When people think about Google’s greatest assets, they usually picture Search, Android, or Gmail—market-leading products that hundreds of millions of people use every day. These are great products, but I believe that Google’s most overlooked “crown jewel” is actually a management training program. Of course, calling Google’s Associate Product Manager (APM) program a training program…
One of the great paradoxes of entrepreneurship is that you have to pursue an opportunity with 110% commitment, but be willing to pivot at a moment’s notice. As the great philosopher Kenny Rogers pointed out, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. Stumbling over this paradox caused my…
My Investment in Apollo Fusion Simply put, Moore’s “law” states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers, will double every two years. While there has been some debate about whether or not Moore’s Law characterizes advancements we’ve seen in space technology, and many believe that Moore’s Law in computation has slowed, what is not…
If software is eating the world, it’s using the marketplace model as the fresh cracked pepper to flavor its meal. Services from Uber to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk promise to layer clean, systematic APIs on top of messy human interactions for greater efficiency. Yet while economics papers might model human beings as Homo Economicus—a hyper-rational utility maximzer—in the real…
One of the most interesting things I’ve taken to heart in the wake of Microsoft’s combination with LinkedIn is how strongly Microsoft is committed to supporting open source code, open source developers, and Linux. Under Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has re-invigorated itself with an exploratory, future-oriented, and developer-focused mindset. Part of that has included pursuing…
Companies need different kinds of leadership at different stages. And there’s a very specific kind of leadership needed in an organization that’s changing fast — so fast that the office you leave at night is different from the one you walk into the next morning. I believe to lead this kind of organization to scale,…
Over the last 20 years, I’ve worked on or invested in many companies that scaled to 100 million users or more. And just about every entrepreneur I meet with has that ambition as they get started. But here’s the thing: You don’t start with 100 million users. You start with a few. And in many…
There’s a myth amongst entrepreneurs of the “lightning strike” — the “aha” moment when an idea just comes to you. In reality, it’s rare to find a successful scale entrepreneur whose big idea landed on their lap. It’s more likely they were already on the hunt. If you want to find your big business idea,…
Fred Kofman’s new book, The Meaning Revolution In 2012, after LinkedIn went public and the size of our global workforce was growing rapidly, our CEO Jeff Weiner convinced Fred Kofman to join our team as Vice President of Leadership and Organizational Development. Jeff and Fred had been working together since the mid-2000s — when Jeff…
For decades, John Doerr has been the leading evangelist for using objectives and key results (OKRs) to manage world-changing organizations. John has helped spread OKRs from Intel, where he learned the technique from the legendary Andy Grove, to organizations like Google and the Gates Foundation, to present-day startups like Zume (where robots and algorithms help…
Back in 2004—which is basically biblical times in Silicon Valley—Flickr was home to a tiny tribe of people who started sharing their photos online. Photo sharing begat the idea of “followers.” Followers begat activity feeds. Activity feeds begat hashtags. Hashtags begat #selfies. It’s actually astonishing how many conventions of social media were begat by Flickr.…
In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs tend to celebrate a daring pivot. They see an opportunity. They act—and they don’t look back. Later on, they sound a bit like Caesar reporting to the Roman Senate: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” But the truth is a lot messier. There’s more to a pivot than a sharp left…
Every successful company scales more than just revenue. It scales your worldview. And I believe you can scale positive social impact along with your business. But only if you’re as creative and cash-conscious about doing good as you are about your business itself. As the founder, former CEO, and now executive chairman of Starbucks, Howard…
Think it’s hard to find a big idea? Imagine trying to find a mythical boiling river deep in the Amazon rainforest. That’s precisely what geothermal scientist Andrés Ruzo did in 2010, when he set out to find Shanay-timpishka, which means “boiled with the heat of the Sun.” That quest may sound quixotic, but it’s no…
As has been reported and documented, sexual coercion, harassment, and assault have unfortunately become the experience of many women and women founders in tech. In June of 2017, I published “The Human Rights of Women Entrepreneurs” (fka #DecencyPledge) as a response to news media reports of sexual harassment and assault in the venture capital industry.…