It’s good to anticipate growth, but it’s bad to overanticipate growth. - Ben Horowitz

courage is particularly important, because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study. As a result, the CEO must have the courage to bet the company on a direction even though she does not know if the direction is right. The most difficult decisions (and often the most important) are difficult precisely because they will be deeply unpopular with the CEO’s most important constituencies (employees, investors, and customers).

Don’t separate scale from the rest of the evaluation. The relevant question isn’t whether an executive can scale; it’s whether the executive can do the job at the current scale.

At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study.