Course Correct

Obviously, not every investment is a success. What failures and leadership have you seen that have hurt the performance of companies?

I think the first failure is not acknowledging where you're failing. Or at least not acknowledging it soon enough. Not being disciplined enough to take a hard look at the performance of your team. If somebody is not doing the job that you hired them for, are you making the hard decision to let them go and recruit somebody else in their stead? To not doing the hard work at looking at the numbers and deciding whether or not your marketing strategy is selling, whether or not you're bringing customers on as quickly as you anticipated. And if you're not, appreciating that and then taking the actions you need to correct course.

Which could include letting people go, which could include paring back on marketing, which could include reinventing your product, which could include pivoting your company altogether. So I think the greatest liability, particularly in a young, unproven entrepreneur, is not being able to look at themselves and their company every day and recognize the warts and come clean to yourself and to your investors and to your team that things aren't going as you expected.