Ben Horowitz on Executive Firing (and Hiring)

1. 0:00 – 3:07

   Post-product market fit

   1. SSSteph Smith0:00

      The holy grail of company building is finding product-market fit. But what most people don't tell you is that finding product-market fit brings its own challenges. All of a sudden, you need to scale really quickly, and scaling really quickly is actually really hard. One of the hardest, yet most critical aspects of scaling is finding the right leaders at the right time. And while the growth stage of a company is hard, it doesn't need to feel like things are constantly breaking.

   2. AGAli Ghodsi0:29

      If you're, if you're, like, two people and you find product-market fit, you can, you can grow to 10 people or something like that in a year, so that'd be like a 5X. But if you're at scale and you try to 5X, I mean, you're gonna completely blow up the company.

   3. BHBen Horowitz0:40

      It's pretty rare to see, like, a big, giant corporation that's figured out how to really be a team of small companies. Al- small business units.

   4. SPSpeaker0:47

      At some point, they're gonna reach a level of scale and complexity where, like, one guy just can't, like, run everything, and you're gonna need to bring in the, the experts, right? The experts, the technically trained experts, the managers.

   5. SSSteph Smith0:58

      The Growth team at a16z has spent the last year culling the hard-earned insights of dozens of leaders across the firm and late-stage startups to literally write the book on hiring executives at scale. You can find that book at a16z.com/growth/executive-hiring. But in today's podcast, two of those leaders, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz, and Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi, sit down to talk about hiring and firing executives, including the most common reason an exec fails, why sometimes micromanagement is actually a good idea, and the difference between someone who has written a playbook and someone who has only run one. Ben also sits on the board of Okta, Databricks, and more, and he's scaled up several organizations in his past, including Loudcloud that went public in 2001. Ali, on the other hand, took over Databricks in 2016, and has since scaled the company to over 5,500 employees. Before we jump in, just a few quick notes. The first is a language warning. You'll also hear Ali refer to super ICs. ICs refer to individual contributors without direct reports. You'll also hear Ben and Ali refer to some of the executives that they've worked with. Mark Cranney was Ben's former head of sales at Opsware, while Ron Gabrisko is Databricks' current CRO. All right, let's kick this conversation off with where executive hiring often begins: recognizing the hard truth that you've outgrown someone. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. It should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. Please note that a16z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com/disclosures. [upbeat music]

   6. BHBen Horowitz3:03

      How do you know when you've outgrown an existing leader?

2. 3:07 – 5:41

   When is it time to let someone go?

   1. AGAli Ghodsi3:07

      It's when you're asking other people, "What do you think?"

   2. BHBen Horowitz3:09

      Yeah.

   3. AGAli Ghodsi3:10

      Or when you're starting to have the thoughts of, like, is this the right person or is it not the right person, you're done.

   4. BHBen Horowitz3:15

      I always find if you give somebody, like, a task, and they get, like, super emotional, then they're done.

   5. AGAli Ghodsi3:23

      Yeah.

   6. BHBen Horowitz3:24

      Right? Like, "I can't handle anything else." [laughs]

   7. AGAli Ghodsi3:27

      [laughs]

   8. BHBen Horowitz3:27

      When you can't even process it-

   9. AGAli Ghodsi3:28

      Yeah

   10. BHBen Horowitz3:29

       ... then somehow, like, it's gotten away from you. Another one that I find is kind of leverage, right? Like, if you have somebody who's really doing the job, what you always find as CEO is they're kind of teaching you about how the function should expand, how should, how should it grow. And if you're giving them a lot of ideas, like more ideas than you're getting out, then that's probably not gonna work.

   11. AGAli Ghodsi3:50

       Well, that's a high- I agree with that, but that's a high bar. If they're still adding value and they work and they make the company better and so on, you might wanna keep them. Like, that kind of leverage where you're saying, like-

   12. BHBen Horowitz3:59

       Yeah

   13. AGAli Ghodsi3:59

       ... you know, this person just takes care of that thing and they're so good at it, I'm just trying to, like, keep up and, and, uh, yeah, can you keep me in the loop of how you even do this thing? I'm learning. I'm taking notes.

   14. BHBen Horowitz4:07

       Yeah.

