I might publish a long-form reflection when the dust settles.
Very early in my career I used to believe that I or anyone else could be a CEO.
It wasn't until working with tiny teams where the CEO/founders devoted everything in their life to the business -- often at the expense of hobbies, romantic relationships, and any shred of free time -- that I realized true CEOs are a rare breed.
When are you ask things like "what happens if the product fails?" the answer would always be "It won't."
They both relentlessly believe in, and put every ounce of energy toward, their vision because anything less would not suffice
Again as trite as it sounds, I empathize with these people in that to them losing their vision felt like losing something dearest to them
There’s a fallacy that successful companies are only successful because their CEO was a “rare breed” and that failed companies fail because their CEO didn’t have some innate quality.
This isn’t true. It’s easily shown to be not true by looking at all of the CEOs who had success with one endeavor and then failed all of their following startups, or the other way around.
A lot goes into founding a successful company. Not all of it is in anyone’s control. Not everything can be overcome by a CEO with powerful motivation.
Some times the market moves in ways nobody could have expected. I even worked at one startup that was destabilized and ultimately failed due to a natural disaster.
Looking back at the startups in my past, some of the worst CEOs were the ones who paraded around their ideals about failure not being an option or who pretended that they could get the company through anything through sheer force of their will and the power of their dream.
Some times knowing when to call it, move on to the next thing, and stop stringing your employees, investors, and customers along is an important CEO skill.
In smaller startups, everyone is directly involved and has to punch above their weight to pull through, not just the CEO.
Also devoting everything in your life to one thing is not a mark of intelligence or skill. It is a mark of dedication but by itself means little.
And yeah, not everyone can be a CEO because most business fail very quickly. There is always an element of luck in those that survive.
But the idea that you devote 24x7 of your life hence you must be a good leader is not accurate. In fact, if you press this culture downstream, you'll tire your workers and the rest of the team.
For example: I cannot imagine being a successful touring live performer. I am an introvert, I keep a rigid schedule so travel throws everything off, can't keep myself awake very late...
Could I perform the functions of a live performer? Yes, though no matter how much I "tried" the mismatch between the job and my natural tendencies is a recipe for failure.
> not everyone can be a CEO because most business fail very quickly
These are not examples of in-born traits. While I agree that not everyone has the motivation to become a CEO, I would disagree that a person cannot learn and adapt.
Is there a way to reach out to you as I would like to hear what you have to say about what I am working on. You can update your HN profile to include contact information or you can reach out to me using my HN profile.
I'm basically working on a portable intelligence layer for AI that I will be open sourcing and the commerical product will be to make the intelligence layer even smarter. I can share the Show HN post that I am working on that better explains the value proposition and would love to learn any lessons you have gained while trying to sell AI tools commerically.
Edit: In case somebody calls me out it. I didn't want to use the `tensorzero` email domain incase the domain was going to become defunct soon.
The only way this could be a 'lesson learned' is if you homehow managed to not pay any attention to what has been going on in the last 25 years with open source software companies.