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0 pointsdragontamer2y ago0 comments

Only if you pretend that the CEOs job is purely for raising money.

Nominally, CEOs are supposed to run the company and help brew the culture that makes that company productive.

We've grown a bunch of celebrity CEOs because people stopped caring about how companies worked over the last 10 years of low interest rates. But now that it's harder to raise money, it's time to see these guys run the companies they built.

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gkoberger2y ago

Everything you said here is true, but I don't think it applies to Twilio or Jeff.

I don't think you can accuse Jeff of not caring about company culture. He built one of the defining dev cultures out there. Yes, this have changed as they've grown, but I've always found the people and offices of Twilio to be warm, productive and smart.

And Twilio was forged in the hardest time to raise money ever... 2008. If anyone knows how hard it is to build in a climate without easy money, it would be Jeff.

wintogreen742y ago

Memories are short, but Twilio was built when doing what seemed obvious - add an API to telecom services - was really hard. It's what Stripe is (doing, not done) to banking & payment, what countless companies have failed to do with Healthcare... I met Jeff in the early days and the fact that he (a) managed to stay the CEO through this growth & timeline, and (b) gave few enough sh!ts to maintain a hacker dev mentality makes him a notable standout. I'm not surprised that lots of people with legitimate viewpoints and perspectives DO/DID NOT like him or his approach. To me, that's a feature; we need less CEOs and senior executives who try to be all things to all people.

rukshn2y ago

Working in healthcare, I’m genuinely interested why healthcare startups have failed?

lokar2y ago

It depends on the company and what it needs.

At google Eric had very little to do with product and engineering. He was still a very effective CEO.

slac2y ago

Having been in Eric reviews, let me tell you he was very involved in what I was working on... And I learned a ton.

callalex2y ago

I was tasked with taking over some of jeffiel’s code bases around the time period we are discussing here. He perfectly skirted the line of telling me what he was thinking while writing stuff and simultaneously staying out of it and letting the people he hired take the reins. He spent most of his time interacting with Cxx and Director level people to set the tone and direction of the company, while still taking the time to know what ICs were doing so that he could usefully answer questions and use our products.

hitekker2y ago

IMO, you and the GP are onto something with the term "celebrity CEO". In Jeff's case, he seems like a celebrity CEO for his employees/developers, who we identify with, though not for his customers, who we are largely not.

His customers probably expected better products, whereas his developers expected another round of amazing perks and fun work.

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