ReadWriteStart

Children's literary character Pollyanna is supposed to teach the value in maintaining a super sunshine-filled attitude. The lesson echoes, perhaps, the notion that "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Social pleasantries aside, this is probably no way to run your business. And in a recent blog post, VC Ben Horowitz agrees, cautioning CEOs against falling into the trap of being too nice and too positive. "Tell it like it is," he advises.

Last week on his blog, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz diagnosed "Second Startup Syndrome," a condition that many successful entrepreneurs often suffer from. Second Startup Syndrome, says Horowitz, can derail entrepreneurs as they move from one successful startup to founding their next company. Second Startup Syndrome places too much emphasis on business models and not enough on developing the core product, says Horowitz. The company glosses over important details "assuming that what worked the first time will automagically work the second time."

Being a CEO of a company is, as one CEO recently told me with a certain amount of exasperation and exhaustion, "a 24-hour-a-day, 7 days-a-week job." It's all-consuming, all-encompassing, and in many ways when it comes to the success or failure of a company, all-important.

But despite the high-stakes involved in being a CEO, it's a position that all-too-often only receives rigorous feedback and a thorough performance review when things goes desperately awry. And even then, the measurement of "a good CEO" is often merely just a reflection of "good financials." But surely there's more to it.

If you are a subscriber to Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis's listserv (you are, right?), you probably found your email inbox slammed last week when the list briefly allowed recipients to reply to the entire list. In today's "Jason Nation" missive, Calacanis apologized, explaining the error and using it as a launching pad to discuss what can be an unpleasant but sometimes necessary task: firing an employee at your startup.

In the case of Calacanis's email, it seems, the sys-admins who set up the list accidentally left the "post to list" setting on for several thousand list members. Oops. Calacanis recognized the problem almost immediately and shut the email server down. And according to Calacanis, the individual responsible was apologetic, fearing that he'd be fired.

Earlier this month, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz brought up an interesting topic surrounding the hiring and firing of executives at startups. While talking with a pair of his friends - one a VC and the other a startup CEO - the CEO asked if he should get rid of an executive as the company grows larger because he lacks experience leading a larger company. As Horowitz explains in his post "The Scale Anticipation Fallacy," he believes passing judgement based on how an executive might perform in the future is ludicrous.

Ben Horowitz of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote an interesting piece Wednesday on why he and partner Marc Andreessen look for strong founding CEOs when investing in companies. Founding CEOs are the kind of entrepreneurs that run their companies from the early development stages and are not replaced by a professional CEO as the company grows and builds. In this lengthy but worthwhile read, Horowitz provides insight into what makes for a great founding CEO, and why he believes they are more likely to help a company succeed than a professional CEO.

Earlier in the week we mentioned a preview of a presentation Steve Blank is giving this Friday at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in which he describes how startups and larger companies are unique and have differing needs. One of the ways they distinguish themselves from one another is that the roles of executives play out in very different ways, and sometimes startups make the mistake of hiring execs that would fit in better with a larger company. Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz wrote recently on this very topic and provided some hints to startups looking to hire execs.