In a company context, this is a critical point. As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust… - Ben Horowitz

As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t.

When you get really big, you’ll need to decide whether to organize the entire company around functions (for example, sales, marketing, product management, engineering) or around missions — self-contained business units that contain multiple functions.

few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience

Even the most basic CEO building blocks will feel unnatural at first. If your buddy tells you a funny story, it would feel quite weird to evaluate her performance. It would be totally unnatural to say, “Gee, I thought that story really sucked. It had potential, but you were underwhelming on the buildup and then you totally flubbed the punch line. I suggest that you go back, rework it, and present it to me again tomorrow.” Doing so would be quite bizarre, but evaluating people’s performances and constantly giving feedback is precisely what a CEO must do. If she doesn’t, the more complex motions such as writing reviews, taking away territory, handling politics, setting compensation, and firing people will be either impossible or handled rather poorly.