What should a tech Founder/CEO be doing?

In their new tech company

11 min readNov 15, 2021

Over the course of the last few years, I’ve been doing a lot of learning and teaching about why other Tech Founders, especially CEO/Founders, should definitely NOT be dictating the Product Strategies of their new tech companies. There is so much more value they need to focus on, excluding this piece, so that they keep their company alive.

Many more Founders have now gone on to learn this lesson the hard way of course, but unfortunately it usually costs them at least one major startup failure first.

What SHOULD they be DOING instead? and how can you learn this before your startup fails?

I cannot do the learning for you, but I’m gonna give you answers and insights into these million dollar questions. Also, I’m going to tell you what Founders should do if the real work of the CEO is not their core strength or focus.

Here is the punchline for you:

Product strategy and execution is not the CEO’s job, and how it happens is nothing like something as simple as planning and building a new home.
As CEO, being an expert in the domain of your tech business idea is not a superpower for you that guarantees success. It is useful but not necessary.
Your ideas, for what will work, in your new product business are just as unreliable as anyone else’s guess!

Let’s start with those last two. The primary reason that Tech Founder/CEO’s go wrong in this area is that tech product development is so different to all other types of businesses activities they’ve learnt before, or been taught. This is not obvious, and the smart people getting into tech simply it don’t want to recognise that, so they rely on what they learned in the past about other businesses/jobs/careers they had, and then apply them in this kind of business.

The difference in how a tech startup works, is similar to the difference between a Hobbyist (using hand-power tools) creating a new experimental idea to sell, and kickoff a new business of their own. Versus an enterprise company using an assembly line of machines to create (their already sold) products as fast as possible. Product Development versus Product Production.

It is true that Product Development (tech or otherwise) is more like using a bunch of ad-hoc hand-power tools, making heaps of design compromises in a series of experiments (most of which fail) to learn how to create an evolving working prototype/product. Iterating on that prototype/product and refining what works and what doesn’t, and what actually sells at market.

One of the hardest things an experienced industry expert finds about this is admitting they haven’t already learned all this design process. Afterall, what are they actual experts in then? Answer: Generally, they are experts in the production, distribution, logistics and sales of these things, not in the design of these things.

In stable businesses/enterprises they use what amounts to pre-programmed machines/processes in more linear sequences to reproduce predictable outputs, at scale, to known existing markets. Their focus is on optimization of what they are producing— More things, for less cost. Why? because they are “stable businesses”, and stable businesses who know that what they have now sells and generates actual cash flow— in whatever market and conditions. What they struggle to do is innovate and change any of that, so they necessarily go slow at that change, starting with what they already have and trying to innovate (incrementally) from there.

In the wood-working world, one of my hobbies, it is the difference between: using a hammer and chisel + portable sander + electric screwdriver + tape measure + workbench, making boutique hand-joined coffee tables to sell at the local Saturday village market. Versus having a 2-storey saw mill + 3-phase jointer and shapers + CNC machines and a fork lift truck. Making 10 varieties of popular dining room tables, that sell at a nationwide chain of furniture stores. The business model and the execution are totally different.

The significant difference between discovering a product and commercialising production is key to understand if you want to build a new tech product company, and survive at it.

Two Hard Parts

The first order of business (which may actually take you a decade to succeed at) is to do the necessary research and development into a product that actually sells. Once you have done that, then we can talk about the second part which is scaling it up and commercialising it. At which point you may want to exit your own business, because starting new things is your jam. Or sadly your investors may want you replaced because you remained the bottleneck to the business scaling.

Jumping over the first part to the second part is the key mistake so many CEO/Founders make far too soon, because the first part is so damn hard to do.

Here is why. You simply can’t know (and don’t know) exactly what you are building, and you don’t know if it will actually work, and you don’t who will buy it, nor what it should cost. There is little, if any, certainty of any of these things in-place when you start, and not for the next decade or so at least. Never mind all the other things that have to align to succeed in business. So, the actual work in product is to create certainty in what works and what does not by experimentation. Not to just assume you can have it by just knowing stuff (from your past careers), nor can you find it by up-front planning and reckoning.

Not the Job of the CEO

The main reason that the Founder/CEO should not be controlling the product strategy (as well as controlling the business strategy), is because that’s simply not the job of the CEO.

If it were the job of the CEO, then everything they did, and said will lead them to tell and incentivise those in their company to build the wrong things that they thought would work, driven by their idealised businesses strategies.

Business strategies succeed only because product succeeds. Not the other way around! The sooner this is learned the better.

I explain this very concept and its nuances across a number of articles:

It is such a crying shame, and it breaks my heart every day, to see this same mistake made over and over and over again (ad-nauseum). Often by courageous, gifted and intelligent people who really have all good intentions of creating successful businesses and companies.

We desperately need visionary people like these people to change our world, and build new products and services, AND they also need to be very smart about how they go about doing that.

Nonetheless, over and over again, smart people are failing at doing it. Technically, it really is their fault, but only in that they are unaware of how different and difficult building a product is, and founding a company to do that sustainably, than anything they have ever done in the past. And surprisingly there still is no single handbook to help them do it right.

Actually, I think that even if such a handbook did exist, (and, just quietly, they do exist by the way, many of them exist in fact) those founders would still not read them carefully enough and pay due diligence to them anyway. Because to them its just obvious how that should be done — their way. And so, the show goes on, year after year. This failure is the price of progress in the world.

