PandoMonthly – June 2012 – Sarah Lacy interviews Ben Horowitz (Photo credit: thekenyeung)
Instead of writing about what it means to be a Leader, I am just going to link to a bunch of posts that I read about the challenges of being a CEO. The classic one is “The Struggle” by Ben Horowitz, and I found a number of gems in this category in his blog. If you have not read my post about the Struggle, you should. When your startup goes through a metamorphosis of growing up there is always growing pains, there is politics and the team culture challenges. Building a world class team is hard, if this was easy or simple everyone would do it. I have been really digging deep into figuring out what makes teams tick and come together. I guess it is as different as we are as people.
- What is the most difficult CEO skill? Managing Your Own Psychology
- How to minimize politics in your company?
- Making yourself a CEO
- Lead Bullets
- Peace time CEO/War time CEO
All this being said, what a CEO will be measured on is quite simple actually:
Let’s not bullshit each other —- the most important characteristic of any CEO is to be a moneymaker. It is not particularly dignified to say it that bluntly but you can sugar coat whatever you want and it all comes down to “can you ring the bell?
— The mighty comment blogger JLM in a comment to this post: A VC: What A CEO Does
Related articles
- Venture capitalist Horowitz to startups: Investors want more now, get used to it (bizjournals.com)
- Ben Horowitz warns startups: You’re worth less today, and you need to be OK with that (bizjournals.com)
- Will you make it past being a founder? (marcbarros.com)
- Silicon Alley Insider: Top VC Tells Startups How To Cope When Investors Tell Them They’re Worth Much Less Than Before (businessinsider.com)
- Capital market climate change (finance.fortune.cnn.com)
Reblogged this on Simon Sundaraj-Keun.