What does a CEO do?
After demo day concluded, I started reading all the materials I could find online about what a CEO should do. I browsed through multiple definitions of CEO and the notes from Sam Altman explained the most clearly to me:
In addition to these, find whatever parts of the business you love the most, and stay engaged there.
I believe this breakdown is likely most applicable for growth / late-stage company. For CEOs at early stage (i.e. pre-seed to seed) companies, much of their responsibilities lie in execution and doing the dirty work themselves. But for now, this provides a good enough framework for me to comprehend the role of a CEO so I have an expectation for the near future.
Misconceptions about CEO
Alongside reading, I scheduled a 1-on-1 meeting with Pete a week after demo day.
Here is a summary of what Pete said:
- CEO doesn't need to be the loudest.
When we think about CEO, we usually think about the big names, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Sam Altman, etc., so we naturally associate CEO with the image of public speaker and think that successful CEOs are extremely extroverted.
In fact, there is an inherent selection bias. The reason we associate this steoreotype is because most of the CEOs that we see are the outspoken ones, but there are many other CEOs that are introverts and don't appear in the public eyes a lot.
One canonical example that Pete pointed out was Larry Page, whom does not like speaking and has very few public presence. Yet, he attracted a huge pool of talents and built the empire of Google silently. On the other hand, there are a lot of public speakers out there, but we don't see all of them building empire businesses.
- CEO doesn't always stay the same, they always learn and change.
One of the reasons I have been refusing to be the CEO is because I am bad at talking to people. Now what's wrong about this statement is that once you phrase it that way, you are tunnel visioned on who you are at the moment and not who you could become.
Pete pointed out that communication and public speaking are actually one of the few skills that people can acquire quickly. There are no CEOs who mastered everything right when they start, they just acquire the skills (extremely quickly) to do their jobs.
- When you are the CEO, you get to (and should) build the company based on who you are.
I had this belief that if you want to be a successful CEO, you need to behave like this, talk like that, dress like a successful person, etc, so that you can command a "perfect" company. So I was working backwards by thinking what a perfect company looks like, then tried to mold myself into a shape that could lead such company.
However, Pete said most CEOs don't succeed because they shape themselves to lead the "perfect" company. Rather, they just be themselves and build a company that fits perfectly to themselves. That's how you build a well-oiled company.
- Talents are attracted by super smart and driven people.
"Talents are naturally attracted to driven people, that's usually all it needs." - Pete.
- Pete's biggest regret is letting others make a decision and it went bad.
Back in the early days of Optimizely, Dan and Pete often said that what they regret the most is letting others make a decision and that went bad, not that they made a decision themselves and it went bad.
- Vision is about having a picture of what the product, company, the relevant future look like and shaping the world towards it.
Pete advised reading Elon Musk and Steve Jobs biography. But a local example is if someone brings you a feature idea for the product, you could easily accept or reject it by seeing if it fits into the picture of what you are envisioning.