Gurley argues most great leaders delegate because no one can be expert in everything at scale.
“I think there are very few great leaders. If you were to just take a picture of a whole bunch of great leaders, most of them are good at delegation, getting other people to make decisions because organizations are so large, and no one has the capacity to be an expert in so many things.”
Gurley advises against small layoffs of five or ten percent because they cause cultural pain without meaningful financial gain.
“One piece of advice though is never do a five or 10% layoff because it doesn't create any meaningful gain, yet you go through all the excruciating cultural pain.”
Gurley argues management treats stock-based compensation as if it's free, unlike cash expenditures which get more scrutiny.
“I personally think management is a lot more, thoughtful about cash expenditures, and I think they think about this SBC as if it's free almost.”
Gurley says he encourages founders to have executives develop five external peers and meet quarterly, but gets pushback.
“And I've been very unable to make that programmatic or make that successful and people find it foreign.”