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What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

venturebeat.com

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Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#71

Post by treydey »

areoform wrote: post #27

Most of the comments so far have been negative and posed with barbs for the author's competence. I'd like to offer another angle. It appears that she's someone who didn't come from means, put herself through college by waitressing, kept getting jobs in PE/VC (haven't looked up her bio as that would be creepy), and became a senior enough player at a firm to be installed as an interim-keep-the-ship-steady CEO while a n…

I would be careful with the blanket statement "Job performance has a high correlation with IQ".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#72

Post by [deleted] »

areoform wrote: post #27

Most of the comments so far have been negative and posed with barbs for the author's competence. I'd like to offer another angle. It appears that she's someone who didn't come from means, put herself through college by waitressing, kept getting jobs in PE/VC (haven't looked up her bio as that would be creepy), and became a senior enough player at a firm to be installed as an interim-keep-the-ship-steady CEO while a n…

[deleted]

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#73

Post by Traster »

anon12345690 wrote: post #45
mrosett wrote: post #36

I’m not impressed with the comments here. The author has eight years of experience in finance and was apparently the best person to fill this role despite her lack of directly relevant experience. (You might disagree, but that was the perspective of investors with a lot of skin in the game.) The article makes good points and is well written. And yet it seems half of the comments can’t get past the fact that she worke…

if you have to jump to sexism without any evidence then you need a better argument. you should do better instead of asking HN.

The evidence is right in front of anyone who reads hacker news regularly. You might have a different judgement, but it's not difficult to say that I've seen lots of articles on Hacker news where men in similar situations are regarded as go getters who have the balls to get stuck in and take a swing at the top job.

She's a Principal at a VC, she's got two bachelors degrees (one in Economics), experience working in M&A and she was a board member. Yet somehow, despite knowing literally nothing about the company she was CEO of, Hacker News have decided not only that she was unqualified, but:

> I dug a bit to figure out what space the company is in, so that I can avoid using their services if it was applicable.

>Why on earth was this person in any way shape or form the person to step in?

>How did a waitress become a VC? (Didn’t read the article)

Despite that piece of information literally being a cheeky throw away line in the intro of the piece.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#74

Post by pizza_boy »

dang wrote: post #52

All: some comments below have taken a tack that's not good for HN: seizing on one line, in which the author was obviously downplaying herself, then piling on with pedestrian indignation. That makes for lame discussion—equal parts sour and boring. The value of HN is curiosity. If you find yourself driven to post like that, please wait until curiosity is what you're feeling instead. Then you'll respond to something int…

I don't have a problem with the comments. They're illuminating under a close reading.

The role of CEO is high status and highly desirable. I think it's safe to assume most readers of this site have coveted it from time to time and had to accept at some point that they're in that role.

It's easier to accept this is you assume CEOs are exceptional and different to you in some way: as founders; impressive track record; or something similar.

However, this article gives an example of someone just like us stepping easily into that role. How can that be? Why can't we have this? Either there is a problem with this CEO or we're missing out. It's easier to believe the former That's what the comments are about.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#75

Post by hef19898 »

This section, I think, is really important and has to come from the top:

"Interestingly the slide that seemed to resonate the most was an overview of what was not part of the strategy."

If someone can achieve that, defining what is out and get team buy in, that person is more qualified to be CEO than 80% of managers I met in my career so far.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#76

Post by jonathankoren »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #2

"The company has 100+ employees, hundreds of customers, and more than 15,000 end users. I spent almost four months as CEO. Prior to this role, my “operating experience” consisted of working as a waitress during college. My entire professional career has been in finance, where I have worked in small, flat organizations with a project-driven, deal team-oriented model. In short, I had no idea what to expect, and I learn…

> Yes, but understanding the product, customers, operational details, and knowing where to direct the system is probably more important than 'empathy and compassion'.

As interm CEO, her job is keep the lights on while the board conducts a search for a new CEO. That’s it. She’s not expected to come up with strategy, or really change anything except put the immediate fires out. It’s a caretaker position.

That said, it’s a bit disingenuous to read her comment as as saying that these business skills are not important. In fact, she doesn’t mention of these product and marketing skills at all. She’s talking about finance, which she primarily focused on as a VC and a board member. Given that C-suite jobs are primarily political, it’s completely fair to observe that soft skills are more important than reading a P & L sheet.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#77

Post by notahacker »

rdl wrote: post #34
ErikAugust wrote: post #11

"The company has 100+ employees, hundreds of customers, and more than 15,000 end users. I spent almost four months as CEO. Prior to this role, my “operating experience” consisted of working as a waitress during college." I'll admit: I dug a bit to figure out what space the company is in, so that I can avoid using their services if it was applicable. Side thought: It'd be interesting to do a bizarro "Undercover Boss"…

Re: bizzaro undercover boss, If it's for a week, "just don't fuck it up" would be fine. If I got airdropped into something where I had no experience or relevant insight (e.g. CEO of LVMH for a week), the only thing I could realistically do is try to keep stuff that was already working working (by deferring any decisions or just making "what would you do" delegations to subordinates), and spending the week learning ab…

tbh I'd assume the point of a bizarro undercover boss was less to do with actually turning the company around and more to do with "other C-level execs discover junior product manager has insights into customer base and development timelines that aren't captured by metrics, McKinsey or reports from the division VP; junior product manager discovers the things he thought the CEO should obviously introduce are in fact very difficult to change, and realises how difficult it is to grasp the needs of other products and departments" crammed into 40 minutes of TV time.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#78

Post by itronitron »

areoform wrote: post #27

Most of the comments so far have been negative and posed with barbs for the author's competence. I'd like to offer another angle. It appears that she's someone who didn't come from means, put herself through college by waitressing, kept getting jobs in PE/VC (haven't looked up her bio as that would be creepy), and became a senior enough player at a firm to be installed as an interim-keep-the-ship-steady CEO while a n…

Unfortunately the article is lacking in specifics which leaves a lot of room open for interpretation.

From her perspective it sounds like she did a great job. It would be interesting to hear from other employees of that company on whether they feel the same as she does. This could have been measured along the way with a set of company wide surveys and certainly would have fallen within their data-first approach to reporting.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#79

Post by danieltillett »

stickfigure wrote: post #61
danieltillett wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it is PresenceLearning as they still have a founder who is described as the Co-CEO [0]. 0. https://www.crunchbase.com/person/clay-whitehead#section-ove...

The commentary about PresenceLearning on Glassdoor sounds about right. They even mention the interm CEO (favorably, fwiw). https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PresenceLearning-Reviews-E... Crunchbase could be out of date, or maybe one of the cofounders stepped up.

Interesting. I am surprised when they had a co-founder that they put in a CEO who's only hands on business experience was being a waitress.

Re: What I learned as a VC filling in as a startup CEO for 4 months

#80

Post by hef19898 »

danieltillett wrote: post #79
stickfigure wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commentary about PresenceLearning on Glassdoor sounds about right. They even mention the interm CEO (favorably, fwiw). https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PresenceLearning-Reviews-E... Crunchbase could be out of date, or maybe one of the cofounders stepped up.

Interesting. I am surprised when they had a co-founder that they put in a CEO who's only hands on business experience was being a waitress.

So finance is all of a sudden not relevant for a business anymore? Interesting take. I stated it already elsewhere, but maybe a finance focused interim CEO was exactly what was needed. Also, maybe the co-founder didn't feel like the right fit for CEO at that point in time? Just being a founder doesn't qualify automatically as CEO, examples include Uber and Google.
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