Book Summary — Founder to CEO by Matt Mochary
How to build a great company from the ground up.
You can find all my book summaries — here.
The book is a summary of practical tips of leadership practices when scaling a company. I’ve seen most of those implemented myself at Expert360, when we went from 10 to 60 employees.
The below is a summary of a summary so it’s by no means comprehensive. It covers my core takeaways.
Part I — Getting Started
Only one thing matters: deep understanding of your customers’ problems
Team
Cofounders — find one, it’s emotionally easier and give them 50% it’s worth it
Teams should not grow above 6 people until you have achieved product market fit
Why?
- Morale — 10+ people expect stability, pivoting much harder, less people and you’re a team in battle, chaos is expected
- Communication & Org — once you can’t all sit in one room anymore it adds 1 day / week of overhead to everyone
- Efficiency — when you’re only a couple of people, there is no other choice but to write “prototype code”
>15–20 people — you will need a formal management structure
Part II — Individual Habits
You as CEO are the architect of culture
Getting Things Done
Inbox Zero — every day — once or twice per day (not less, no more)
- If < 2mins — reply immediately
- If > 2mins — create next action and plan
Top Goal
Block out 2 hours of your time EVERY DAY to work on your Top Goal ONLY
- Ideally in the morning
On Time & Present
- Be on time ALWAYS — respect others
- If late — let people know ASAP
- Be prepared and present — come early, know who is there and what it’s about
When you say it twice write it down
- So you don’t have to explain it again and you just forward something your written comms
Part III — Group Habits
Writing vs Talking
If anyone wants to ever discuss anything or schedule a meeting they have to write it up
- Problem
- Desired solutions
Circulate before the meeting, invite comments and then bring the summary to the meeting
Decision Making
Let others always share their opinions first — most effectively, in writing them down ahad of time
CEOs opinion always sways people one way, you don’t want people to herd around your opinion
Transparency
ALWAYS share everything relevant positive as well as negative
The only two things you can choose not to share publicly are:
- Compensation
- Performance reviews
Even those two can be shared across the company for radical transparency
Culture
One way to determine values is by posing the question:
“The rest of you can make all the decisions about the company, as long as…”
Litmus test for a good culture is to host events you enjoy and then invite (but don’t require) your teammates to join.
If you’re hanging out outside of work, you’re creating good culture.
Hours
Remember the key metric is output, not hours. If you require hours, people will put them in, but not with energy or enthusiasm. They key is to inspire and motivate your team so that long, hardworking hours are not an imposition, but a choice.
Lead by example
- Be the first one to show up
- Be the last one to leave.
Once you have department heads, they should also set an example.
Part IV — Infrastructure
Company Folder System
Do it, get one.
Google Folders, Dropbox, etc. doesn’t matter which solution.
Goal Tracking
Individual as well as Team.
Use simple solutions, don’t overengineer it.
+ Set KPIs for each goal
Personally, I recommend Trello and Google Sheets.
Areas of Responsibilities
Against everything that’s happening in your Org — have ONE point of contact
No single point of failure
No single person’s sickness / exit should grind your org to a stop
Mitigate by:
- Write down all processes, as soon as you do them for the second time
- Train a backup person for each responsibility
Part V — Collaboration
- Vision / Goal Setting (quarterly)
- Communicate above to every team member
- Track and report progress (weekly)
- Get feedback
Meetings
1. Goals (Quarterly)
2. Team (Weekly)
3. 1:1 (Weekly)
4. Company-wide
5. Office Hours
Remember: require everyone to write down and share what they want to discuss ahead of meetings
Share an agenda for the meeting ahead of time + time allocation per topic
- Collect feedback
- Finish with “Follow up meetings to be scheduled”
Goals (Quarterly)
- Leadership team
- 10 Year Vision
o What industry do you dominate?
o Who is the customer? What pain?
o What’s unique about you?
- Where do we want to go?
o 3 OKRs for company
o 3 OKRs for each department
o What action can we take this week to stay on track for the OKR?
Team (Weekly)
- Have you accomplished week’s goals? Yes/No
- Why not? What habit are you going to adopt to get there?
1:1
- Goals
o What are you proud of? successes
o What are you not proud of? Setbacks
o What can you do to mitigate risk of setbacks in future?
- Updates
o KPIs
o New customer insights
- Issues
o What tools do you need to accomplish your goals?
- Feedback
o What did you like about management since last time?
o What would you like to change?
Manager:
- Make sure weekly OKRs are straightest line to get required goals
- What did you like?
- What should he/she change?
Company (Weekly or Monthly)
- Share leadership team updates / insights from Goal setting
Office Hours
- Allow anyone to come see you
- Transparency and openness
NO MEETING DAYS — decide when, ideally 2–3 no meeting days / week
Part VI — Processes
Fundraising
- Pick a partner, not a firm
- Get warm intros
- 1st meeting get to know the partner really well
Inflection Points
- Use step changes in your business to raise capital
1. Hiring capable engineering team
2. Signing up first 3 paying customers
3. Exceeding $1m in ARR (This is product market fit!)
4. Hiring capable sales team
5. Exceeding $5m in ARR (Demonstrates effectiveness of sales team)
6. Hiring senior managers for all departments
Use SAFE and convertible notes as bridge rounds between inflection points
Cap Table
- Create one from Day 1
- Google sheets or software like Carta
Recruiting
- Share roadmap for first 90 days and goals to hit during interview process
- Offer 3 salary / equity packages
- Before making and offer, it is critical to know if the candidate will accept
o Ask them to complete:
“I will join the company as long as…”
o “If we were to make you the following offer (state offer in full detail, cash, equity, benefits) would you accept?
- Make a big deal if someone accepts an offer
Recruitment Questions
- What are your career goals?
- What are you really good at professionally?
- What are you not good at interested in doing? (5–8, push for real weaknesses)
- Who were your last 3 bosses and how would they rate your performance from 0–10 when we talk to them?
Reference Checks
- Always do them!
- Don’t use the references the candidate gave you ideally
Sales
- Qualifiers — generate qualifying leads (base + bonus for each qualified lead)
o Outbound reps — proactive reach out
o Inbound reps — qualify incoming
- Closers
o Base + commission
- Farmers
o Tend to existing customers — renew and upsell
o Base + flat quarterly bonus on retention rate or account growth
- Never overlook integrity and culture fit
- Invest in training
- Don’t focus too much on sales team track record
- Best sales people are often not best managers
