Firas Raouf
The Chief Executive Officer
HR & Leadership
What's a Founder's Life Expectancy as CEO?
Last week, @wadhwa tweeted this: "Sequoia founder says 45% of founding CEOs of their investments fired in 18 months. Quite...
by Firas Raouf
Startup Strategy
The Curse of Email in Customer Communication
I believe that technology companies tend to rely too much on email for communicating with their customers. This tendency may...
by Firas Raouf
HR & Leadership
Traits of the Best CEOs: Creating and Communicating Mission, Vision, and Values
This is the second post in a short series on the traits of the best CEOs. To read the introduction...
by Firas Raouf
HR & Leadership
Traits of the Best CEOs: Recruiting and Motivating an Exceptional Senior Team
This is the first post in a short series on the traits of the best CEOs. Here's the introduction to...
by Firas Raouf
Finance & Operations
A Quick Thought on Value Added Board Members vs. Observers
I had lunch with Mark Suster last week. We exchanged a bunch of war stories and ideas on early stage...
by Firas Raouf
Startup Strategy
Traits of the Best CEOs: How Do You Stack Up?
As I wrote in a recent blog post, the untimely death of Steve Jobs got me thinking about a lot...
by Firas Raouf
Startup Strategy
Are You Brave Enough to Be Wrong?
I just finished watching great TED talk by Kathryn Schulz on Being Wrong.  Go ahead and watch it now… It...
by Firas Raouf
Finance & Operations
The Damage a Bad Board of Directors Can Cause
The recent happenings at HP bring to mind just how much damage a dysfunctional board of directors can wreak on...
by Firas Raouf
Startup Strategy
Entrepreneurs, What's the Best Bit of Advice You've Been Given?
This question was posed on Quora, and received a ton of answers, including my own. Given how popular it is,...
by Firas Raouf