Crucible: How a CEO’s Injury Helped Him Revitalize His Young Firm

In the spring of 2009 Farbood Nivi and the venture capitalists backing Grockit, his online-education start-up, were locked in a vigorous debate. More than two years after its launch, Grockit had just 15 employees, mostly engineers—and Nivi still served as CEO. “Farb wanted to keep the management team very small,” says Mitch Lasky, of Benchmark Capital, an early investor. “The venture guys were arguing for more-aggressive hiring—a layer of VPs and senior managers. I always tell entrepreneurs, ‘Try to build enough competence into the layer below you that if you got hit by a car, life would go on.’”