Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: … - Ben Horowitz

Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.

Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.

You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.

There was no other way out. No window, no hole, no escape hatch, no back door. We had to go through the front door and deal with the big, ugly guy blocking it. Lead bullets.

The second part of the evaluation determines whether the CEO can effectively run the company. To test this, I like to ask this question: “How easy is it for any given individual contributor to get her job done?” In well-run organizations, people can focus on their work (as opposed to politics and bureaucratic procedures) and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen both for the company and for them personally. By contrast, in a poorly run organization, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries and broken processes.

The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least ten times better at