Startup Life
How do You Manage the CEO’s Expectations?
Put the Weight of the Company’s Growth on Everybody’s Shoulders
“What numbers are you signing up for?”
Few questions have been so destructive in the history of tech company growth. If you’ve never been asked this question, imagine this scenario.
You go to the roadmap meeting to present your initiatives for the quarter year. The CEO is there. You present the four features you think your team should tackle. Based on your assessment, each one could improve the conversion rate by 20%. That’s a 107% lift (120%⁴). If they all hit, bingo! You’d more than double your conversion rate. But you know they will not, so you don’t want to tally up their impact.
That’s when the CEO asks, “So, what numbers are you signing up for this year?”
A seemingly innocuous question. But it’s one of the most dangerous and delicate questions you will face in your career. Answering it correctly can mean the difference between happily doing what’s right for the company, or leaving the company, frustrated, scared, and with a…