   15. AGAli Ghodsi4:07

       That's phenomenal. That, we should strive for that.

   16. BHBen Horowitz4:10

       But that's what, you know, like, when you pay a guy, like, all that equity and all that money, that's what you expect, right?

   17. AGAli Ghodsi4:16

       I agree with that. That's what you strive for. But then what happens is turns out they are like that-

   18. BHBen Horowitz4:21

       Yeah

   19. AGAli Ghodsi4:21

       ... but they're a terrible communicator. Or they're amazing communicator-

   20. BHBen Horowitz4:24

       Yeah

   21. AGAli Ghodsi4:24

       ... and they're super awesome about it, but they just blab forever. So they'll have, like, weaknesses. They'll have, like, big weaknesses.

   22. BHBen Horowitz4:31

       Yeah, yeah. But you always take the weakness for the, against the magnitude of the strength-

   23. AGAli Ghodsi4:36

       Yes

   24. BHBen Horowitz4:36

       ... right?

   25. AGAli Ghodsi4:36

       Exactly.

   26. BHBen Horowitz4:37

       And then, like, the, the causes for people running out of gas, I always find there are also many. Could be they just con- you know, you promoted them and they continued to do their old job, and they never actually figured out what the new job was, or the company just outgrew them. Or, like, sometimes there's, like, actual personal, like, they've got a drug problem, they're getting divorced. Like, something happens, and the person you hired and you had for a while isn't that person.

   27. AGAli Ghodsi5:05

       Yeah.

   28. BHBen Horowitz5:05

       And that one is very confusing to me always because you're like, you thought you knew who they were, but-

   29. AGAli Ghodsi5:10

       Yeah

   30. BHBen Horowitz5:10

       ... they're not that anymore.
3. 5:41 – 7:05

   When do you give someone a chance to grow into the role?

   1. BHBen Horowitz5:41

      because nobody's following you.

   2. AGAli Ghodsi5:43

      You're almost better off starting anew somewhere else.

   3. BHBen Horowitz5:45

      Yeah, as opposed to wrecking your reputation by continuing here.

   4. AGAli Ghodsi5:48

      Yeah.

   5. BHBen Horowitz5:48

      When do you give somebody a chance to grow?

   6. AGAli Ghodsi5:50

      Well, I think, as you said, there has to be a superpower there that you have identified. You know, they can come up with an amazing product, or they're amazing communicators-

   7. BHBen Horowitz5:57

      Yeah

   8. AGAli Ghodsi5:58

      ... or they can really get the team to execute. Then the question is, can you just put them in a position- Where you can accentuate that strength.

   9. BHBen Horowitz6:04

      And then [laughs]

   10. AGAli Ghodsi6:05

       And then, yeah

   11. BHBen Horowitz6:05

       ... fill in the gaps.

   12. AGAli Ghodsi6:06

       Yeah. Like, yeah.

   13. BHBen Horowitz6:07

       Yeah

   14. AGAli Ghodsi6:07

       Patch up.

   15. BHBen Horowitz6:08

       The other thing I'd say is I think a, a, a mistake a lot of companies make is, you know, in engineering and in product and so forth, the knowledge of how your company works is really, really valuable. But in sales and marketing, the knowledge of how, like other people's companies work is actually the more valuable thing.

   16. AGAli Ghodsi6:25

       Yeah.

   17. BHBen Horowitz6:25

       And so if you take somebody who only knows your company and they have to go learn the world, you're kind of harming everybody in the company. Because if you're gonna pay somebody to do that, go pay somebody who knows the world.

   18. AGAli Ghodsi6:37

       Yeah.

   19. BHBen Horowitz6:37

       Like, go buy the knowledge. Go buy the acceleration. As opposed to, and I don't really care how much potential your internal smart MBA who doesn't have any experience has, like, you know, the, the idea that they're gonna run worldwide sales for you if you've got a killer product and get that done fast, it's, is probably wrong.

   20. AGAli Ghodsi6:58

       I just think it's because, like, people with the wrong background are trying to figure out the other side.

   21. BHBen Horowitz7:03

       Yeah.

   22. AGAli Ghodsi7:03

       You know, so you either have t- typically have

4. 7:05 – 9:27

   Let go or level?

