Tech

Managing founder-CEO tension in a startup – TechCrunch


“Are you going to hire a bunch of useless salespeople like they have at Oracle? “

This was the first of many memorable interactions I had with Eliot Horowitz. Eliot is the founder and CTO of MongoDB, and in late 2010 I was interviewing to be president. Product-driven growth is a far cry from today’s buzzword, but the founding team at MongoDB built a product that developers love – it’s the developer’s love that drives much of the growth. company’s rapid growth.

My topic today is not product-led growth, but rather the relationship between a founder, such as Eliot, and a hired executive and the key elements needed to build a relationship. The relationship was successful. That momentum is always important, but focusing on it is crucial in today’s fast-changing and volatile technology market.

On the surface, Eliot’s question is about sales recruiting and business models. But it goes much deeper: Our discussion was a direct test of how we would work together, diving into the heart of a startup’s decisive partnership between a CEO and a founder. The territory we cover that day includes:

  • Am I open to unorthodox thinking?
  • Can I justify my plan on first principles?
  • Am I willing to engage with a young technical founder on business issues?
  • The discovery that the founders wanted to challenge the way it worked got me excited to get in – or run for office?
  • Can I make a business decision that goes against the founder’s point of view and we both feel good about the process?

All of those questions are relevant questions and examples of potential points of tension between a technical founder and a newly brought in from outside. The way a founder and a CEO work through these stressful times can help determine a company’s ultimate success.

In addition to products suitable for the market

A lot can go wrong with a startup, but to be successful, two things are required: First, the product has to be a good fit for the market, which is almost always the domain of the creator(s). established, and second, the company must successfully execute, which is sometimes the domain of a hired executive.

In most cases, the original product and market vision came from the founders. They started the company because they had an insight that something could be done better and an idea of ​​how to do it better. When that idea resonates with a wide audience, you have product and market fit. Without that, there is no company.

But that initial product-market fit isn’t nearly enough. A company needs funding, a team, and ultimately, it needs to perform in terms of engineering, sales, customer success, and marketing. In some cases, a founder is interested in and has demonstrated an initial aptitude for leading all of these areas. In other cases not, and in these cases, they need a partner to lead the operation of the company.

My four years at MongoDB – first as president, then as CEO – have been an amazing experience. The company has grown explosively and changed the database market and the way developers build web applications. Perhaps more importantly, we laid some of the groundwork for what would become a hugely successful cloud business that transformed the way businesses deliver and use infrastructure software.

We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the close partnership between the founders and me, especially with Eliot and Dwight Merriman (original founder and CEO who eventually became president) ). Decisions doesn’t split into product categories and works for me neatly.



Source link

news7h

News7h: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button
Immediate Peak