I am fortunate in my current job to spend a lot of time talking to other founders and CEOs. I mentor and coach them, my company and I help counsel them on executive and board searches, and I spend time with them at conferences and seminars. Even when I am giving them advice, I always take time to learn what they’re doing, what works, and what doesn’t work. I’ve noticed a consistent set of behaviors and practices common among the successful founder operators – the ones who go on to lead their companies through multiple chapters of growth and sometimes never hire the “seasoned operator” to come in and take over. #1 – They are students of the game. It’s…
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Business
The myth of the “playbook” in executive hiring, and how to work around it
I help mentor CEOs on executive hiring all the time. One common refrain I hear when we’re talking about requirements for the job is about something I like to call The Mythical Playbook. If I only had the exec with the right playbook, thinks the hiring CEO, all my problems in that executive’s area would be magically solved. I once hired a senior executive with that same mentality. They had the pedigree. They had taken a similar SaaS company in an adjacent space from $50mm to $250mm in revenue in a sub-group within their functional area. They had killer references who said they were ready to graduate to the C-level job. They had The Playbook! Suffice to say, things did…
Book Short: Must-Read for CXOs
Lead Upwards: How Startup Joiners Can Impact New Ventures, Build Amazing Careers, and Inspire Great Teams, by Sarah E. Brown, is an amazing book – and one that fits really well with our Startup Revolution series, in particular our book Startup CXO. I kept thinking as I was reading it that it was the other side of the proverbial coin…that Startup CXO was about the details of each executive job in a company…but Sarah’s book is about the things common to ALL executive jobs – how to get them, how to succeed at them, essentially how to BE an executive. I read it front to back in a single day one weekend and loved it. Some of the most insightful…
The quest for diversity in Tech leadership is stalling. Here’s why.
There’s been a growing cry for tech companies to add diversity to their leadership teams and boards, and for good reason. Those two groups are the most influential decision making bodies inside companies, and it’s been well documented that diverse teams, however you define diversity — diversity of demographics, thoughts, professional experience, lived experience — make better decisions. Gender, racial, and ethnic representation in executive teams and in board rooms are not new topics. There’s been a steady drumbeat of them over the last decade, punctuated by some big newsworthy moments like the revelations about Harvey Weinstein and the tragic murder of George Floyd. It’s also true that in people-focused organizations, and most tech companies claim to be just that,…
Book Short: It’s All About Creative Destruction
I was excited to read Launchpad Republic: America’s Entrepreneurial Edge and Why It Matters, by Howard Wolk and John Landry the minute Brad sent it to me. I love American history, I love entrepreneurship, and I’m deeply concerned about the health of our country right now. I have to say…on all fronts, the book did not disappoint! The authors make several points, but the one that sets the tone for the book is that like our country’s origins and culture in general, entrepreneurship is itself rebellious. It’s about upstarts challenging the status quo in some way or other with a better way to do something, or with a new thing. The balance between protecting private property rights and allowing for…
How to engage with Your CRO
(Post 4 of 4 in the series on Scaling CROs – other posts are, When to Hire your First Chief Revenue Officer, What Does Great Look like in a Chief Revenue Officer and Signs your Chief Revenue Officer isn’t Scaling) Assuming your CRO is on track and scaling with the company so that you’re not having to mentor or coach them, I’ve found a few ways to engage with the CRO that have been particularly fruitful. Here are a few tips on making every moment with your CRO well-spent. One of the easiest ways to carve out quality time with your CRO is during travel time, or in and around events. Particularly if you’re a B2B company that engages with…
Signs your Chief Revenue Officer isn’t Scaling
(Post 3 of 4 in the series of Scaling CRO’s- the other posts are When to Hire your First Chief Revenue Officer and What does Great Look like in a Chief Revenue Officer). If you’ve hired a “great” CRO (see previous post) you might think that you’re set for a long time and that the great CROs are also able to scale. Not always, and you’ll have to check to make sure that your CRO is scaling and growing as much as your company. I’ve found that there are several telltale signs that your CRO isn’t scaling and fortunately, they are easy to spot and easy to correct. First, if your CRO gravitates to being an individual contributor sales rep…
Double Book Short: Framework of Frameworks
I love me a good framework. And Geoffrey Moore is the kind of good product/marketing frameworks for technology companies. Moore’s Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption is a must-read for anyone managing a larger technology organization (start reading it when you get to 200-250 people – it’s never too early to worry about disruption). More important, it’s really a companion book or coda to Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past, so if you haven’t read that one, start there and read both sequentially. Zone to Win is quite short and punchy, and it doesn’t disappoint. I can’t believe is that I never blogged about Escape Velocity before since it…
Book Short: Loved Loved
I enjoy reading books written by people I know. I can always picture the person narrating the book, or hear their voice saying the words, I can periodically see their personality showing through the words on the page, and books bring out so much more detail than I’d ever get from a conversation. Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products, by Martina Lauchengco, is one of those books. Martina is an operating partner at Costanoa Venture Capital, an investor in both Return Path and Bolster, and I’d known Martina for several years before she joined Costanoa through Greg Sands. She’s the best product marketer on the planet. She’s the also one of the nicest people around. Product Marketing is…
Two Great Lines (and One Worrisome One) About the Current Macroeconomic Situation
I was trading emails a few weeks ago Elliot Noss from Tucows about the current state of the economy after being on a panel together about it, and he wrote: The market is fascinating right now. Heated competition AND layoffs and hiring freezes. It feel like an old European hotel where there are two faucets, one is too hot and the other too cold. While a quick rant about European hotel bathrooms could be fun…we’ll just stick to the sink analogy. As anyone who has ever tried to use one of these sinks that Elliot describes knows, they’re hard to use and illogical. Sure, sometimes you want freezing water and sometimes you want scalding water (I guess), but often, you…
When it is Time to Hire Your First Chief Financial Officer
(This is the second post in the series…the first one on How to Engage with Your CFO is here.) What comes before a full-fledged CFO? Lots of startups have nothing more than an outsourced bookkeeper or one junior staff accountant. Sometimes a founder or a founder’s spouse even steps in on this front. As startups scale, they are likely to hire a more senior accountant, maybe an AR/AP/Collections staff member, or even a Controller or VP Finance. Depending on the complexity of your business you might be able to hold off on hiring a full-time CFO, but if you have any of these signs then it’s time to start thinking about bringing someone on board. One sign is intuitive, and…