Comments on: The three kinds of CEO

By: Alistair Croll

Alistair Croll — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:25:46 +0000

Yeah, you have to be a product guy first — so make sure your best friends are a sales guy and a finance guy. Actually, most startups succeed with a pair of founders: It keeps you sane, and helps you scale. It’s very few that can do the single-founder thing. So if you’re a product/tech guy, find a sales/marketing guy and vice-versa.

Aaron, I don’t need to write that post: This slideshare is the single best thing I’ve read on PM 2.0. I’m humbled by how good it is and wish I’d thought of it first.

http://www.slideshare.net/dan_o/designing-and-optimizing-the-dna-of-a-killer-app-by-dan-olsen-startonomics-presentation/

By: Aaron deMello

Aaron deMello — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:39:00 +0000

Very insightful Alistair. I’d cast myself as a blend of two types, with both the positives and negatives of each.

I’m with Mark – the CEO of a tiny product-focused startup needs to be first and foremost a Product CEO. However, he does need the ability to sell – be it a product, their vision, etc. to customers, VCs, and recruits.

An idea for a future post: maybe you can tackle Product Management 2.0 for startups? As in, how to have a basic product management process without wrecking the innovation that a startup needs?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:40:09 +0000

Seems to me that early stage startups probably have product CEOs by default. How is a startup going to find and attract a Sales CEO when there are no sales yet, and how is a finance CEO going to be interested in the startup if it’s just a few dudes banging out code in a garage? Further down the road when there’s financing to raise and actual salespeople in the organization I can see there being a role for the other two CEOs, but as Mark says any startup CEO “should be technical.”

By: Mark MacLeod

Mark MacLeod — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:13:23 +0000

I think the 1st CEO for any startup should be a founder and should be technical. Biz heads like myself have big blindspots at the very early stage (going from idea to 1st product) because we’re not technical. In today’s tech light web world, this is less of an issue. Still, its all about product and user experience. The CEO should be the founder with the intuitive feel to drive these key elements.