   1. AGAli Ghodsi7:05

      tech CEOs and founders who are really good at tech. They're smart, maybe they have an engineering degree.

   2. BHBen Horowitz7:09

      Yeah.

   3. AGAli Ghodsi7:09

      And like, well, how hard can this sales or marketing thing be?

   4. BHBen Horowitz7:11

      Yeah.

   5. AGAli Ghodsi7:11

      Right? Like-

   6. BHBen Horowitz7:11

      Turns out very hard. [laughs]

   7. AGAli Ghodsi7:12

      Yeah.

   8. BHBen Horowitz7:13

      You know, if you have somebody who runs out of gas, then do you fire them? Do you level them?

   9. AGAli Ghodsi7:18

      I definitely think that you can put people in new roles, and they can succeed in it.

   10. BHBen Horowitz7:21

       There's circumstance, right? So there's, I've got an early team, and everybody's doing everything in the beginning.

   11. AGAli Ghodsi7:29

       Yeah.

   12. BHBen Horowitz7:29

       And people are taking on roles that are eventually gonna be bigger than them.

   13. AGAli Ghodsi7:33

       Yeah.

   14. BHBen Horowitz7:33

       Then there's, I hired a high-end VP of marketing, gave her, gave him a point and a half equity and a big salary. I can't level them, can I?

   15. AGAli Ghodsi7:46

       You can. I think it's gonna be hard to put them in a new role and remove all of their equity, and-

   16. BHBen Horowitz7:50

       Right

   17. AGAli Ghodsi7:50

       ... that's, it's t- too hard to take those away. What I have done is, you know... Look, it turns out I don't think you're really, like you don't need to express it this way, but this person is not amazing at running a big team. And, you know, they're really a super IC. It's very often I see super ICs who went into ma- management, and it doesn't need to be on the tech side. You find them in all kinds of roles.

   18. BHBen Horowitz8:07

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AGAli Ghodsi8:07

       They're just so good that eventually they started managing. But actually they're not good people leaders and, you know, eventually their team is just doing random things.

   20. BHBen Horowitz8:15

       Yeah.

   21. AGAli Ghodsi8:15

       And they don't kind of care, 'cause they're busy super IC-ing

   22. BHBen Horowitz8:17

       Right

   23. AGAli Ghodsi8:17

       ... doing the work of two, three people themselves. In those cases, I've been able to take them out and say, "Hey, look, we give you fa- I'll give you a fancy title. You move over here and do the super IC stuff."

   24. BHBen Horowitz8:27

       Yeah.

   25. AGAli Ghodsi8:27

       "And you're extremely valuable, 'cause honestly, you're better than most of these people that you used to manage, 'cause you're a super IC."

   26. BHBen Horowitz8:33

       Yeah.

   27. AGAli Ghodsi8:33

       "But don't try to lead also a team of 200 people, because you're actually not leading them."

   28. BHBen Horowitz8:37

       Yeah. So that's a use case that you think works, that you're switching them back. You're saying, "Look, you do great work, so we over promoted you to something that you're not good at."

   29. AGAli Ghodsi8:46

       Yeah.

   30. BHBen Horowitz8:46

       "And let's put you back what you're good at, and I'll still pay you a lot of money and give you a good title."
5. 9:27 – 16:39

   How do you have the tough conversation?

   1. AGAli Ghodsi9:27

      not working."

   2. BHBen Horowitz9:28

      Yeah.

   3. AGAli Ghodsi9:28

      "We tried it. Let's move on." And I have found in those cases, they all, like, sort of feel ashamed and like, "Yeah, I know. I know I've been phoning it in."

   4. BHBen Horowitz9:33

      Yeah, no, well, that, that, that's an important kind of part of it, and it kind of gets to the next thing, which is, okay, how do you have the conversation? And the, the mistake I see CEOs make is, okay, the way to have the conversation is to, you know, particularly engineers, is to be correct.

   5. AGAli Ghodsi9:53

      Stick to the facts.

   6. BHBen Horowitz9:54

      Stick to the facts.

   7. AGAli Ghodsi9:55

      Let's enumerate them fast.

   8. BHBen Horowitz9:55

      Well, yeah, let's, the, the indisputable facts about why you should be fired.

