Marc's Blog

One of my friends recommended Marc Andreesen's blog. Marc was one of the founders of Netscape and Loudcloud and seems to have a very good touch on picking ideas for (and executing on) start ups. I have been reading his practical advice on founding starts ups. They are a good read and I recommend them. The first post talks about why not to do a start up. I thought it was instructive, but that some of his reasons why start ups are difficult are applicable even in fairly well established companies. Hiring is always a pain, though in different ways than he describes.

He also mentions the long hours. For anyone who wants to great something great, the hours always are long. If really you care about what you are doing, then you are going to put discretionary time in to the work.

His comment about it being easy for the culture to go sideways I would not argue, but as a company gets bigger, the culture is going to take a turn for the worse. I have worked at two large companies that had grown rapidly and both of them had "old-timers" who spoke loudly about the degradation of the corporate culture over time. Creating a good culture is a constant battle and as a company gets larger, it gets fought (day to day) not from the top, but in the middle. Having said that, a bad CEO can ruin the culture faster than you can drive a termites minbike around a pea. I guess what I am saying is that a good corporate culture can go south at any time. Creating stuff is hard. Even in big companies.