The Book
I’ve finished the book! Please go to Amazon, buy it, read it, and give it a nice review. Below is a very short excerpt from the intro.
I’ve never found a truly great book out there for startup founders and CEOs. Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Brad Feld’s Do More Faster came close, but even they were missing many topics I believe are important. Many other books, written by non-CEOs about how to be a successful CEO, weren’t even close to good. They were like sex instruction guides written by virgins. They may get a couple of things right, but they fundamentally have no idea what they’re talking about.
Being a good manager is an important part of being a successful CEO, but it’s just a part, and not that central. So books on managing in general are not that useful. This book is focused on the key parts of being a successful startup CEO. It touches on general management in places, but it’s also much more and much different than a management book.
Any CEO will get it wrong. A lot. You’ll make big mistakes that put the future of the company on the line. If you get it right even half the time, you’re doing awesome. This is very different from every other executive role, where it’s a reasonable expectation to be hitting your goals regularly. Being CEO is unique.
So think of this book as a sympathetic source of hard-earned wisdom, from a fellow CEO who managed to get it right about half the time – like most successful CEOs, even those who would never admit to a batting average that low.