   9. AGAli Ghodsi9:59

      Why you're wrong, why you're bad. [laughs]

   10. BHBen Horowitz10:00

       Yeah, why you suck.

   11. AGAli Ghodsi10:01

       Why you're losing your job.

   12. BHBen Horowitz10:02

       Which is the-

   13. AGAli Ghodsi10:02

       You're a bad person. [laughs]

   14. BHBen Horowitz10:03

       Which is the worst starting point at all.

   15. AGAli Ghodsi10:05

       100%.

   16. BHBen Horowitz10:05

       Right? Yeah, ironically, um, you think you're being, like, objective and factual. What you're really being is emotional, defensive, and afraid of the actual truth. And the actual truth when you fire somebody is mistakes were made. If you're being objective, it's always partially your fault, usually more than half your fault-

   17. AGAli Ghodsi10:25

       Yeah

   18. BHBen Horowitz10:25

       ... if you're, if you're honest. And so if you start from a place of the truth-

   19. AGAli Ghodsi10:30

       Yeah

   20. BHBen Horowitz10:30

       ... which is, like, kind of what you're talking about, "Hey, you're not putting in an effort," [laughs] is always a much better than like, "Let me tell you all the places where you came up short."

   21. AGAli Ghodsi10:39

       Yeah.

   22. BHBen Horowitz10:39

       Like, if you start the conversation there, they have no choice but to get very defensive-

   23. AGAli Ghodsi10:43

       Yeah

   24. BHBen Horowitz10:43

       ... and say, "Well, like I, I, I don't agree with that, like da, da, da, da." If you really actually thought you were right, you might get squeezed into not actually even finishing the firing. So you kind of have to just start from the place of most honesty. Like, one, this is a done decision. Two, it's my fault too. Or like, if you're not ready to fire them, you want to know why their work sucks, just say, "Hey, like, here's what I observe. What's going on?"

   25. AGAli Ghodsi11:07

       That's just a one-on-one, right?

   26. BHBen Horowitz11:07

       Yeah. Yeah, it's a normal-

   27. AGAli Ghodsi11:08

       It's just a normal one-on-one

   28. BHBen Horowitz11:09

       ... yeah

   29. AGAli Ghodsi11:09

       ... where you're like, "Hey, what's going on with the output of this thing?"

   30. BHBen Horowitz11:11

       And, and you can, you know, like, things happen in those conversations.
6. 16:39 – 18:40

   Exit packages

   1. AGAli Ghodsi16:39

      at these other departments. They're the ones doing it to me."

   2. BHBen Horowitz16:41

      Yeah.

   3. AGAli Ghodsi16:41

      That's when you know that, no, with the right leader there, the right leader will not let these other departments do that.

   4. BHBen Horowitz16:47

      So when you get them all the way there and they go, "Okay, what about me?" Like, what's your philosophy on the package, the comp, you know, references? You know, Reed Hastings in his book, which I argued with him about, um, after he wrote it, said, like, they send an email at Netflix saying, like, "We fired this guy." Um, how do you think about all that?

   5. AGAli Ghodsi17:13

      Yeah, I disagree with that. I think from then on, it's you owe them. You're the one that made the mistake of hiring them, uh, to be as generous as possible within reason.

   6. BHBen Horowitz17:23

      Yeah.

   7. AGAli Ghodsi17:24

      You know, you have a company to run, you have fiduciary duty. But as much as you can, if, if you squint, and in the big scheme of things, it's not gonna hurt the company, it doesn't really matter, be as generous as you can possibly be, both in terms of taking care of them compensation wise, but more importantly, I think, being there for them psychologically, finding them the next job, being a reference for them, helping them as much as possible. I think that goes a long way. And actually, you'd be surprised. You can have great relationship with these folks for many, many years to come. Put it out on your CV as long as you like.

   8. BHBen Horowitz17:48

      Yeah.

   9. AGAli Ghodsi17:48

      You know, who cares? And if you need a reference, I'm here. And then o- on the compensation, as generous as you can be, but the, you know, there's, there's fairness and there's equity and there's fiduciary duty and so on. But I found you can be more generous, and people are very, very stingy in these kind of situations.

