What’s the role of a Startup Founder/CEO?
5 essentials to think about
There’s one awesome part of starting a company and it’s having incredibly tight feedback loops on your personal/professional goals. It’s an addicting, motivating, awesome, tough experience — I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone (well, not on meeting #1).
One of the best parts is understanding the true potential of your opportunity and realizing that your team can be the team. As co-founder and ceo of SoapBox I’ve been able to witness the incredible progress and growth of our team. And, because they’ve been doing such a damn good job, my job has started to change significantly. I can only hope it continues to do so.
Through tons of thinking, reading, stress, and talking I’ve settled on a few things that are essential for (co-)founders and startup ceos to be doing at all times.
- Constantly Fire Yourself
- Catch 22's
- Vision
- Team
- Bank Account to Match #3 and #4.
p.s. I’ve borrowed #3, #4, and #5 from Mike McDerment
Constantly Fire Yourself
I’m not sure where I first heard about this, but I first read about it through Joel Kraus’s blog post titled, “First, Fire Thyself”.
The crux of the post is that startup ceo’s and founders often find themselves working in their skill positions for far too long (and not on them). What you wont realize is that by focusing on what you’re best at can actually hold your organization behind because you’re needed for much more than just that.
You will, at some-point, end up being an unnecessary bottleneck. Free yourself in order to free your company for better things.
The only thing I want to add here is that you should constantly fire yourself.
For example: Fire yourself from selling so you can work on managing a sales team… then fire yourself from managing a sales team and work on a sales organization. Or, fire yourself from developing so you can work on leading a development team… then fire yourself from that to free yourself to leading an entire engineering organization.
As a ceo this might stop with a large organization where you’re working on the vision and executive team. As a ceo, there isn’t much need to fire yourself from the ceo role.
I’d imagine as a founder you could, conceivably, fire yourself from the ceo role if that would accelerate the company’s trajectory.
Catch 22's
Catch 22's, coined in a novel by the same name, are paradoxical situations wherein the hero cannot escape by the inherent rules of the situation itself.
In startup land everything is a Catch 22. I think it becomes the founders job to find and fix these Catch 22's in order for the organization to move forward.
IE: Can’t raise money without sales… but can’t get sales without a better product… but can’t make a better product without raising money.
No M.B.A., employee, or mentor can find the way through a catch 22 for you. These are impossible situations that make this job interesting, terrifying, and exciting.
Find your organization’s biggest Catch 22 and figure it out — show the team that you all live in a world where willpower wins.
Others have raised money. How did they do it? Simple: They went out and sold; which gave them more money to build; which let them build and gave them more to sell; which let them raise money to do all of the above faster.
Constantly look for Catch 22's and try to show people a path to the impossible.
Vision
Your customers have to want to buy what your sales team is selling, which, must be what your support team is built to support, meanwhile, your product should tie all of that together in a way that is beautiful, simple, and obvious. All of this is created by your best assets—employees—who are found and retained by HR (taking into account a culture). Not to mention where the markets are heading and a decent plan to get there.
I don’t think vision is the hardest thing in the world to come up with or maintain but it requires information that very, very few in your organization will be able to keep up with.
It will become your job to unite the team in a way that makes sense to all while informing them where they should be and, importantly, when they are/aren’t there.
Team
Taking into account where you want to go, it becomes your job to fill your company with people that sync up to that vision and fit within that culture.
I think it’s worth noting that it also becomes your responsibility to notice when there are people on that team whom do not sync with the vision or culture and find replacements for them.
Bank Account to Match
Realizing your goals for your company and your team may or may not require capital. Regardless it’s your responsibility to make sure that the resources you have at your disposal match the opportunity a head of you.
If you need more money to hit your goals than you have—including what you can accomplish through sales and renewals—then you might consider raising money.
Set the bank account to match the ambitions and quality that your company needs. Don’t decide on raising money at a certain amount because that’s what people have told you or what is being offered to you.
Match the cash required to the investments needed.
