Brad Feld's Burning Entrepreneur – How to Launch, Fund, and Set Your Start-Up On Fire!

I no longer have a task list. I have outcomes I’m going after

suggested to my portfolio companies that they fire their VP of Marketing and hire a VP of Demand Generation

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology.

Interviewing sets the tone of the culture to everyone that comes into the company. This is the very first exposure to the company.

Take everyone that directly reports to you and change their title to “head of X.” Scribble this on a white board and see if you have all the X’s you need for your whole company covered. Then examine whether there is overlap that is unnecessary, and see if there are big holes.

If the CEO isn’t willing to have the VP of People on his executive team, I think it’s worth asking the question “Why not?” Aren’t people the most important resource you are adding to your company?

I prefer to call it “VP of People” since we are people after all, not “human resources” or “HRs”.

He anointed her “CEO of her job.” As the receptionist, she was the one who felt the most pain from the inadequate phone system and was probably in the best position to figure out a solution.

what I realized was that if you give people really big jobs to the point that they’re scared, they have way more fun and they improve their game much faster. She ended up running our whole office.”