   10. BHBen Horowitz18:02

       And then there's a couple things about that. One is if you are- Kind of more supportive and generous, and you know you're gonna have a relationship afterwards, it's easier to fire the next one-

   11. AGAli Ghodsi18:13

       Yeah

   12. BHBen Horowitz18:13

       ... because it wasn't, like, a dramatic, horrible, like, event.

   13. AGAli Ghodsi18:17

       Exactly.

   14. BHBen Horowitz18:18

       And then, you know, my old friend Bill Campbell used to say, he's... He'd be like, "Ben, you have to take his job. You do not have to take his dignity. That's not ne- that is not necessary." And I think that that just goes a long way also for the people who are still in the company.

   15. AGAli Ghodsi18:34

       Yeah.

   16. BHBen Horowitz18:35

       Because-

   17. AGAli Ghodsi18:35

       They see how you treat them. Yeah.

   18. BHBen Horowitz18:36

       Absolutely. And no matter how bad an executive is, they have

7. 18:40 – 24:27

   Setting a new leader up for success

   1. BHBen Horowitz18:40

      some supporters. They have some people who like them.

   2. AGAli Ghodsi18:42

      Yeah.

   3. BHBen Horowitz18:42

      Um-

   4. AGAli Ghodsi18:42

      And it's nuanced. There are two sides to the coin. Yeah.

   5. BHBen Horowitz18:44

      Yeah. And that executive is gonna talk to them, and it's gonna matter how you treated them. [laughs] We start at the end of the process, you gotta fire the guy. Let's talk about bringing them in, and how do we stop them from getting fired? So if you bring in a new exec, how do you help, like, ensure their success? 'Cause the failure rate on that is pretty high. It's almost always retrospectively people call it fit, but fit isn't entirely determined by the hire. It's what happens after you hire them. So how do you, how do you think about solving that?

   6. AGAli Ghodsi19:20

      I actually literally give them the article that you published.

   7. BHBen Horowitz19:23

      Which one?

   8. AGAli Ghodsi19:23

      It's on micromanagement-

   9. BHBen Horowitz19:24

      Yeah

   10. AGAli Ghodsi19:24

       ... Five on Horowitz-

   11. BHBen Horowitz19:25

       [laughs]

   12. AGAli Ghodsi19:25

       ... where you battle, uh, Marc Andreessen-

   13. BHBen Horowitz19:28

       Yeah

   14. AGAli Ghodsi19:28

       ... uh, who says, you know, you have to delegate, and you have to respect the people, and you hire them. They do the job. You stay away. And you say, "No, you gotta micromanage them."

   15. BHBen Horowitz19:35

       Yeah.

   16. AGAli Ghodsi19:35

       So I actually give them that article, and I just tell them, "This is what we're gonna do next."

   17. BHBen Horowitz19:40

       He called it micromanagement. I call it training. [laughs]

   18. AGAli Ghodsi19:42

       Okay. Training. But I give it... 'Cause I think it's an expectation thing.

   19. BHBen Horowitz19:46

       Yeah.

   20. AGAli Ghodsi19:46

       Because the thing is, if you start micromanaging a person that's new in your organization, or training them, as you called it, some people might be offended. "Hey, I don't like this. What, what, what am I getting into? This is a new relationship."

   21. BHBen Horowitz19:54

       Yeah.

   22. AGAli Ghodsi19:54

       "And you're gonna be breathing down my neck like this 24/7? Like, I'm not sure this is, like, a good thing for me." They get freaked out. This article kind of says, "Hey, it's just a transitory thing. It's a normal thing. Everybody here went through it. We're gonna do it here, too." So that kind of just sets the stage.

   23. BHBen Horowitz20:08

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they don't feel like they're being singled out.

   24. AGAli Ghodsi20:10

       And in fact, some people might be like, "Hey, you're actually not that bad, even. Like, I, I... After reading that article, I thought you were gonna, like, be all over the..."

   25. BHBen Horowitz20:16

       [laughs] Right, right, right.

   26. AGAli Ghodsi20:17

       Yeah.

   27. BHBen Horowitz20:17

       You set the expectation very high.

   28. AGAli Ghodsi20:19

       Exactly. Exactly. And then I think stay as close as you can to them. Weekly one-on-one and so on, that's not gonna cut it.

   29. BHBen Horowitz20:25

       Yeah.

