This very personal book is a detailed manual on how to be the CEO of a technology company with 300 employees. It is unashamedly based on the author’s experiences and it’s “straight from the heart,” as they say.
I once owned and ran a tech startup that never got to more than 35, so I’m poorly qualified to comment on the quality of most of the advice.
• I never had to demote a loyal friend. I tried to give my loyal friend Tassos fewer shares than my co-founder Marko, but he did not accept and I backed off and I’m very pleased I backed off.
• I did not lay people off except at the very start and the very end, neither of which really counts.
• In the total absence of silver bullets I had no choice other than to fire “lead bullets” (though mine were probably more like plastic bullets)
• [...] (my company) never hired a big-company executive and had unbelievable luck with the small-company executive, Martin, we got on board
• The 360 review I instituted was a disaster, as all employees thought Orange (our investor) had requested it. I did it, and Orange never found out. Oh, and I got some very harsh reviews. Signed, and all.
• We never got around to giving people titles.
• Yes, we had politics, but none of them were caused by the de facto managers. I basically made a mistake when I had one floor full of men and one full of women. I should have mixed things up. By the time I put Misha among the girls it was already too late.
• I never had to work on a succession plan: to get around a quirk of UK law, I fired Phil, Phil fired Dave and Dave fired me. This (sadly) does not predate Reservoir Dogs, we cannot claim the credit.
• We did not have a recruitment process. We hired each other. Diomidis is the preeminent computer scientist in Greece, and he's a friend. Susana was Sara’s friend. Eva used to sell clothes to Susana at Joseph’s. Sam was Tassos’ girlfriend. Katerina was his sister. Our web designer Tunde was Katerina’s classmate in arts school. Carryn used to work at Ove Arup with Sam. Diomidis recommended Ellie. Nadia worked in Ellie’s local Blockbuster. Damiano worked at Blockbuster illegally after falsifying his age (and went on to manage the Clapham Grand, probably before he got to vote for the first time). Tassos’ friend Misha used to tend bar at Quaglino’s. Ziad used to run the counter at Tassos’ local Maroush. Our customer Alex told us we’re hiring his nephew Ahmad. Who hired Toby? Michael? I never found out. Phil used to run Arbitrage Support when I was at Salomon. Andreas used to sell bonds there. Maria-Lisa and I went to summer school together when we were kids. Jackie’s married to Serkan, my friend Dimitris’ former boss at Booz Allen. Davey boy used to do analyst work for my friend Inma at BNP. Thomas and I met Circuit Le Luc in the south of France, at the AGS driving school. Vicky explained to me she’s joining. My mom explained to me Marilisa is joining. Everybody turned out awesome. Seriously. AWESOME. I could not have wished for better. Pretty much everybody is now either immensely successful or very happy or both, much as I stole a couple years from everyone’s life… Come to think of it, there’s Alex. We actually got him through a proper recruitment process. Small confession, everybody: Alex was on 30k. Just him. It’s what you had to pay for a developer of his experience, Phil and Elias would not settle for less. Oh, and Tunde! He sat me down and blackmailed me one day. And, of course, I backed off and gave him the raise; he’s such a creative genius.
So the book did not really bring me any flashbacks and did not really point out any of the (surely tons of) things I did wrong. And I don’t think I’ll ever get to use the advice in the future, much as I’m running a startup again. If this stuff does not all come naturally to you, I think you’re hosed. If people doubt your honesty, you’re hosed. If people don’t realize you’ll always put the company first, they’re hosed.
The references to “terror” did resonate with me, actually. Mine manifested itself via cataclysmic weight loss, from which I was thankfully delivered by the discovery of Wagamama on Lexington St, though the salesforce did peel apple for me and laid it on my desk on a daily basis, just to make sure. And I got these very clearly psychosomatic pains around my diaphragm. But I think it was the shame I felt toward my loyal investors that caused me the terror, rather than the actual fear we might fail. Who knows? He’s totally right about the terror bit, at any rate. Haven’t had any pains before or since and you would not call me thin if you saw me now.
I’d give the book a 5 regardless, but I must dock it a point for doing an Alt-Edit-Find-Replace that ticked me off: 99% of all CEOs and all managers who are referred to in this book by their name are male. All their counterparts who are referred to in the abstract, on the other hand are referred to as “she.”
So go ahead, be a cynic / a hypocrite / a panderer / a wuss, but if you’re going to do it, do it right! Page 254 I found myself reading the following lines: “Every CEO sets out to hire the very best person in the world and then recruits aggressively to get HIM. If HE says yes, she inevitably thinks she’s hit the jackpot.” (the capitals are mine) Dunno, maybe it’s deliberate. Perhaps after 250 pages of “she” this and “she” that the author does feel compelled to concede that the very best person in the world is male, after all.
And there you have it.
Finally, if you want my one piece of advice for when you run a company (and I don’t have the success of Ben Horowitz to back me up, but I’ll say it anyway) I’ll sum it up in one word: delegate.
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