FounderMail 4th Edition: The Evolution of a Startup CEO
đ Hey there! Iâm Ilan. This is FounderMail, your monthly dose of startup insights that helps founders hire top talent, raise capital, and stay informed. A Startup CEO: Not just a title, it's a daily level-up. Letâs go!
In This Edition:
Shower Thoughts: Founders, Should You Stay or Should You Go?
Whatâs Got Our Attention
Unstacked Podcast: Phases of a Startup CEO
The MVP Play with Jacob Cole, Co-Founder & CEO of Ideaflow.io
Unstacked Perspectives: The CEO's Role in Talent Acquisition: From Seed to IPO
Shower Thoughts đ
Soak up insights from our networkâs top investors, founders and tech influencers.
Founders, are you overstaying your welcome?
âThereâs a lot of talk about the importance of a company being âfounder-led.â Ultimately I believe thatâs severely limiting and a single point of failureâŠI believe itâs critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founderâs influence or direction.â
- Jack Dorsey, Founder and Former CEO of Twitter
Your startup is your brainchild. Youâve invested tears, sweat, and sleepless nights into your business so it's only natural youâd want to nurture it to the end as the CEO. But much like raising children, the goal should be to equip them with the tools to leave the nest and achieve independence.
So, why does this sometimes feel more like empty nest syndrome and less like success? The ultimate sign of achievement shouldnât be to sit at the top forever but rather to drive yourself out of the role. Consider this:
You've built something scalable - if the business can grow without your day to day involvement, youâve done something right.
You hired the right people across the organization, including your potential successor - that in itself should give you peace of mind.
You've established a company capable of adapting to changes, including in leadership - a sure sign of long term success for a company.
Have a plan. Whether itâs to pat yourself on the back and enjoy the villa in Costa Rica, or scheming your next venture - whatever youâve picked out for your post-founder life.. đ„
TL;DR: If you can build a great company that endures well beyond your exit, you've accomplished the greatest feat as a founder.
Whatâs Got Our Attention
The latest startup news and research you canât afford to miss.
Money vs Control: The Founderâs Dilemma
More engineering resources please - how CTOs can win over the board room.
Protect Taylor Swift⊠from AI?
Unstacked Startups Podcast Recap
Check out our favorite insights from a recent episode of the Unstacked Startups Podcast. Every episode, Unstacked host, Ilan Saks, chats with startup founders, early employees, leaders, and VCs to uncover the 'secret sauce' of startup growth.
MARK MACLEOD
A seasoned coach to high-growth tech company CEOs, Mark is also the Ex-CFO of Shopify and Freshbooks, an Ex-VC, Cross-fit athlete and DJ. In this Podcast, he shares his insights on the different stages of a startup and the role of a CEO.
Key Lessons
The Early Stage â It's not about convincing the market how amazing your widget is. You should be obsessed with solving a problem instead. âOnly when we build a product that some segment of the market embraces, do we bother building a company. Until then, you're not a CEO, you're a product manager.â
GTM Phase â CEOâs need to lead the initial GTM efforts. Be hands-on and having direct contact with customers to gather feedback. "Everybody's in sales. You're in sales, I'm in sales, every human that needs to convince another human to do something is in sales."
Scaling Phase â "The bigger the company goes, the more everybody wants a piece of you." As a CEO, maintain your companies values and culture - live and breathe them, celebrate them daily. âThe root of all disagreement and lack of alignment in a company boils down to a value that is not being lived or is not being articulated."
Bonus: Improving 1% every day isnât just motivational fluff - itâs a game changer.
The MVP Play
Unlocking the playbooks of startup MVPs, one question at a time.
Checking into the game? For this edition, we chatted with Jacob Cole, Co-Founder and CEO at IdeaFlow!
MOTIVATION
Why are you building Ideaflow and what is the driving force behind your willingness to endure the challenges of founding a startup?
Sir Tim Berners-Leeâs (inventor of the world wide web) original vision was proposed as a solution to information loss across people and teams. After working in Tim's group at MIT, researching intelligence augmentation, I understood this was a burning need, that was still unmet.
Inspired by the early Web, I see a future where every spark of insight is captured and propagates across the global brain.
The stakes are higher than you might expect; our survival as a human race depends on our ability to augment intelligence with a digital brain, allowing for vaster states of awareness that can solve the problems we've created today. As Einstein said, you can't solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.
VENTURE
What advice do you have for founders to ensure a good fit with potential VC partners?
My advice is to:
Do your due diligence.
Ensure investors do their due diligence.
Trust your instincts.
Deep alignment is possible.
The first dozen pitches we did felt lukewarm, but when we met investors who were real visionaries in our space, it was a phase shift. Meeting with Jim Pallotta, First Round Capital, Tim Draper and others, the energy in the room felt different. They could see where we were going and halfway through, they practically started pitching us! It was joyous, to feel so understood, and to discover real thought partners!
Your intuition has a higher-bandwidth level of intelligence than you can consciously process.
PEOPLE
How do you identify truly bar-raising talent?
Passion: People who are passionate enough about knowledge management that if we didn't hire them, they'd have to be doing it anyways just to get the thoughts out of their head and into the world.
Alignment on Vision: People who have questing energy in pursuit of building a "humanity 3.0" which can think and act together at an unprecedented scale.
Scrappy & Self-Starting: People who are scrappy hackers, self-starters and robust.
The PLAY
Founders, donât forget to harness this innate ability: Intuition.
Trust Your Gut: Listen to your inner voice, it often knows the right path forward.
Balancing Wisdom With Gut: Blend them for optimal results.
Tune Your Inner Compass: Ensure itâs leading you to the intended north star
Tom Bradyâs intuition led to a historic Super Bowl comeback win in 2017. Facing a 28-3 deficit at half, Bradyâs innate sense for the game led the Patriots to a stunning 34-28 comeback win. It wasnât just Bradyâs skill, but the way he could intuitively read the game, adapt swiftly, and motivate his team in a high pressure situation. â 'Gotta play tougher, harder... everything weâve got,' was more than words; it was an intuitive leader inspiring action.
Unstacked Perspectives
Unstacked host, Ilan Saks, on a mission to basically give everyone a Harvard MBA, one lesson at a time.
The role of a CEO evolves from startup to scale. Startup CEOs â with their sights set on IPO â must excel in championing talent strategies through every phase of the business. They need to build robust teams and turn potential into innovation.
So exactly how do startup CEOs drive their companies towards IPO success through each stage of the growth cycle?
Read the full blog post, to learn more about the specifics of a CEOâs role in talent acquisition during the seed, growth, and IPO stages of a startup, and understand the cognitive transition that occurs from Founder to CEO regarding talent acquisition.
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