   30. AGAli Ghodsi20:25

       You know? You gotta call them every day.
8. 24:27 – 26:24

   The importance of the first quick win

   1. BHBen Horowitz24:27

      the tasks that are relevant [laughs] -

   2. AGAli Ghodsi24:29

      Exactly

   3. BHBen Horowitz24:29

      ... to us until you're mature on them-

   4. AGAli Ghodsi24:31

      Exactly

   5. BHBen Horowitz24:31

      ... and then we don't have to talk every day.

   6. AGAli Ghodsi24:32

      Exactly.

   7. BHBen Horowitz24:33

      And that's, you know, that's really what the micromanagement means.

   8. AGAli Ghodsi24:36

      Hey, let me go back to, you said something really, really important. I actually think this is extremely important. I just think when you hire a new exec, they come in and usually the organization is als- it's not just you.

   9. BHBen Horowitz24:46

      Yeah.

   10. AGAli Ghodsi24:46

       Everybody's looking. Who is this new guy or gal?

   11. BHBen Horowitz24:49

       Oh, yeah.

   12. AGAli Ghodsi24:50

       You know?

   13. BHBen Horowitz24:50

       Everybody's looking.

   14. AGAli Ghodsi24:50

       Everyone's looking, right?

   15. BHBen Horowitz24:51

       'Cause I know he paid him a lot of money.

   16. AGAli Ghodsi24:53

       Who is this? Like, you know, so I-

   17. BHBen Horowitz24:53

       And I don't make that much money

   18. AGAli Ghodsi24:54

       ... exactly. You're sizing them up, you're looking up and down and like-

   19. BHBen Horowitz24:57

       Yeah

   20. AGAli Ghodsi24:57

       ... you know, what are they doing here? What are they gonna do here? I think it's super important, like that f- get- getting that first win, and it's like, ah.

   21. BHBen Horowitz25:03

       And it's gotta be in the first-

   22. AGAli Ghodsi25:05

       Quickly

   23. BHBen Horowitz25:05

       ... two to four weeks. Yeah.

   24. AGAli Ghodsi25:06

       Quickly.

   25. BHBen Horowitz25:07

       Yeah.

   26. AGAli Ghodsi25:07

       Uh, get that quick win. And similarly, if it's like a big trip up and fall and, you know, big splash-

   27. BHBen Horowitz25:13

       Right

   28. AGAli Ghodsi25:13

       ... you know, people are like, "Oh my God."

   29. BHBen Horowitz25:14

       Yeah.

   30. AGAli Ghodsi25:15

       You know, "Who is this person?" You know.
9. 26:24 – 32:52

   The impact a new leader has on culture

   1. BHBen Horowitz26:24

      week.

   2. AGAli Ghodsi26:24

      Yes.

   3. BHBen Horowitz26:24

      Another win next week.

   4. AGAli Ghodsi26:25

      Yes. Exactly. And then on the daily call, remind them, "Hey, how's that going?"

   5. BHBen Horowitz26:28

      Yeah.

   6. AGAli Ghodsi26:28

      "That dumpster fire on third floor."

   7. BHBen Horowitz26:30

      Yeah.

   8. AGAli Ghodsi26:30

      "Did you put it out?"

   9. BHBen Horowitz26:30

      [laughs] Exactly. Exactly. So what's the impact of a new executive on an organization and its culture? Like, and what do you want it to be and what do you not want it to be?

   10. AGAli Ghodsi26:41

       Well, I think, um, companies qui- quickly form a culture, fortunately or unfortunately. The more successful they are, they become a little bit arrogant. Companies typically are not super open to massive change.

   11. BHBen Horowitz26:53

       Yeah.

   12. AGAli Ghodsi26:53

       Companies don't like someone coming out from outside and saying, "This is amateur hour, okay? We're gonna do things quite differently, and I'm gonna show you 'cause I come from this really big company over there."

   13. BHBen Horowitz27:02

       Yeah, yeah.

   14. AGAli Ghodsi27:02

       "And I'm gonna show you how we did it over there, and we're gonna..." You know, and then they're name-dropping that company in every other sentence, and you can see people are like, "If-"

   15. BHBen Horowitz27:08

       Don't wanna hear about Amazon anymore.

