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If the employees fundamentally trust the C.E.O., then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don't. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust.

A C.E.O.'s job is leadership, problem solving, and team building. I've done that my whole career.

There are certainly valid reasons for taking a company private, and it's also possible that C.E.O.s perform better when monitored by a small number of owners in a private company rather than by the dispersed and often uninterested shareholders of a public corporation.

If I'm in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what's possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that's a valuable thing.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

I'm the C.E.O., nominated by the shareholders. If they're not happy, I have to take the consequences.

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.

It's hard to overestimate how much the perception of the quality of the V.C. firm you're with matters - the signal it sends to other V.C.s, to potential employees, to customers, to the tech press. It's like where you went to college.

A company gets better at the things it practices.