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I became CEO at 20. Here's what I learned
- jacquesm 8y agoThis is actually a pretty good list, but like all such lists emulating it won't bring you success.
- ggg9990 8y agoAll lists of this type are not “do this and you’ll succeed” but rather “don’t do these and you’ll increase your likelihood of failure.” Just like looking before you cross the street won’t ensure you survive, but not looking will make it quite likely you won’t.
- wenc 8y agoRight -- in most systems, there are a few correct answers, and many wrong ones. The search space is vast. In this kind of environment, it can be valuable to to learn to avoid vast classes of wrong answers, and this can be done without 1st hand experience -- someone's already done the hard and expensive work for you. Warren Buffet is attributed to the quote, "It's better to learn from other people's mistakes." Every failure is a de-risking exercise for someone else. In the startup ecosystem (like most evolutionary ecosystems), it's not necessarily your failures that make you stronger. Instead it is all the failures in aggregate that make the rest of the system stronger. And the way it does that is to have people learn from observing failures that have occurred, and doing better. (whether this actually happens or not is another story; humans are full of foibles.)
- bigiain 8y ago"4/ Over time, you will feel like all you’re doing is spending time in meetings but not getting any real work done. You are though. Your job is now helping other people through the medium of meeting. Don't resist it, embrace it. Now's the time to design it to be fun & productive." :sigh: Yep.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoSurprisingly insightful! I half expected to be shaking my head thinking "oh, the follies of youth, he'll learn the hard way" - but this is a really good list.
- AstralStorm 8y agoMissed the most important one: learning from others instead of making mistakes yourself. (And the general list lacks humility - apparently no CEO can be humble anymore ever. Overconfidence rules.)
- oceanman888 8y agoSo that is the current state in SV now huh?(Aren't there suppose to be several charisma type for leading?) Only humid CEO that I can think of is pintrest founder.
- noir_lord 8y agoHe is warm and damp? I kid, what in particular makes him humble?.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago"The night was sultry"
- noir_lord 8y agoA saying I like. > Experience is learning from your mistakes, wisdom is learning from other peoples I apply this as much as I can, for example when looking at a new technology I bypass the people raving about it and look for the negative cases first. I don't immediately accept whatever they say as valid but I do take notice. It helps me avoid falling for the hype around "new and shiny".
- Mtinie 8y ago
- tomcam 8y ago16/ Learn to read financial statements. Read them every quarter at least.
- WalterBright 8y agoThis should be taught in high school. It's amazing that high schools teach nothing about how business works in a market society.
- raverbashing 8y agoYeah, the basics are important. And it doesn't matter if you're a CEO of a top 500 or self-employed. In the end, accounting means: how much are you earning, how much are you spending and how much taxes do you need to pay
- swalsh 8y agoProbably depends on where you go to school. My high school was in the middle of a pre-trump era industrial region of WI. High school was teaching us the basics to go work in a factory. However I did learn to read, and a book on the bare basics of accounting is like 200 pages.
- mitochondrion 8y agoWhen you say "pre-Trump-era industrial region", do you mean that there is now more industry there, or less?
- swalsh 8y agoThere were many small manufacturers, and I think 2 very large ones near me. When I was around 13 I think, one of the big ones closed down, and many of the small ones followed soon after. It went to Democrats every year (but the margin was dwindling over time). 2016 it finally flipped completely. I think there is a trickle of new things coming back, but I don't think it is correlated with Trump in any way. I describe it as pre-trump because, at least to me, I get a very vivid picture of a region with a long history of successful industry that's dried up, and the only thing people have left in the area is retail and healthcare.
- ehosca 8y agoIs this DJ Khaled?
- mkesper 8y agoIn one page: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/998660806005768192.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/998660806005768192.html
- SenHeng 8y agoThank you! Twitter really isn't the right place to write a blog post.
- rorykoehler 8y agoIt's where the audience is
- ourcat 8y ago..momentarily. In a sea of distraction... ;)
- rorykoehler 8y agoNo different than any other site. For what it's worth i read this thread all the way through the first time i saw it
- komali2 8y agoLinks exist lol
- rorykoehler 8y agoLinks aren't immediate
- psychometry 8y agoApparently he didn't learn how to write a blog post as CEO.
- seattle_spring 8y ago
- z3t4 8y ago8) Attack problems, not people. Don't avoid confrontation
- k__ 8y agoSo important. I know too many people who get into trouble because they don't confront others and hope problems will solve themself
- z3t4 8y agoAnd when the final drop hits the goblet everything is spilled on the person. eg. If you let things accumulate the problem always seem to be the person.
