Silicon Valley VC Vinod Khosla wrote an insightful post on TechCrunch asking the question ‘Do You Need to Be a Jerk to Be a Successful Entrepreneur?“. He contrasts Steve Jobs’ ‘jerk-like’ behavior with his phenomenal success, while explaining that being successful and treating people fairly are not mutually exclusive. While entrepreneurs are not always the easiest people to love, there are thousands of successful entrepreneurs who are not jerks. Take Richard Branson, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Levie, Sarah Blakely and Oprah Winfrey to name a few.

You don’t have to choose between success and being nice, good, fair or treating people well. “It’s a false choice,”says Khosla.

I agree!