Is selling the ONE job of a startup CEO? Yes or No?
I read somewhere that the one job of a startup CEO is to sell: to clients, investors, etc.
It said that, as a company scales, a CEO must drop everything else and focus exclusively on this aspect of the job. If they don't - or if they're not qualified to do it - either they'll be replaced or the company will not reach its potential.
I wanted to hear the opinions of Indie Hackers on this, since this sounds like a concept I'd expect from traditional venture-backed startups that needed round after round to reach critical mass, but it might not be the case for most of us here.
Do you think a good CEO must only be concerned with sales and raising capital and should hire people for everything else? If not, how do you see the job of a CEO?
My personal opinion is that if you are forced to pick one thing a CEO is supposed to focus on, it's to lead. If the head of sales is killing it, then the CEO will just be in that team's way if they focus too much on sales. The same goes for every other department. However, all those department heads need the CEO to help lead them toward the next phase. CEO's must have the vision to see what should come next, and the leadership skills to motivate a team to make the appropriate decisions to get there.
Thanks Betilfan. I read this quote yesterday:
“The CEO is the link between the Inside that is ‘the organization,’ and the Outside of society, economy, technology, markets, and customers. Inside there are only costs. Results are only on the outside.” - Peter Drucker
And this makes sense to me. I think you're spot on regarding leading the team towards the best decisions.
CEO is the nucleus. Their job is to build the atom. Sales is one electron.
The focus on "sales" is to emphasise the need to "sell" the vision to all parts necessary to make it work.
Indiehacker != CEO
Thanks Rab. Can you elaborate on Indiehacker != CEO?
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I think we're saying the same thing. I hesitate to use the word "selling" to describe what I refer to as leadership because it's extremely important that the efforts are genuine. If the CEO doesn't truly believe it, then why should anyone else?
That's very interesting Primer, thanks.
I'd like to ask: as your company scaled, did your job become mainly communicating vision and strategy to investors, employees, partners, etc.? Or were you still involved in some part of operations, like coding, product development, marketing, etc.?
It seems to me there's an expectation that the CEO will stop doing any technical or hands-on work as the company scales. However, I dislike the idea of not being involved at all in some parts of the company, specially developing new technologies.
Of course this is up to each company and each person but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.