- Xunxi 8y agoTwaddles but hey,.... At some point, maybe some day someone from one of these starts outta give a graphical representation of what "code all day" really purports! 90% brainstorm is an altruistic embodiment
- systemtest 8y agoAt one of the best companies that I worked at, the founder acknowledged that he was only good at creating things, not running them. So he hired someone for the day-to-day stuff so that he could focus on company growth and creating new business units. Worked out great.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- toomanybeersies 8y agoIf only the CEO at my old company was this self aware. I don't think he even once owned up to screwing up. I ended up leaving the company due to irreconcilable differences. In our last meeting, I tried talking to him about how I thought there were problems on both sides of the table (specifically in regards to communications skills), I was quite happy to admit that I had problems and had fucked up from time to time, but he absolutely refused to admit that he had done anything wrong.
- lugg 8y agoSounds like a taker[1], maybe a bit of a narcissist too. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_are_you_a_giver_or_a_taker/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_are_you_a_giver_or_a_ta...
- abritinthebay 8y agoThis is 9/10 CEOs I’ve dealt with, sadly.
- TheKarateKid 8y agoMaybe people in power or executive positions are. It probably was a factor in how they got there.
- Schmunder 8y agoSounds like good advice, but keep in mind it's a "CEO" of a typical barely-profitable pump-and-dump analytics thing - not an actual CEO.
- tomhoward 8y agoHe's run the company for nearly 10 years; couldn't be less of a pump-and-dump play. Built the only analytics product to rival Google Analytics. Gainfully employed 300 people. Earns tens of millions of dollars per year in revenue, from clients including BMW, Intuit, Samsung and Uber. Of course not profitable because it's insane to be profitable when there's growth potential. Few CEOs have ever done this well, at any age.
- rplnt 8y agoYet he uses twitter to deliver list of lessons/insights...
- raesene9 8y agoand why not? Looking at his post he's already got considerable engagement and here it sits (as I type) on the front page of HN. He's made a list where each point fits a single tweet, so it's not awkward to read, and twitter makes chaining posts pretty trivial (plus of course it can be unrolled easily). Sure he could have done a "traditional" post somewhere like medium, but would that really have made a difference to the message he's delivering?
- afarrell 8y ago> Find a great mentor This is harder than the sentence makes it seem. Subproblems involved in finding a mentor include: 1) Knowing yourself well enough to know who would make a good mentor for you. 2) Finding and asking someone in a way that is not functionally equivalent to asking someone "Hey, could you commit to spend an unbounded amount of time helping a stranger?" 3) Asking well-framed questions that set your mentor up for success in helping you. Does anyone have recommendations or advice on how to better frame the "find a mentor" problem or how to accomplish it?
- titanix2 8y agoI think you have to put something on the table that will interest the other party. It might not be huge, but being able to help back in a way or another will certainly motivate someone to spend time for you. Also, having a common interest for something, on which you could work together. For example, if you really like some open source project, you could be mentored by a committer (common interest) which will have incentive to help you contribute (help back) to the project.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- struppi 8y agoI agree that 1) and 3) are hard, but you don't have to do 2) like you said. Asking strangers is not that hard, and most people I know don't find it annoying to be asked. Just do not ask for an unbounded amount of time. Ask specific questions. Even to strangers. Many will be flattered you asked and will answer. Some will tell you that they do not have time or energy right now. Many will not answer at all (1). How do I know? I do ask strangers for advice. And I am open to questions: From time to time, I publicly say that on Twitter (like "Reminder: Ask me anything about code quality, technical excellence, TDD or freelancing. DMs open"). I get interesting questions from total strangers, and I answer them as best as I can. So, maybe also do search for people who offered their help to strangers in the past. Maybe you will not find a mentor right away by asking strangers for advice, but maybe you can be able to evolve a conversation into a form of mentorship. (1) If someone answers in a rude or condescending way, block them.
- te_chris 8y agoI really like this, but I can't help but think that encouraging young people to throw away the best time of their lives being startup founders has been a massive mistake and will be looked back on as stupid by future generations. I tried it, thought I wanted it, but when it failed the relief that I could keep fucking up and partying was immense. Some friends are now very successful founders, and while they say they're happy, that they don't regret spending their youth 'businessing', this is always said with a pang of insincerity. There's no right way to live your life, and people will take different paths, but more and more it seems like the myth of founder, the desirability of it, is a farce sold by VC's who want to turn £2 million into a 10x google acquisition.
- charlesdm 8y agoYou can do a startup, but grow organically. No one says you need to play the VC game with crappy odds and low chances of payoffs. Alternatively, if you need to raise investment (once you have established the model actually works) there are alternative ways to fund the business (i.e. family investment funds who want to be your longer term partner rather than flipping it in two to five years) I'd rather take a 50% chance on owning a smaller niche business (think Convertkit) that does a few million a year, of which most profit ends up in my pocket, than playing the VC game with low odds and hoping for a $100m exit. The only ones for whom the odds are great, are VCs. They'll make back their entire fund on one or two investments as part of their portfolio and will pocket a healthy amount of carried interest as a result, on a massive amount of money. But they're not the ones slaving away. And their management fee makes sure they're always well compensated and living well.
