The Paranoid Survive the Decision

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Apple CEO Tim Cook: Only the paranoid survive pivoting. When there are no good options, what do you do? He says it's a really lonely job because nobody has the data and insight that you have all synthesized together in the same way. "If you mess it up, you've got no one to blame but yourself," he adds.

In this episode from February 2017, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz and Jason Rosenthal, former Lytro CEO (now Vice President, Subscription Services, at Google) share stories and lessons learned from doing whatever they could to help their companies survive in hard times, including making and living through major pivots, selling new products before they were ready, figuring out financing with market and industry headwinds against them, and more. From their days together at LoudCloud to Jason’s experience at Lytro, and beyond, a common theme emerges: a CEO’s job is lonely in these moments and the hardest thing about a big pivot or change might be in finding the courage to make the decision in the first place.