Pricey SaaStr: What’s It Actually Prefer to Be CEO of a Startup?
Let me simply throw out a couple of issues I’ve discovered that being a CEO of start-up isn’t, or isn’t as you’d anticipate:
- It isn’t glamorous till you’re At Scale and Sizzling, on the very minimal. At $10m-$20m+ in revenues, possibly. Possibly not even till pre-IPO. Possibly by no means, not likely.
- The Zero Money Date once you run out of cash will likely be burned in your mind. Extra on that right here.
- You might be by no means recruiting sufficient since you all the time want a minimum of another wonderful individual on the workforce and it simply isn’t getting completed and that is a very powerful factor so by some means you must discover a method even if you happen to aren’t.
- You may’t actually share, not likely, as a result of your workforce doesn’t actually perceive what it’s to have all of the 100% accountability for the whole lot, and your partner/ S.O./ no matter can solely hear about 58 instances how you’re about to fail earlier than they naturally begin to tune out.
- You’ll turn out to be a pacesetter it doesn’t matter what your background is. Even when you have by no means scaled earlier than, by no means employed earlier than. You’ll know a lot, about the whole lot, about how it’s all completed. Folks will gravitate to that, and observe you. Not everybody. However increasingly over time. You’ll discover a method right here.
- Folks will truly care what you assume in a method you’ve by no means skilled earlier than. Even if you’re only a CEO of a ten individual firm, your prospects will care, even when they’re 10,000x greater than you’re. Your workforce will care. The CEO issues to whomever the product impacts.
- You’ll take into consideration stepping down in some unspecified time in the future, regardless of if you happen to by no means admit it. There’s a cause Elon Musk didn’t begin off as CEO of Tesla, nor did Marc Benioff begin off as CEO of Salesforce, although they wrote the primary checks. It’s onerous. Don’t inform anybody when you will have these ideas. Besides possibly your one closest advisor.
- You’ll be within the Founder CEO membership when you have any success in any respect. And it’s a enjoyable membership as a result of it lasts for all times so long as your startup is a minimum of considerably profitable. You’ll have your personal language, personal shared experiences, and be a part of a particular membership that nobody else actually may be part of. It’s a reasonably cool membership.
My non-obvious learnings.
