Re:What’s the Second Job of a Startup CEO?
by rkho on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @03:04PM
(#13065815)
Exactly this. I associate "company first, product second" with the kinds of organizations that seem to exist for the sole reason of playing company.
The mentality that important decisions within a new company boil down to which friend gets which corresponding C-level title is just trivial to me. You don't have a product and you're wasting time on the unimportant things. Literally, your startup needs a CEO to guide the ship and a team who can help build the product. Not a CEO, a COO, CTO, CMO, a Director of Engineering, a SVP of Marketing, and who knows what other fancy titles you can come up with.
Product is king. Without a product, you don't have customers nor revenue.
The problem with this is you don't really have a company until you have a product to sell. And not all products can support companies. The roles in the company have to orient around the product. Product has to come first.