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0 pointsalephnerd1y ago0 comments

0-to-1-ing a company is different muscle from managing an established company.

Revenue expectations, margins expectations, and investors are entirely different between the two.

This is why most founder CEOs tend to either get booted out or choose to keep their companies private as long as possible.

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hintymad1y ago· 1 in thread

Given the average shelf life of S&P companies, I assume that even an established company needs to go through 0-to-1 all the time. The aforementioned companies all reinvented themselves multiple times.

> Revenue expectations, margins expectations, and investors are entirely different between the two.

Yeah, it's hard. How the great CEOs achieve their successes are beyond me. I was just thinking that a great CEO needs to drive product changes.

alephnerdOP1y ago

> I assume that even an established company needs to go through 0-to-1 all the time

Not significantly. Massive product and strategy pivots are rare because they can fail horribly (eg. For every turnaround like Apple there's a failure in execution like Yahoo)

> How the great CEOs achieve their successes are beyond me

Luck in most cases.

I've worked with plenty of CEOs and in most cases, most people at the C-Suite and SVP level of large organizations are comparable to each other skills and intellect wise.

Administration/mid-level management buy-in is also critical. C-Suite doesn't have much visibility into the lower levels of an organization (it's unrealistic), so management is their eyes and ears.

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