What does a startup CEO actually do? | Hacker News Reader

What does a startup CEO actually do?

ajaimk.com

19 pointsajaimk14 comments

I can't disagree more with the idea that a CEO should never get his hands dirty. That his entire job is just to dictate and coordinate other people's work. I think the CEO needs to dig in deep regularly, to show people the level of work that is expected.

It's hard to respect someone who can't (or doesn't) actually produce any work themselves.

Steve Jobs seems to be an inventor, designer, tester, AND CEO. Steve Balmer seems to be much more like the author imagines a CEO should be. I know who would choose to emulate.

maybe at first. once you gain traction, a CEO should be whining and moaning about how he wants to code, and wishes he could code like he used to, but is busy doing all the people stuff that a techie just doesn't have the skills for.

I believe that genius is 1% intelligence and 99% obsession. Which is what Steve is.

What I'm talking about here is not about getting your hands dirty but more on the lines of not micromanaging people. It's all about delegation.

My rule of thumb is to hire people who are better than myself at what they do. I'm not against jumping in and getting my hands dirty with my guys, but I can trust them to do a good job and know they don't need me. But if they do, I'm there.

Nontrivial secret to being a CEO: You need to hire people who are better than you (at something).

That seems like a high bar to clear, especially if you are a pretty good engineer.

But if you don't clear it, you will end up working with people who will do things worse than you.

This will make you and them feel awful. You will feel awful because either you won't have the time to redo what they did (and won't want to give them another task), or you will have the time to redo what they did (and waste the time of having assigned them the task in the first place). Moreover both ways you hit their morale and your morale.

Yes, one can make comparative advantage arguments (country/person X is uniformly worse, but frees up country Y for their value add) -- but in real life it sucks to think that "oh, this page could have looked so much better if I had styled it, but at least it got done."

In short: you need to hire people who are better than you (at least at something) in order to delegate with any hope of retaining your sanity.

PS: things are different for a professor. That's more of an r-selected strategy. Go for good graduate students, yes, but if any given one fails it's usually not a huge hit as projects are decoupled. Big difference vs. running a company.

Responds to user support requests and begs customers not to cancel their accounts. That's in between posting comments on blogs saying "come check out my blah blah blah"

Glamorous, huh?

A CEO’s job is to hire people to do different tasks, tell them what to do and make sure they get it done.

So a startup CEO is a regular company's project manager with hiring powers added? That doesn't sound right...

Clearly there are many different possible ways to be a successful start-up CEO.

Anything and everything (wear lots of hats) if they want it to succeed. Leadership by example.

Mostly counting the incoming money and thinking up new titles for the business cards.

I like to convert my money to silver dollars and stack them on my desk, while complaining about the cost of coal to heat my office!!! rubs hands together maniacally

Organize meetings and get the people.

If he has an MBA? Probably nothing.

So, what about you? Everything? or Nothing?

What would you say is the difference between a leader going crazy trying to get his team to work they way he wants them to.

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