It sounds like the failings of
the product CEO can be fixed with just
a good COO. E.g., the OP has:

> Then somewhere along the line,
employees start complaining
that the CEO is paying too
much attention to what the
employees can do better
without her and not enough
attention to the rest of the company.

Sounds like the CEO needs a good COO
for "the rest of the company". Okay.

It does appear that VCs commonly
miss this point. Maybe someone could
guess why, with three guesses, where the
first two don't count.

For a 101 level lesson on deception,
watch, say, Star Wars III --
that lesson is in the movie because
audiences are prepared to believe that
it is close enough to reality,
and many in the audience have good
reason to so believe. Deception, etc.,
go way back, at least to Shakespeare.
Don't fall for it.

In the OP, the recommended
solution for the product
CEO is to write down the vision
or whatever for the product. Good.

But now we are on the way
back to the most rigid
version of waterfall development --
documents mostly in advance
for each level of the
work. I tend to believe that
those documents, etc. are a good,
maybe nearly essential, approach
for the
scenario in the OP, but
that approach is the polar opposite
of lean and agile development.
For small projects, sure, lean
and agile are okay -- knock out some
code, see if like it, else change
it, rinse and repeat.
But for significant projects, I never liked
lean or agile anyway!

But, let's see: The product CEO
is to communicate only via
a carefully prepared, written
document and does prepare
one or more such documents.

So, now the VCs can think what
that they couldn't before?
Three guesses, and the first
two don't count.

There is:

> The CEO skill set is
incredibly difficult to master,

Hmm ... So, how did Gates, Ellison,
Page, Zuck do it?
Did they have
years of experience managing
people, from a lemonade stand
to the decorations for the homecoming
dance to the college PBK awards dinner
to a division in the US Army,
to salesman, local sales manager,
district sales manager,
chief marketing officer? Nope --
none of those.
What about
guys in the flyover states who
build businesses big enough to
let them have, say, a 60 foot yacht?
But, still we're
talking something "incredibly difficult"?

IMHO the whole OP is
to make excuses for what
VCs still very much like to
do -- have the CEO their puppet
on their strings and, then,
pull the strings to get what
they believe they want where
firing the founding CEO is
to be expected. Such firing by VCs
used to be expected, and now
we see that with A16Z it is again.

Besides, this stuff about how
much A16Z likes product CEOs
looks like just misdirection
to keep from talking about
what A16Z really cares about:
A company with traction significantly
large and growing rapidly in
a huge market but where the
founders need/want cash and
are still willing to
sign a standard term sheet that
has the founders suddenly go from
owning 100% of the company to
owning 0% and a four year vesting
plan to get back some of the
ownership while the BoD can
fire them before their stock is
vested and, really, makes the
VCs' investments more valuable --
it's the VC's fiduciary responsibility
to their limited partners.

What is a founder to believe about
a VC? What's
in a blog post or what's in
a term sheet and the other
documents, maybe two inches thick,
worked out very carefully by
bright, well paid lawyers?

Instead, (A) plan the project so that
get to positive free cash flow
early on, (B) grow just organically,
that is, from retained earnings,
and (C) plan the project so that
have some good barriers to entry
to keep out competition long enough
for the growth.

Guys, it looks like A16Z just
wants your work, ownership,
and company and wants to
get those by having you sign
an onerous term sheet
while they give you some
excuses about why you
should give up your power as CEO
and, thus, really, all or a lot
of the financial benefit of your
work. They are after the founder's
money, guys.