Jason M. Lemkin discusses how startup CEOs can be likable while holding teams accountable. The board meeting every 60-90 days serves as a "tough room" to surface missed targets, and steady pressure to meet numbers works better than occasional yelling.
I know for a fact that Yalmin holds people very accountable and is much tougher than she looks. And so I'm not worried about that at all, actually. Maybe in an earlier stage company, that probably makes sense.
I just defer startups sometimes as CEOs, especially if you're likable like you are, you're likable. It actually, it's confusing to bring down the hammer. You can't beat people up every week, right? And how do you manage that? And sometimes I find it helpful for the board to be the tough room, even if they don't say anything, just having to walk in every 60 or 90 days and say, geez, I didn't deliver my SQLs. I didn't, I didn't, we slipped the release. Like, and how often can Brian or Yamini, earlier stage, maybe how often can you yell at the team? Even if you're not, I think you can yell once a year. Yeah. You yell more than once a year and it's tough, right? It's tough.
Yeah. I would say I yelled very infrequently, but I was grinding people all the time. Yeah. I was a grinder and I think Yamini is a grinder and I think people are accountable to the CEO. They're accountable to themselves and they're accountable to their peers. Hopefully if they're adults and they've got some experience that they're deeply troubled by those numbers. And they also have to sit through their own management team meetings and present all those numbers. Yeah. A lot of accountability in that management team meeting.
