网景创始人、facebook投资者是如何评估创业公司-英文版.doc

How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs ?I mean damn, did you even see the test You got D’s, motherf, D’s!Rosie Perez” ?Kanye West No position in a company is more important than the CEO and, as a result, no job gets more scrutiny. Sadly, little of this analysis benefits CEOs as most of the discussions happen behind their backs. This post is a step in the opposite direction. By describing how Andreessen Horowitz evaluates CEOs, I am at the same time describing what I think the job of the CEO is. Here are the key questions we ask: 1、Does the CEO know what to do? 2、Can the CEO get the company to do what she knows? 3、Did the CEO achieve the desired results against an appropriate set of objectives? 1. Does the CEO know what to do? One should interpret this question as broadly as possible. Does the CEO know what to do in all matters all of the time? This includes matters of personnel, matters of financing, matters of product strategy, matters of goal sizing, matters of marketing. At a macro level, does the CEO set the right strategy for the company and know its implications in every detail of the company? I evaluate two distinct facets of knowing what to do: Strategy—At Andreessen Horowitz, we like to say that in good companies, the story and the strategy are the same thing. As a result, the proper output of all the strategic work is the story. Decision making—At the detailed level, the output of knowing what to do is the speed and quality of the CEO’s decisions. The Strategy and the Story The CEO must set the context that every employee operates within. This context gives meaning to the specific work that people do, aligns interests, enables decision-making and provides motivation. Well-structured goals and objectives contribute to the context, but they do not provide the whole story. More to the point, goals and objectives are not the story. The story of the company goes beyond quarterly or annual goals and gets to the hardcore question of why? Why should I join thi