Perhaps the most common mistake that I see a technical founder make when building her sales organization is she applies strategies that worked in building the engineering team to the sales hiring process. This may sound shocking, but sales people are different than engineers and treating them like engineers does not work well at all.…
More »When I was 20 years old, I was a computer science major at Columbia University and I needed a summer job. It was 1986 and I was barely aware of a place called Silicon Valley. In those days there was no “startup culture or entrepreneurship movement”. Most people were only recently becoming aware that computers…
More »As CEO, you know that you cannot build a world-class company unless you maintain a world-class team. But how do you know if an executive is world-class? Beyond that, if she was world-class when you hired her, will she stay world-class? If she doesn’t, will she become world-class again? These are complex questions and are…
More »Ask 10 founders about company culture and what it means and you’ll get 10 different answers. It’s about office design, it’s about screening out the wrong kinds of employees, it’s about values, it’s about fun, it’s about alignment, it’s about finding like-minded employees, it’s about being cult-like. So what is culture? Does culture matter? If…
More »Your startup is going well and as your business expands, you hear the dreaded words from someone on your board: “You need to hire some senior people. Some real ‘been there, done that’ executives to help you get the company to the next level.” Really? Is now the time? If so, where do I begin?…
More »This is a guest post by our newest board partner, John M. Jack. Is there any question in today’s economic environment that enterprises of all sizes continue to search for solutions that fit the “better, cheaper” mantra? Cloud, as we know, meets the criteria and offers other tremendous benefits to such enterprises. However, there has…
More »The other day, a friend of mine asked me whether CEOs were born or made. I said, “That’s kind of like asking if Jolly Ranchers are grown or made. CEO is a very unnatural job.” After saying it and seeing the surprised look on his face, I realized that perhaps it wasn’t as obvious as…
More »This is a guest post by Marc Andreessen, co-founder and partner at Andreessen Horowitz. I’m delighted to announce that Andreessen Horowitz is investing $15 million in Rap Genius. Given that Rap Genius is a website where people explain rap lyrics, and given that my partner Ben is a noted rap fanatic, your first reaction might be,…
More »This is a guest post by Margit Wennmachers, partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Today we broaden our firm’s expertise with the appointment of our second special advisor, Adrian Fenty. Adrian is best known as the iconic former mayor of Washington, D.C., who threw out entrenched rulebooks to reform the public school system with unheard-of success. Adrian…
More »After I wrote A Good Place to Work, people flooded me with feedback about one-on-ones. About half the responders chastised me, saying that one-on-ones were useless and that I shouldn’t put so much emphasis on them. The other half wanted to know how to run more effective one-on-ones. It seems to me that both groups…
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