I thought the reason why people left the SXSW interview was because the interviewer was a giant, self-absorbed douche who gave Ev little time to speak and/or didn't do a good job of facilitating.
This may end up being a wise choice for the company (I think Ev is happier now), but you don't have to be a detail-oriented leader to be a great CEO. You just have to be great at finding people who complement your strengths and weaknesses as a leader.<p>There is no perfect CEO, so Ev's situation shouldn't apply to everyone. Zuck kept power as CEO and has done an extraordinary job. Larry and Sergey created a triumvirate for the big decisions, and that's worked out quite well as well.
They hired a great CEO in Dick Costolo, gave him time to prove himself within Twitter as COO, then promoted him to CEO. This <i>may</i> have been thought out for quite a while in advance.
“Ev is very difficult to work with because he has a tough time making a final decision on products,”<p>“This all changed when Dick took over. He’s very logical and knows how to make things happen.”<p>“Dick is hard-charging and very focused on urgency and executing now, and I tend to be very contemplative,” he says. “My weakness is probably taking too long to make a decision, and his is being too hasty.”
<i>Speaking to a group of new hires at an orientation session last spring, Mr. Williams said Twitter had three goals: to change the world, to build a business and to have fun.</i><p>I see Union Square in the Crunchbase profile for Twitter (<a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter" rel="nofollow">http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter</a>) but I also see Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price. This leads me to ask: How well or how poorly do the goals of VCs and angels align with those of the founders? VCs have a responsibility to deliver a return to their investors -- what implications does that have for operating a company when a founder states that he wants to change the world or build a legitimate business or have fun?