7% for the first hire was too much?
It's a nice post, but if the first hire is as key as the text says, I don't think 5% is too much.
How to Be Startup CEO
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#12Hey Watershawl... the thinking is that it may take 6 months to build a product that customers are willing to pay for. Definitely try to validate faster if you can!
In the normal economy the first year You take care about the business, the second year You and Your business take care about each other and the third year the business takes care about you.
So stay tuned.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#13This might be a good guideline for someone who has never had CEO experience (and one day aspires to be a CEO), but I think it's almost offensive for one person to try to write the definitive guide to be a CEO from 0-x employees unless you're the CEO of some Fortune 500 company.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#14This might be a good guideline for someone who has never had CEO experience (and one day aspires to be a CEO), but I think it's almost offensive for one person to try to write the definitive guide to be a CEO from 0-x employees unless you're the CEO of some Fortune 500 company.
I don't know if you know this or not, and I didn't notice if TFA made this point explicit or not, iContact was successful enough to be acquired for $169MM, and he remained CEO right up to the acquisition. And they grew to > 300 employees at their peak, so it's not like this guy is talking out of his arse here.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#15There's some bad advice in here, IMO, although overall it's decent. Fundamentally I think there isn't much value in laying out every detail of running a company from zero to scale, since initially all that matters is doing as few things as possible and not even thinking about what kind of org chart or employee handbook you'll need later. A huge document like this kind of deters people at best, or at worst convinces t…
One of the things I appreciate about Ryan and the information he shares is that he provides very detailed information and a lot of it. He leaves it to the reader to determine what parts are helpful, which varies by what stage each company is at to your point. However, I'd rather have too much information and be able to determine what is helpful myself at that point in time than to have someone choose to provide less…
That's great for you. But what about the new CEO with no experience? Lots in here to lead them down the wrong path.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#16This might be a good guideline for someone who has never had CEO experience (and one day aspires to be a CEO), but I think it's almost offensive for one person to try to write the definitive guide to be a CEO from 0-x employees unless you're the CEO of some Fortune 500 company.
I don't know if you know this or not, and I didn't notice if TFA made this point explicit or not, iContact was successful enough to be acquired for $169MM, and he remained CEO right up to the acquisition. And they grew to > 300 employees at their peak, so it's not like this guy is talking out of his arse here.
I never said iContact was a small company by any means. However, there are a many factors that can lead to a company growing >300 and getting acquired for that price. It might sound condescending so I understand the downvotes...but some of the things laid out in the post just sounded wrong to me.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#17Growing up, I didn’t really know much about entrepreneurship and business, but as I began working in companies around the age of 16 and 17, and started my company, iContact, at 18, I discovered that there’s an entirely different world out there. In fact, there’s a world of prosperity and unlimited wealth out there for you to reach for. You can enter this world. But first, you have to be aware that it exists and you have to work hard to create value for others.
This kind of struck a chord with me. I've grown up in a relatively "unprivileged" (lower-middle class) family, and I think one of the main ideas I'm struggling to grasp as I build my business is that if I work hard to provide something people want, then I'm entitled to wealth in return.
Having lived a life where all I know is that everyone in my family has nearly always had financial difficulties, almost as if we're all undeserving of wealth for some unknown reason, it's hard for me to get into a mindset where I'm able to ask clients/customers for large amounts of money, amounts that might not even put a dent in most people's wallets.
I'm actually just realizing now that if I want to succeed, I'm going to have to break through this mental barrier.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#18while I like the idea, my quick scan suggests there are two small holes. the quote ""examples are not another way to teach, they are the only way to teach" sums up the first. the second is learn by doing. practical excercses, learn by doing. the practical is a corner stone of good teaching. just my thoughts, hope you find them useful.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#19The one thing I've learned from top entrepreneur is that there is no blueprint for success. What worked for Ryan in one company between 2003-2008 doesn't have to work in different time place.
The only thing is to run it and improve it all along.
Re: How to Be Startup CEO
#20I think very highly of Ryan, and I think this is a great article full of good advice. On a related note, his book Zero To One Million [1] is also excellent. That said, Ryan presents one possible model in this post, for how to structure and sequence things. I'm believe there are very probably other equally acceptable models, and maybe even some that are better (depending on the circumstances). In our own case at Fogbe…
The pricing for small teams with many repos is free at bitbucket...