As you may recall, this was a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway. Not a great movie as movies go per se, but it has some hidden meaning for management and startups.<\/p>\n
The nominal story is that a president of an internet startup (Anne Hathaway)\u00a0hires an old codger (Robert DeNiro) as an intern, after she gets the idea that she should have some age diversity in her company.<\/p>\n
He’s just looking for something to do because he’s bored being retired, but he has a lot of management background that she lacks, that the whole firm lacks, \u00a0because it’s gone from one person to 200 in 18 months.<\/p>\n
And the company is a disaster waiting to happen….at one point, a guy who looks like he might be the CFO lists the faults, besides management: poor customer service, slow changes to the web site in a fast industry (fashion), no organizational structure, VC’s in an uproar because of the aforementioned problems.<\/p>\n
At one point, Anne asks if she can ‘take CEO pills’ to get smarter about running a company. Robert demurs, but he convinces her to look for a professional CEO, which is a good idea, to bring some order out of the chaos. She does find one, after some false starts; her husband, with whom she started the company, but who has ‘retired’ to raise their daughter, validates her choice.<\/p>\n
Presumably, the company goes on to remain a roaring success.<\/p>\n
But, there’s a lot of sturm and drang on the way, most of which might have been avoidable with more adult supervision. Even a board of directors, beyond Robert DeNiro.<\/p>\n
Makes you wonder if a lot of this is going on in Silicon Valley and elsewhere because all the founders think they’re too cool for school, when they’re really not.<\/p>\n
So, if you’re a startup, take some CEO pills on the American School of Entrepreneurship website. Or you can just call us at 1-800-716-9626 for that old school personal touch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As you may recall, this was a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway. Not a great movie as movies go per se, but it has some hidden meaning for management and startups. The nominal story is that a president … Continue reading