The NOT so obvious stuff

It really does not matter how well you understand your business opportunity. How much and for how long you researched it, nor the successful superstar career you just exited to become a founder. Nor what domain expertise you may have after decades of experience in industry, nor how experienced in any specific industry you are. None of that automatically qualifies you at being an expert at: discovering, designing and developing a new tech product for any market! Even if you know that market inside out and all the people in it.

It is not the unfair advantage that you think it is.

Plenty of non-industry domain experts, who are experienced at building tech products, have learned what they need to learn about those domains, and have learned about what sells in those domains, and gone on to create successful tech in them. They hired that expertise in, and focused on building product that sells for the long run.

It does not matter that you were the Corporate Vice President of Sales at the top grossing furniture sales company in all of the Americas, if you are now the founder of a new startup building boutique coffee tables to millennials who can’t even afford a mortgage. Having all that industry experience and knowledge in one market does not mean you are endowed with all you need to know about what new table to build, what it should look like, and what table will actually sell in that new market — that you are now breaking into. You have to stop guessing and start experimenting, especially if you want to sell thousands of tables and survive the next 10 years doing it.

Never mind the fact that tech is more expensive to build, support and maintain for its lifetime than any dinning room table. Never mind the fact that tech is orders of magnitude more complex to design and build (and operate) than any dinning room table will ever be. And, never mind the fact that a tech product constantly evolves and changes over time! whereas a dinning room table cannot, once it is built and sold.

Until it was spelled out to the past and failed founders of tech businesses, (who are by the way, in the main, highly intelligent, motivated and ambitious individuals), this was also was NOT that obvious them at the time either.

The tech dream of building what you think will naturally succeed in-market and make a ton of money doing it, is a still strong and tantalizing myth that ensnares many. And many still fall into the same traps making the same mistakes over and over again.

Once you understand all of this, and you are finally prepared to accept it, one question remains:

What should a Founder/CEO be doing instead of deciding and dictating the flagship product to build for their company?

That’s the million dollar question

and here is the short answer:

1. Raise capital — to keep your company alive for the long run. You are in business to stay in business, and if you want a product business that grows, you need cash in advance of making money from your product/service.

2. Hire and retain the best and most experienced people that you can – and trust them and empower them to do the hard product work for the business. You need smart, motivated, prudent and engaged people to do the hard work of discovering, designing and building your products. You can’t do this yourself, and they can’t do this if you don’t trust them to.

3. Decide on, and communicate your vision and strategy across the company and outside the company— at every opportunity you get — to everyone. Without which they won’t get the strategy, and they won’t care about your company nor your customers, and internally, your staff will get distracted from what is important to focus on.

Is that all you do?

No. Of course not, there is more day to day, but these three things are the primary focus of the work of a tech CEO/Founder. It is essentially a people role, people! Not a tech role, not a sales role, not a product role.

CEO is not for me

OK Fine! but what do you do if you are one of the Founders of this startup and you want to, or feel like you should be figuring out the product?

Real simple: don’t be the CEO. Leave that to someone who is hungry to do the 3 things above! and you go do something more valuable to the business.

You are still a Founder, and always will be. No-one can take that from you. Drop your ego and get your hands dirty alongside those building an effective product discovery, design and build capability that delivers a winning product. Demonstrate leading that process (from the front or from the back, your choice) and those in your company will love you for that. So will your customers.

That will be far more satisfying to your soul than being the big boss telling people what to do just because you say so. Only then you can marvel at how counter-intuitive things in product development really are, and how so wrong smart people can be at assuming what works and what does not based on gut-feel and intuition. Asa bonus you get to demonstrate what actually creates positive business outcomes, and what is just vanity.

If you are not experienced at doing this kind of discovery, design and build activities, then hire the proven experts to do it along side you instead.

This may not be the value you bring to the business obviously, but perhaps instead it is years of domain expertise instead? Which is hugely valuable for creating solid hypotheses, and knowing where to look for new opportunities. Understanding your specific product domain and loving your customer problems might in fact be your jam, and that’s hugely valuable because someone in your company has to have that.

That role is usually held within a skilled and proven Product Manager. But if you haven’t done that job before, then don’t DIY it — that’s a massive mistake.

Instead hire a proven Product Manager instead and team up with them as their partner SME. Afford the best PdM you can get, a little better makes a dramatic difference. Together you will be a great force to be reckoned with.

Learn an effective product development process from that Product Manager, and contribute your piece to your future business in whatever way you can. Use them and the process to keep you in check, and help you (collectively) shape a valuable product.

Do NOT (and I repeat, DO NOT) be tempted to hire cheaper an amateur and inexperienced Product Manager (Product Owners are NOT Product Managers) because you simply cannot afford to play the “smartest person in the room” game, trying to DIY and winging it with your own homemade discovery, design and build capability. It will fail to deliver the product that you need to succeed, because it will have no checks and balances to control your confirmation biases, or elevated status in the company, and will not depend on solid evidence.

This kind of approach is not easy for Founders, and none of why this is so damn important to your success is obvious. But what is clear from the get go is that you simply can’t afford to fail at it your first time around.

Remember: If you think hiring the professionals is expensive, then just wait to see how much the amateurs will cost you in the long run!