Doug Leone: VC Support for a Startup

Well, there are many reasons why a company may not work. Take the notion of you threw a party and nobody showed up, meaning you built a product and there are no customers. And my always take on that, who's going to get us out of that pickle? Am I going to get you out of that pickle? If I were that smart or that capable, I would have been a founder. And so to me, that's when you double down on founders, they're the only hope you have. Their execution challenges. There's always lack of experience with founders, but that's where we come in to help recruit executives, to help surround founders with operating people that have built businesses. So you can go have dinner, you can go have lunch. I can tell you I'm probably not the first call you make on an operating issue, even though I'm known as having operating. Know how you probably call George or someone like that, which is fine by me. Just call somebody. And then you have the extreme case. The extreme case where it gets really tough is where five vice presidents come to our office and say, can't work for this person. It's either he goes or she goes, or we all go. Those are the tricky situations. And you hope that those are the rare cases. Look, it's happened to me. I've been in business for 1988. You know, it's only happened twice. In that case, it's a very unpleasant choice because, you know, the founder is the soul. You know, you're not going to recover from that. You basically are not. And so you do everything you can to take this most talented people in the building and make sure you put them in a position to succeed. And that's the best way, and that is try to nip these things in a bud. Pay attention. Don't be an absentee board member. You know, don't be a pontificating. Let me give you the look of a pontificating board member. They have this look. Have you thought of, you know, they don't know anything about anything. And so it's just get involved, ask the questions and help to recruit the right people.