- The responsibility of a startup CEO,
you know I get asked that question all the time
and I was recently talking with some friends
and they were wondering, like, you know,
okay now that I have a team,
what is my responsibility as CEO? okay now that I have a team,
what is my responsibility as CEO?
'Cause a lot of them are still coding or designing
or doing kind of busy work but
when it comes to being the CEO,
especially if you raise money from venture capitalists,
you need to figure out what is my responsibility
and that's what I wanna share with you guys today
is the three things that make great CEO's
and really the responsibilities of those founders.
So the number one is to set the vision.
Think about where the company is going.
When people come to work,
they want to have a sense of future state.
You know, I always kind of try to paint people the picture,
not what we're doing today
because we can kind of project out
what does the rest of the day or the week look like
but how does this look like in three to five years
or even twenty years.
What is our mission for this company?
And as the founder and CEO, your responsibility
is actually to not only paint that mission
and to set the vision, but it's also to remind people.
And trust me, you're gonna feel like there's sometimes
where you're explaining yourself over and over
and you're like saying this almost on a daily basis
if not several times of day,
but that's actually your job.
That is what founders and CEO's do.
They carry that mission and that vision forward.
They remind people.
They tie what they're working on back to that mission.
And that is what they do all day.
It's a communication strategy.
It's a leadership strategy
and that is the first, you know, responsibility of a CEO.
The second, the most important,
the one that will kill you, is don't run out of money.
Right, I know, it may sound crazy to think,
okay, of course, don't run out of money
because if you do, you have no business.
But, think about this, if you're on the venture path
and that's the one I've known recently.
You know, I recently sold my last company Clarity
but I've done two venture backed companies
and what I've learned is the role
of a venture backed CEO is to not run out of money.
It's to figure out how much capital
do you have left in your bank account
and when should you start
raising your next round of funding.
Bad CEO's, ones that don't take this into consideration,
are the ones that wait two to three months
before they run out of money to start the process.
It's at least a six to nine month process prior
to when you need it.
You know so, running out of money or resources.
So think about, your team needs resources.
They might need contractors.
They might server capacity.
They may need design support or feedback
but whatever resource or need they have including capital,
that is your responsibility to make sure it's topped up,
that everybody has access to it so they know how to use it
and that they don't run out.
So that's the second thing.
The third thing is to hire great people.
You know, it may sound crazy
but those are really truly the three things
is to make sure you set the vision,
you don't run out of money,
and hire amazingly great people.
This is the area, the people part,
that I spent probably 70% of my time on
because to me, it's an ongoing thing.
As you're building a business,
you know, you don't know when you're gonna need
to hire five great developer and designers,
BD specialists, marketing experts.
So what you're always doing
as part of your daily routine
is always trying to meet new people.
Get introduced to high caliber talent,
you know, contractors that eventually
may be part of your team.
But whatever it is, 70% for me anyways,
it's the way I look at it,
especially if you, again, venture backed,
you have a good core team.
You need to be continuously looking for new talent
and then recruiting that talent.
And most people at a high performing team,
the people you hire don't need a job.
They're probably working somewhere
and your responsibility, your goal,
is to try to convince them to either
leave that position and join you
or if they're working on their own startup
and this has happened in many times,
I'd say half of the people I hire
actually are working on their own companies,
is putting their projects on hold
so they can come join our mission and our vision
for the next two to three, maybe four years if you're lucky.
But having A-players and making sure
that you continuously, you know,
if people aren't performing, they're not a good fit,
get them off the team.
If you need more people, have them queued up,
have them ready to join the team.
Those are the three areas.
Again it's set the vision, don't run out of money,
and hire really great people.
That's the responsibility of a startup CEO
and I wanted to share that with you guys quickly.
I would invite you to like this video
and leave a comment below.
Let me know if you have any other tips
for founder CEO's or if you've struggled with anything
and overcome it, what were your solutions to that.
I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
and a bigger business and I'll see you guys next Monday.