Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox (2013)
"A friend of mine led his company from nothing to over $1 billion in revenue / This worked brilliantly up to about 500 employees."<p>I'm often confused by the apparent VC assumption with excessive growth and not building right-sized companies sometimes.  Is this failure?<p>To me, this is a great time to say "I'm making lots of  money, my employees are making lots of money, and it's ok to be at this size and there's nothing wrong"<p>It might have been a great time to stop at 100, or even 25, and you could have had a fantastic time, doing one thing supremely well, too.<p>There's honor in that.<p>I think the pressure to grow to unicorn sizes inherrent in VC things could often result in weird business choices.<p>It's important to remember the VC is motivated by the final selling price, and big companies sell more -- but that's totally not failure.