Maven reposted this
I’ve been a co-founder/CEO 3x now with hundreds of employees and $90M in capital raised. Here’s an inside look into how I think about my job... It boils down to 3 things: 1. Set a vision for the company. 2. Hire and organize the right people to the right jobs. 3. Execute on a top strategic priority. It sounds great in theory, but the reality is Maven is just 18 people. So there is also a 4. Operational bullshit. Let me talk about all 4 of these... 1. Set a vision for the company. Setting a vision only happens once every 6 months, but there’s an ongoing 1-2 meetings per week where I’m talking to another startup CEO, an investor, or diving deep into a competitor to understand what they are doing. This is constant background thinking: do we have the right strategy? Is someone else doing it better? Startup CEOs are paranoid by nature, and I’m always investigating and evaluating if the company is pointed in the right direction. 2. Hire and organize the right people to the right jobs. This is 30-50% of my time. Recruiting new hires. 1:1s with my direct reports (I have 5, and always try to keep less than 8). Skip-levels once per quarter with half the company. Attending product reviews, strategy meetings, and leading our leadership and all hands meetings. 3. Execute on a top strategic priority. Usually this is hiring. Sometimes it means launching a new product, recruiting a set of instructors, or interviewing customers to help design a new direction. I almost always pick 1-2 strategic priorities in a given month and just work on them until they are in a good place. BTW we're currently hiring for two roles at Maven: a Partner/Product Marketer and a Growth PM! Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ehwdJfcH 4. Operational bullshit. I’m in year 13 of being in charge of company operations. It is extremely dialed, but it still takes time. P&L reviews, investor updates, calendaring, and correspondence (Slack and email). Though I like to think I rarely attend “networking events,” I invariably go to at least 1 dinner per month and 3 conferences per year. Less than I did when I was younger, but still enough to stay fresh on what’s going on in the industry and catch up with close contacts. Oh, and I probably spend about 30-60 min/day on social, which has been a core part of Maven’s success and growth. Many people only see the outward stuff: PR, product launches, and social posts. But the reality is 70%+ of my time is spent on stuff you will never see: new hires, coaching existing employees, aligning the company around the mission, and running or attending meetings. Lots of meetings. In my experience, this is highly typical of all CEOs. There might be the rare few who have figured out how to avoid this by taking extreme measures (running a meeting-less company or having a COO who manages the entire team). They are the exception.