The Really Great CEOs Share One Trait: They Are Learning Machines
I heard a refreshing perspective on the one trait that Marc Andreessen believes separates the good from the really great CEOs (I find this to be also true amongst all the great non-CEOs I know) that I wanted to quickly share with you today.
“I think the archetype/myth of the 22-year-old founder has been blown completely out of proportion… I think skill acquisition, literally the acquisition of skills and how to do things, is just dramatically underrated. People are overvaluing the value of just jumping into the deep-end of the pool, because like the reality is that people who jump into the deep end of the pool drown. Like, there’s a reason why there are so many stories about Mark Zuckerberg. There aren’t that many Mark Zuckerbergs. Most of them are still floating face down in the pool. And so, for most of us, it’s a good idea to get skills.”
“The really great CEOs, if you spend time with them, you would find this to be true of Mark [Zuckerberg] today or of any of the great CEOs of today or the past, they are really encyclopedic of their knowledge of how to run a company, and it’s very hard to just intuit all of that in your early 20s. The path that makes much more sense for most people is to spend 5–10 years getting skills.”
Excerpts from a recent a16z podcast, one of my personal favorites, with Marc Andreessen (one of my favorite geeks on this planet).
We highly recommend you listen and subscribe to a16z (and to Seeking Wisdom too). 🙌🏽
