mostly researching, thinking, and writing about company culture via The Kool-Aid Factory and Founder Fodder (newsletter). Used to Stripe (Stripe Press, BizOps) and Figma (Figma for Education).
Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that ... See more
Which way you run is often the key differentiator between effective and ineffective CEOs. Almost all CEOs know where the problems are, but only the truly elite ones run towards the fear.
The thing that will endure for 100 years, the way it has for most 100 year companies, is the culture. The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.
At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind.