Startup CEO: Role of a CEO

one of my investors and longtime board members Fred Wilson has a very pithy description of the job of a CEO and he says your job is three things one is to create strategy for the business division for the business and to communicate it the second is to build a team and to ensure that the organization has the talent that it needs to succeed and Fred would say the third thing is to make sure there's enough cash in the bank I would extend that a little bit to say the third thing is to make sure the company execute on its plan including being properly financed all three of those roles or all three of those functions are critical right you can't have a successful business without a good strategy a good team and good execution and enough cash in the bank in the early days of a business there very few people that are going to be capable of generating the vision for the business are setting the strategy for the business other than you may be a close partner as a co-founder so setting that vision is important but I think even more important than that is being able to articulate the vision and communicate the vision in a way that's going to translate it's going to make sense to all the different constituencies or stakeholders in and around your company and that tends to be sort of three broad buckets your team your customers and potential investors or shareholders so CEOs vision I would say is as much about the communication of the vision and the strategy as it is setting it in the first place because that's really how you're going to be able to rally people to your cause the CEOs roll our and talent and around human capital I would say ends up being two different things one is around selection and the other is around motivation there are lots of different pieces of each of those things but figuring out who to bring on board your organization is absolutely critical because especially in the early days those first five 10 20 employees are the ones that are really going to make or break the business they're the ones that end up doing the lion's share of the work not you and they're the ones that have an awful lot of power in shaping the culture and practices and behaviors of the organization beyond selection motivation becomes incredibly important so CEOs our leaders our managers and making sure that your work force is motivated to jump out of bed in the morning and come give you their absolute best for eight ten twelve fifteen hours is very important that's what drives the business forward that's what writes the code or greets the customers whatever area of of the industry your business works in execution directly to the motivation of people in the organization and it's directly linked to the strategy you set as well and making sure that goals are clear that everyone is pointed and rowing in the same direction making sure that deadlines are respected and that people are held accountable for results there very few people who can do that as effectively as the CEO making sure there's enough cash in the bank and having the company properly financed again is one of those things that's sort of the lifeblood of the organization or the the gas and the tank it all comes back to being able to sell the vision so selling the story and selling progress against the story to investors to potential investors is one of the most important things you can do because without the cash in the bank it's very hard to run the business so I don't know that there's such a thing as an average day for a CEO but there's certainly averages over time and for me I always try to spend as much time in market as I can with customers with partners with prospects understanding what their needs are and how my company is either meeting those needs or could be meeting those needs and building those important relationships I would say over time that's probably about a third of what I do I then try to spend about half my time internally and internally can mean lots of things it could be one-on-one meetings with people who report to me it could be team meetings with my executive staff and the rest is going to be odds and ends it's going to be time with board and investors it's going to be time thinking and and reading and learning and working on projects myself and then a certain amount of time that's going to industry events obviously that blurs with being in market on any given day you're going to do some of those things occasionally you'll do all of them so no day is typical but over time that's how it balances out you

Channel: Kauffman FoundersSchool

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Keywords: Startup CEO, Matt Blumberg, the role of a CEO, day to day operations, vision alignment, culture building, how to be a CEO, Return Path, how to create strategy, build vision, building your team, keeping cash in the bank, cash flow, executing your plan, CEO communications

Id: 7G6nxQa-OjA

Length: 5min 19sec (319 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2016