No, every real problem in startups is a people problem,

Ultimately, the Valley attitude is an empowered anomie turbocharged by selfishness, respecting some nominal “feel-good” principals of progress or collective technological striving, but in truth pursuing a continual self-development refracted through the capitalist prism: hippies

People go into startups thinking that the technical problems are the challenges. In practice, the technical stuff is easy, unless you’re incompetent or really at the hairy edge of human knowledge—for example, putting a man on Mars. No, every real problem in startups is a people problem, and as such they’re the hardest to solve, as they often don’t

Investors are people with more money than time. Employees are people with more time than money. Entrepreneurs are simply the seductive go-betweens. Startups are business experiments performed with other people’s money. Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it. Company culture is what goes without saying. There are no real rules, only laws. Suc

irreverence without disrespect, competence without arrogance, ambition without ego.

As I observed more than once at Facebook, and as I imagine is the case in all organizations from business to government, high-level decisions that affected thousands of people and billions in revenue would be made on gut feel, the residue of whatever historical politics were in play, and the ability to cater persuasive messages to people either bus

It really is a user-growth roulette wheel with razor-thin odds.

Incidentally, it helps to have enemies. While love is a beautiful emotion, far more empires have been built, books written, wrongs righted, fights won, and ambitions realized out of vengeful desire to prove some critic wrong, or existential dread of some perceived enemy, than all the love in the world. Love is grand, but hate and fear last longer.

was the guardian of the Facebook Ads team, sussing out obscene