Startup Wisdom

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Leadership

Every resource in the archive tagged with leadership.

43 resources

Don't Fuck Up the CultureEssay

Don't Fuck Up the Culture

Brian Chesky

Apr 2014 · 3 min read

Why culture matters more than anything else — the letter Chesky sent the entire Airbnb team in 2013.

Guide to Big Companies: Retaining great peopleEssay

Guide to Big Companies: Retaining great people

Marc Andreessen

Jul 2007 · 12 min read

How big companies lose their best people, and what it takes to keep them.

Steve Jobs on FocusVideo

Steve Jobs on Focus

Various Founders

Sep 1997 · 3 min

Steve Jobs's philosophy on the power of saying no and eliminating distractions to achieve excellence.

CEOs Should Tell It Like It IsEssay

CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is

Ben Horowitz

Jul 2010 · 11 min read

CEOs who hide bad news destroy trust and prevent their best people from solving hard problems.

Making Yourself a CEOEssay

Making Yourself a CEO

Ben Horowitz

Oct 2012 · 12 min read

Being a CEO requires mastering unnatural skills, especially the foundational practice of giving honest, authentic feedback.

Managing Your Own PsychologyEssay

Managing Your Own Psychology

Ben Horowitz

Mar 2011 · 16 min read

Managing your own psychology is the hardest CEO skill, harder than organizational design or hiring, because everything wrong is your fault.

How Things Get DoneEssay

How Things Get Done

Sam Altman

3 min read

Things get done through focus on two or three priorities and strong personal relationships.

Employee RetentionEssay

Employee Retention

Sam Altman

5 min read

Why keeping early employees matters more than hiring them, and three strategies that actually work.

How to HireEssay

How to Hire

Sam Altman

12 min read

Hiring is the most important thing a founder does; spend a third to half your time doing it well.

Jony Ive recounts the time Steve Jobs called him vainVideo

Jony Ive recounts the time Steve Jobs called him vain

Jony Ive

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

In the clip below, Jony Ive recounts the time he asked Steve Jobs to be less harsh in his critique of a piece of work.

Mark Zuckerberg: “You can’t 80/20 everything”Video

Mark Zuckerberg: “You can’t 80/20 everything”

Mark Zuckerberg

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

Why some problems demand 100% of the work — you can't 80/20 everything.

Keith Rabois on how to identify great talentVideo

Keith Rabois on how to identify great talent

Keith Rabois

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

How to spot great talent: expand each person's responsibilities until they break.

Sam Altman explains how he decides to invest in a startup after 10 minutesVideo

Sam Altman explains how he decides to invest in a startup after 10 minutes

Sam Altman

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

What a 10-minute YC interview reveals about a founder's potential.

Marc Andreessen on the 5 personality traits of an innovatorVideo

Marc Andreessen on the 5 personality traits of an innovator

Marc Andreessen

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

The five personality traits that separate true innovators from everyone else.

Steve Jobs explains the importance of both thinking and doingVideo

Steve Jobs explains the importance of both thinking and doing

Steve Jobs

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

Why the people who change industries are thinkers and doers in one person.

What's The Most Difficult CEO Skill?Essay

What's The Most Difficult CEO Skill?

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

No essay prose was present in the provided resource.

Hiring ExecutivesEssay

Hiring Executives

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

The hard decisions and strategies for hiring and promoting executives as your company scales.

Why Startups Should Train Their PeopleEssay

Why Startups Should Train Their People

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Training employees builds competitive advantage and reduces turnover in high-growth startups.

Why We Prefer Founding CEOsEssay

Why We Prefer Founding CEOs

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Founding CEOs outperform professional CEOs because they're more committed to the company's mission and better able to navigate uncertainty.

The Case for the Fat StartupEssay

The Case for the Fat Startup

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Lean startups can thrive by spending more strategically instead of cutting costs everywhere.

How to Minimize Politics in Your CompanyEssay

How to Minimize Politics in Your Company

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Strategies for reducing destructive internal power dynamics and factionalism in growing companies.

