Great talk, however probably the #1 thing that is most frustrating about the startup ecosystem is the idea that management principles are an afterthought - this despite the fact that they are among the top reasons why companies fail. Ben's talk really reinforces two things that always stand out to me about the SV ecosystem:

1. Management abilities aren't valued in founders

2. It's almost 100% a finance game

To the first point, if you go back and listen to the first day, Sam talks about how young/inexperienced founders are probably the best at identifying new opportunities, and it would follow then that they are the best founders. This is in direct contrast to the idea of being good at hard management tasks like the ones that Ben brings up here. Also in contrast to the talk that PG gave in the same series about waiting to be a founder and his discussions about founders who are over 30. This is reinforced by the idea that a lot of Angel/VC money seems to be going to young, inexperienced founders who have a little traction.

Which leads me to think that, in actuality the funding sources do care about management, they just don't think it matters at the outset because they plan on bringing in "real" management at some point along the way. This is reinforced both by just looking at the history of high growth companies and in something one of my advisers sent me from Kaufmann and it was the Valuation worksheet [1]. you'll notice that a key determinant of valuation is: "founder willing to step aside if necessary for a new CEO." With anything but yes basically ending a deal.

To further the point, Ben's great walk-through of Sam's equity/vesting blog post really reinforces the notion that to get value out of this whole startup thing as anything but and investor you really have to be lucky and savvy, and really hope that your investors have your best interest in mind. To me that is the kind of "dirty secret," which isn't so much of a secret anymore, of Silicon Valley. When someone mentioned during the video making more "incentive to stay" with a company, this is exactly the kind of talk I expect from the Gordon Gecko types, not the Wozniak-esque communal tech focused, make great things founder. While I doubt the person shouting that intended for it to come across quite as nihilistic, the unintended truth came out. Baking in equity incentives that promote retention are probably not good for employees in a competitive market, and thus not good for morale and "culture" in the long run, especially given the average shelf life of a startup.

Edit: Just so this isn't completely negative, I think the startup world really has the ability to have a big impact on management trends worldwide. We have seen this to a degree with the "rise of the developer," however generally speaking things are about the same structurally for employees even if the term sheets are more founder friendly than the 2000s. What thought leaders should be pushing in my opinion is the idea of flat organizations like Morning Star [2], and to a lesser extent Valve. The real revolution in management is having as little as possible and I don't hear that coming from the SV VC/Angels, yet we hear alot about board seats, equity/vesting etc...

[1]Page 16: http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/data/Documents/Resour...

[2]https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/...