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Leadership is More Than a Memo

Steve Blank

While Silicon Valley has grown to have global influence, in many ways the cultural leadership from the venture community has dramatically shrunk in the last decade. Among other things the book reminded me how important leadership is in setting startup culture – both consciously and implicitly. Here was the day I got that lesson.

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Scaling from maker to manager

Version One Ventures

A few weeks ago I shared some important leadership lessons from Stewart Butterfield , including investing in your own growth to make sure that the founder scales as fast as the company. Growing with your start-up can be a very tough undertaking for a founder. It requires reinventing yourself dramatically in very little time.

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A Scaling Magic Trick

Feld Thoughts

There are many things about this that are difficult, but a vexing one has to do with the leadership team. Often times, the wrong people are in senior positions. a first time founding CEO), the more likely it is a problem. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Take a simple example.

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What is a CTO?

Austin Startup

A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. A CTO’s real value is in finding opportunities with asymmetric payoffs. They seek the 80/20 economical solution, present options, and discuss tradeoffs. “A

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People Management: Startup Teams Should Dip but not Skip

Both Sides of the Table

A good early-stage CEO needs to be accessible, to be accountable for producing results and should be establishing the cultural norms of the company through direct leadership at all levels. This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them. I’m not a big believer in too much hierarchy.

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Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

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Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. A few days later Gordon became a founder.