Lead BulletsEssay

Lead Bullets

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Leaders should deliver hard truths to their teams even when doing so risks unpopularity.

A Good Place to WorkEssay

A Good Place to Work

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

The StruggleEssay

The Struggle

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

No essay body was included in the scrape.

Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEOEssay

Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

No essay prose was included — only navigation, bio, and a list of other content titles.

2020 Letter to Shareholders — FarewellLetter

2020 Letter to Shareholders — Farewell

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2021 · 25 min read

Bezos's parting message in his final shareholder letter as CEO, framed via a Richard Dawkins passage on biological homeostasis.

2018 Letter to ShareholdersLetter

2018 Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2019 · 18 min read

Bezos arguing that risk-taking, not just revenue, must scale with company size.

2016 Letter to Shareholders — Day 1Letter

2016 Letter to Shareholders — Day 1

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2017 · 8 min read

Four practices to prevent organizational stagnation: customer obsession, rejecting proxies, embracing trends, and fast decision-making.

Notes on Stripe's response to SVBEssay

Notes on Stripe's response to SVB

Patrick Collison

1 min read

Only a list of nav links (About, Advice, Blog, Bookshelf, etc.) was provided; no essay prose was included.

FastEssay

Fast

Patrick Collison

7 min read

Collison's single sharpest juxtaposition of what humans used to be able to build versus what we now accept.

JudgmentEssay

Judgment

Naval Ravikant

Apr 2019 · 6 min read

Why judgment becomes your most important asset once you have leverage.

What I Wish Someone Had Told MeEssay

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Sam Altman

1 min read

How to start and scale ambitious things: recruiting, focus, speed, conviction, and fighting bureaucracy.

How To Invest In StartupsEssay

How To Invest In Startups

Sam Altman

9 min read

How to succeed as a startup investor by accessing deals, picking great founders, and getting them to choose you.

Startup PlaybookEssay

Startup Playbook

Sam Altman

34 min read

A founder's guide to the core elements of starting a successful startup: idea, team, product, and execution.

How to Hire the Best People You've Ever Worked WithEssay

How to Hire the Best People You've Ever Worked With

Marc Andreessen

Jun 2007 · 12 min read

Drive, curiosity, and ethics matter more than raw intelligence when hiring the best people for a startup.

Guide to Startups, Part 9: How to hire a professional CEOEssay

Guide to Startups, Part 9: How to hire a professional CEO

Marc Andreessen

Aug 2007 · 1 min read

Don't hire a professional CEO if no one on your founding team can do it—sell instead.

Guide to Startups, Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executivesEssay

Guide to Startups, Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives

Marc Andreessen

Aug 2007 · 16 min read

How to hire, manage, promote, and fire executives at a startup, with specific guidelines for each stage.

The Top Idea in Your MindEssay

The Top Idea in Your Mind

Paul Graham

Sep 2022 · 10 min read

Most startup problems repeat across companies, so the key to advising founders is helping them focus on what actually matters most.

How You KnowEssay

How You Know

Paul Graham

May 2003 · 25 min read

Why startups beat incumbents in design wars: design-by-committee deliberately trades away upside to avoid downside.

Mean People FailEssay

Mean People Fail

Paul Graham

Nov 2014 · 5 min read

Meanness correlates with startup failure because it costs you talent and prevents the transcendent thinking startups require.

Founder ModeEssay

Founder Mode

Paul Graham

Sep 2024 · 5 min read

Founder mode—how founders run companies—works better than manager mode, the standard advice they're given.

Maker's Schedule, Manager's ScheduleEssay

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

Paul Graham

Jul 2009 · 5 min read

Two incompatible ways to use time: the maker's schedule and the manager's schedule.

Guide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startupEssay

Guide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startup

Marc Andreessen

Jun 2007 · 10 min read

The emotional, logistical, and interpersonal reasons why starting a company is much harder than most people realize.