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."I'm often confused by the apparent VC assumption with excessive growth and not building right-sized companies sometimes.  Is this failure?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"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.There's honor in that.I think the pressure to grow to unicorn sizes inherrent in VC things could often result in weird business choices.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.