It's easier to coach a technical founder how to be CEO and manage a business than it is to teach a professional CEO the nuances of that particular business. Peter Levine More Quotes by Peter Levine More Quotes From Peter Levine When I was a developer, I couldn't buy a pencil. I had no budget, nothing. Peter Levine budget pencil buy nothing The organization reflects the behavior and characteristics of the CEO, and that establishes the culture. Foster an environment of open communication, and the organization inherits a culture of open communication. Peter Levine open communication behavior culture There's going to be a symbiotic relationship between the edge and the cloud. Peter Levine cloud edge going relationship A self-driving car will have 200-plus CPUs. That's a data center on wheels. Peter Levine will data wheels car I look at Boston-based companies all the time... There's certainly great companies in Boston. If the deal makes sense on the merit of the deal itself, we'll go and do the deal. Peter Levine great go look time Old companies that had nothing to do with software in the past all have software development activities to unlock the invention that's occurring inside of these organizations. And so the developer is a very important part of that overall ecosystem. Peter Levine inside nothing important past If you look back over the history of computing, it started as mainframes or terminals. As PCs or work stations became prevalent, computing moved to the edge, and we had applications that took advantage of edge computing and the CPU and processing power at the edge. Cloud computing brought things back to the center. Peter Levine you power work history There has been an ebb and flow in enterprise IT of centralized versus distributed. Peter Levine centralized been enterprise flow I think with the proliferation of mobile devices and then, eventually, the Internet of Things, we literally have supercomputers in our pockets and supercomputers that will hang on telephone poles and in light bulbs. Peter Levine will think internet light If you believe that the mobile phone is the next supercomputer, which I do, you can imagine a datacenter that is modeled after, literally, hundreds or thousands or millions of mobile phones. They won't have screens on them, but there'll be millions of lightweight mobile-phone processors in the datacenter. Peter Levine phone you next believe Technical co-founders are great at envisioning where the company's going from a strategic standpoint. They have what I call the 'gut-feel' of building out their business. Peter Levine great company building business With the premise that we look for technical co-founders to run a company, I view myself as being a coach to that technical co-founder. I can help them with their business issues, with the growth issues of taking a company from a very early stage to something much larger. Peter Levine myself look growth business Probably, if I created a venture fund, I would create a firm with virtual services not too different from the a16z model, but without employing people. So I would get CPOs, engineering talent, marketing people who wanted to be involved with the venture fund and provide services. Peter Levine create engineering talent people As a former CEO and senior executive, there was a time when I did not quite understand the profound impact a CEO has on the culture of a company, even though I always knew culture was important. Peter Levine understand important time culture It doesn't matter what's written on a coffee mug or on a 'culture' slide; what you do as a CEO, day in and day out, and how you behave will define your company's culture. Peter Levine day you coffee culture Despite the best intentions, companies often become culturally dysfunctional. This occurs when leadership has a perception about the culture that conflicts with reality, or leadership behaves differently than what might be written down. Peter Levine best leadership culture reality When you and I go to work, and we use a computer to work and find that our work apps are completely onerous and the apps we use at home are quite easy, we wonder, why can't it be simpler, easier, quicker, and less expensive? Peter Levine you easy work home I can certainly imagine a day where task workers, enterprise workers no longer communicate via email but instead use some social vehicle that looks a lot like consumer social networks we see today. Peter Levine day i-can today looks Doing processing locally has its advantages. For instance, the cost of an endpoint CPU and memory is a 1000x cheaper than the cost of CPU and memory in the server. And in many places around the world, connectivity and transmission costs are sometimes far more expensive than the device. Peter Levine doing memory sometimes world In the old days, I'd have to go as a company, buy computer resources, buy servers, buy storage, and lash it all together. It took a long time to stand up. Now, if I need, I can go to Amazon or Rackspace and buy some computer power nearly instantaneously. Peter Levine power together time long