   16. AGAli Ghodsi27:10

       I'm, I'm done here.

   17. BHBen Horowitz27:10

       And don't bring that shit up-

   18. AGAli Ghodsi27:11

       You know, this is not Amazon

   19. BHBen Horowitz27:11

       ... at the end of the month in this meeting.

   20. AGAli Ghodsi27:12

       This is not Amazon.

   21. BHBen Horowitz27:13

       [laughs]

   22. AGAli Ghodsi27:14

       You know? It's not Google, okay? The first thing is just honestly speaking, just fit in.

   23. BHBen Horowitz27:19

       Yeah.

   24. AGAli Ghodsi27:19

       Just become part of the team, get those quick wins that we mentioned earlier, become part of the team. Once you've been here and people respect you, only once you really rock it, you can start saying that, "Look-

   25. BHBen Horowitz27:30

       Yeah

   26. AGAli Ghodsi27:30

       ... this process that we have, it's taking eight days. I think there's a way we could shorten it to four days," or, "I think we could actually, if we try this thing, we could improve our hiring and engineering. Do we wanna do maybe a business review on the biggest deals every quarter? Uh, do you wanna try that out?" So I kind of think you have to become part of the organism and you have to kind of succeed in it to change it.

   27. BHBen Horowitz27:50

       Yeah.

   28. AGAli Ghodsi27:51

       I think it's very hard otherwise from the outside.

   29. BHBen Horowitz27:53

       How about, how about the other though, because h- how do you keep the kind... Like, let's say you need a pretty sharp cultural change, and you guys did at Databricks early on-

   30. AGAli Ghodsi28:06

       Yeah
10. 32:52 – 37:35

    Common ways new leaders fail

    1. AGAli Ghodsi32:52

       end up fighting with each other. I said, "No, we're not, we're a small company. We're working together." And, uh, to their credit, they, you know, they said, "No, no, no. 100% I'm not gonna use that phrase." Like, you know, it's like-

    2. BHBen Horowitz33:00

       Yeah

    3. AGAli Ghodsi33:00

       ... "No, no, we're all in it together." And so, yeah.

    4. BHBen Horowitz33:01

       Yeah. We touched on this a little bit, but, um, what are the most common ways that a new leader fails?

    5. AGAli Ghodsi33:09

       One is too much-

    6. BHBen Horowitz33:12

       Yeah

    7. AGAli Ghodsi33:12

       ... this is not the right way to do things.

    8. BHBen Horowitz33:14

       Yeah.

    9. AGAli Ghodsi33:14

       Too much destructive, and we're gonna... Too much copy-pasting what they saw in their previous company.

    10. BHBen Horowitz33:18

        But actually, the copy-paste is also, uh, an interesting thing in the hiring, 'cause this is where people also make mistakes. They're like, "Well, do I really have to hire an enterprise software guy to run my enterprise [laughs] software?" Yes.

    11. AGAli Ghodsi33:31

        Yes.

    12. BHBen Horowitz33:31

        Because-

    13. AGAli Ghodsi33:32

        You do

    14. BHBen Horowitz33:32

        ... whoever you're hiring is gonna copy-paste to some degree.

    15. AGAli Ghodsi33:35

        Yeah.

    16. BHBen Horowitz33:35

        You need that. You're buying the domain expertise. You're buying the stuff that you don't know. So, like, if you go and hire, like, an enterprise sales guy who's selling Google AdWords, he's 100% gonna fail.

    17. AGAli Ghodsi33:46

        I, I think when you hire someone, you want them h- to have seen or done the thing that you need now, and this is, you know, I think how a lot of people fail or how you hire a lot of wrong people. You need to figure out sales. You hire a guy who's been closing $10 billion for some big company.

    18. BHBen Horowitz34:00

        Yeah.

    19. AGAli Ghodsi34:00

        And he's so good, he managed 10,000 salespeople.

    20. BHBen Horowitz34:04

        Yeah.

    21. AGAli Ghodsi34:04

        And you have 10 salespeople. You know, like, that's great.

    22. BHBen Horowitz34:07

        Yeah.

    23. AGAli Ghodsi34:07

        You know? That's not gonna work. Really make sure that they've seen the scale you're at, and they've done that phase. You know?

