago

I agree with you. I work for a Startup in valley, and I agree. Our founder CEO was fired recently. Why, you may ask? Because he was a really poor Manager, so poor that even Senior Engineers could see it clearly. Luckily board came to senses and replaced him with a proven CEO. Sad but that is the truth, to scale you need different skillsets and off course being a good Manager is just one of those.