When a company starts to lose its major battles, the truth often becomes the first casualty. CEOs and employees work tirelessly to develop creative n… - Ben Horowitz

When analyzing whether you should sell your company, a good basic rule of thumb is if (a) you are very early on in a very large market and (b) you have a good chance of being number one in that market, then you should remain stand-alone. The reason is that nobody will be able to afford to pay what you are worth, because nobody can give you that much forward credit. For an easy-to-understand example, consider Google. When they were very early, they reportedly received multiple acquisition offers for more than $1 billion. These were considered very rich offers at the time and they amounted to a gigantic multiple. However, given the size of the ultimate market, it did not make sense for Google to sell. In fact, it didn’t make sense for Google to sell to any suitor at any price that the buyer could have paid. Why? Because the market that Google was pursuing was actually bigger than the markets that all of the potential buyers owned and Google had built a nearly invincible product lead that enabled them to be number one.

During the meeting, since it’s the employee’s meeting, the manager should do 10 percent of the talking and 90 percent of the listening. Note that this is the opposite of most one-on-ones. While it’s not the manager’s job to set the agenda or do the talking, the manager should try to draw the key issues out of the employee.

You may be adopting an organizing principle you don’t understand. For example, Intel created a casual-dress standard to promote meritocracy. Its leaders believed the best idea should win, not the idea from the highest-ranking person in the fanciest suit.