CEO

“Granular People stuff, which is the important stuff as a CEO.”

“It's actually true of every venture capitalist in the world because you got a 50 50 shot when you change the CEO. And why would you put that risk on on your portfolio?”

“I think it was in 2002 I had, I ended up having to do the Heimlich maneuver. So if value add is you save the life of a CEO he had a piece of meat that couldn't get the slides. There's two of us in the conference room.”

“If you're a CEO, first and foremost, give me revenue, if you're a small company, right? That's number one ask. Number two ask will be, give me people.”

“To answer the question more precisely, I think it's this, the willingness and the courage to espouse a specific kind of worldview that perhaps is a little bit counter, but sends in some tension to the dominant worldview and own that anyways.”

“In all those lucky scenarios, there was a spear fisherman at the top to capture an opportunity that was available to Benny, but they seized it. So it's a lot more about the CEO.”

“These young CEOs, they're just so impressive in all ways, and they get more polished faster, and I think the reason is, is they're talking to the AI.”

“I'm here as a board member as an insurance layer. Okay. If the company falls apart, I will step in and be part of replacing the CEO. And that's basically the entire job, which is replacing the CEO well.”

“So the format I've used in the past and what I recommend and what people I've seen now, I've seen at least 15 CEOs adopted and to good effect is Three sections. One is called top of mind. So this is product, business, and team. Like, what is top of mind on the…”

“The other thing I always recommend to CEOs is a board role is like a marriage. Once you get into it, it's very hard to get out of. So never, ever, ever invite anyone to join your board before spending at least a year with them.”

“Most CEOs, Aren't as interested in investing as they think they are. And then also most CEOs aren't as good at helping somebody else learn the job.”

“I place a lot of weight, rightly or wrongly, on clarity of thought and the ability to communicate as a CEO, like, what you want to achieve and how you're gonna achieve it, and especially in written form, because taking the time to write something down, you act…”

“You do not want to learn on the job how to be a CEO. In other words, trial and error is bad for a CEO. You know why trial and error is really bad? Because you hire somebody, they build an empire, they leave, and now you get to unwind their empire, and it takes…”

“I think people are basically born good founders or said differently. It's innate. You don't have to learn how to be a good founder. No one is born a good CEO, and the job of CEO is completely counterintuitive, and almost all of your intuition about what to do …”

“You know, so the bad, bad governance I've seen is when, from a number of things. One, they let their loyalty or relationship to a CEO who's not up to the job overshadow their duty to shareholders. That's probably the main thing”