    24. BHBen Horowitz34:12

        And really did it.

    25. AGAli Ghodsi34:13

        Yeah. Real, yes.

    26. BHBen Horowitz34:14

        Not, not, not were around the ball.

    27. AGAli Ghodsi34:16

        Yeah, exactly.

    28. BHBen Horowitz34:16

        But had the ball.

    29. AGAli Ghodsi34:17

        Exactly. And then there's the people that are like, "This person is perfect. Perfect culture match. I think they're great."

    30. BHBen Horowitz34:22

        Yeah.
11. 37:35 – 40:42

    Closing thoughts

    1. AGAli Ghodsi37:35

       Keep going deep, deep, deep. Don't put up with surface level ans- answers or just one, one-shot answer questions. Go many, many, many levels deep. That's when you kinda can see how deep they are i- in the subject area.

    2. BHBen Horowitz37:45

       All right. Well, closing thoughts.

    3. AGAli Ghodsi37:47

       All right.

    4. BHBen Horowitz37:48

       Any other kinda final thoughts on hiring, integrating, firing executives, dealing with executives?

    5. AGAli Ghodsi37:55

       Start early your searches. Any search for a person has a trade-off. The trade-off between quality of the person and, you know, how fast we get them.

    6. BHBen Horowitz38:05

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AGAli Ghodsi38:05

       Right? So, like, yeah, if I take forever, I can find the best person, uh, you know?

    8. BHBen Horowitz38:09

       Yeah

    9. AGAli Ghodsi38:09

       Or I can quickly close the search immediately and find someone, but it's gonna be a terrible person.

    10. BHBen Horowitz38:13

        Yeah.

    11. AGAli Ghodsi38:13

        And mistakes are costly. I say mistakes take between a year and a half to two years. Takes you six months, jury's out.

    12. BHBen Horowitz38:21

        Yeah

    13. AGAli Ghodsi38:21

        Is it, do we really need... Nobody wants to fire someone-

    14. BHBen Horowitz38:24

        Right

    15. AGAli Ghodsi38:24

        ... within six months of hiring someone, right? So you've taken six months, then you need to have this conversation, you need to reach an agreement, you need to figure out what it is. You-

    16. BHBen Horowitz38:30

        You need to procrastinate 'cause you don't wanna have the conversation

    17. AGAli Ghodsi38:33

        Procrastinate. Exactly. You need to ask 100 people whether should I-

    18. BHBen Horowitz38:35

        Yeah

    19. AGAli Ghodsi38:35

        ... or should I not? Then once you've let the person go, now you have to start a new search. Guess what? The second time you're more nervous. Now you don't trust yourself and your own instincts 'cause you screwed up last time. Now you hire a new person. Okay, you hired the new person. You finally trust yourself. Now you gotta ramp the new person to get them back in. Okay, you lost two years. So then how do you avoid that mistake? Start early so that you can kiss a lot of frogs-

    20. BHBen Horowitz38:57

        Yeah

    21. AGAli Ghodsi38:57

        ... and do a lot of homework, back doors-

    22. BHBen Horowitz39:00

        Yeah

    23. AGAli Ghodsi39:00

        ... really to make sure that you're, you're kinda nailing it.

    24. BHBen Horowitz39:03

        Yeah. Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. I would say the other thing, you know, particularly for new CEOs, is how do you know what's good? What's a good head of sales? What's a good CFO? Well, like, the best way to know is actually to talk to a bunch of CFOs. Ask them how they know what's good. What's the difference between a good CFO and a great CFO? How do you know that? How do you interview for that? Like, all those kinds of things, that knowledge you only get from, you know, you learn a lot from interviewing candidates.

    25. AGAli Ghodsi39:31

        A lot.

    26. BHBen Horowitz39:32

        And if you start early and you're not even filling the position, then you can ask them whatever you want.

    27. AGAli Ghodsi39:37

        Exactly.

    28. BHBen Horowitz39:38

        And then that ends up being basically the script to figure out, like, what it is.

    29. AGAli Ghodsi39:42

        That's a great point. I've seen CEOs who say, "I'm gonna have my assistant do the backdoor checks-"

    30. BHBen Horowitz39:47

        [laughs]

Episode duration: 40:52