- randall 8y agoThe canonical essay: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben-and-jerrys-vs-amazon/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...
- exelius 8y agoActually the VCs don’t make out so well either; VC as an asset class generally underperforms the public markets. A few whales (Kleiner, Sequoia, et al) run the market, and they’re market-makers who prop up valuations and bring in other folks. VC is a gladiatorial ring where rich people do economic battle with each other. But it’s largely zero sum with some small, highly localized gains.
- yy77 8y agoin summary: 1. start a company (that might be the easiest one in his expereince!) 2. Find a VC 3. Find good mentor to enter the group of "rich people".
- partycoder 8y agoYou want to avoid information loss ("telephone games") and distorted information. Once in a while you need to go straight to the source and get information first-hand. Talk to employees at random once in a while. Conduct surveys. Evaluate managers. Bezos replies to random emails, even if only with a question mark. Jobs answered to customer service calls. If you find jerks exploiting information asymmetry at the expense of the company, fire them.
- Already__Taken 8y agoSimilarly doesn't Musk ban acronyms for things in his companies? "Knowledge should take the shortest path" may be a quote.
- wruza 8y agoThis “give up on details and grow” always make me feel bad. Basically, i feel it like you’re trading your inner self and idea for money and few other respectable things. I understand that this is inevitable if you want to grow, but usual results (big companies around) do not really impress me in any way. It feels like creating a bubble to sell it to anyone. I believe that core value is in things that are created by focused groups of professionals, and all that 300-500 growth along with ‘success’ badges is a marketing cancer that kills it all. Does anyone experience similar issues(?) with this topic?
- dhimes 8y agoI absolutely agree with you. To me, the purpose of business is to organize people and other resources to accomplish something. Money is simply the fuel; it allows us to find organize a larger and more diverse group than if we had to barter. The philosophy that "the purpose of business is to make money" is pretty unenlightened IMHO.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoAnd that is fine; to each their own. There's a reason why top CEOs are psychopathic narcissists, it's because most people don't have those personality traits required to get to that point.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThat's illogical. More people being narcissists wouldn't make non narcissists CEOs. Those traits win (if they do) because they are efficient in the competitive landscape.
- Ensorceled 8y agoThis is a very negative way of looking at it. Choosing to be a leader meant I had to give up being an individual contributor. I wasn’t “giving up my inner self” or some other bullshit; I was giving up something I loved for something I loved more. There are all sorts of places in our lives where we make these trade offs. We give up being single to enter a relationship; we don’t “give up our inner self”.
- mcherm 8y agoWhy, oh WHY do people attempt to use Twitter as a means of communication?
- tiffanyh 8y agouBlock Origin blocks https://mixpanel.com https://mixpanel.com That seems like a Big Deal (TM) if you're a company selling web analytics.
- whatever_dude 8y agoI believe uBlock Origin blocks all analytics scripts, no? For context, Mixpanel is a big player on the Analytics field. Their service is pretty good IMO. I believe they were the first big company to aggregate demographics in a way that allowed clients to construct a view of their audience based on cross app use - eg "30% car enthusiasts". They also publish a lot of their data publicly, so you know, day, the percentage of public iOS 11 penetration with a good degree of confidence.
- nojvek 8y agoLink to said trend reports: https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_11 https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_11 https://mixpanel.com/2017-product-benchmarks-report/ https://mixpanel.com/2017-product-benchmarks-report/ Industry Benchmark report
- kuon 8y agoI created my company at 18yo while being a programmer/geek. For me the utmost important thing is to focus on communicating with people (employees and customers). Being a CEO is 99% human management. For someone like me, with poor social skills and mostly "logical brain", it was really hard. I say "was", but after 16 years, it still is. Also, while it might seem "good", don't try to manage your company like family. You will have to take difficult decision, you will hurt people. Just be straight and honest with people. Treat human problem first. Speak one on one with every human around you on a regular basis. Be discrete and protect everyone's privacy. Finally, find someone you can exhaust to, you will rage, you will cry, you will feel lonely, and if you don't have support, you will perish. For me it was/is my wife but I find myself lucky.
- mkirklions 8y agoGot my first contractors last year, I had some rough moments. My first contractor I learned the hard way- >Train people well >Dont overdemand
- kevinsmithvan 8y agoYou can become CEO at 20 or 40, what matters is how you deal with it, what you make of it. If you can maintain a calm head, get your priorities right, age is not a hindrance.
- baxtr 8y agoI think it is though. There was a discussion recently on HN about an article that said that the average founder age of the most successful startups was 42... (btw: yes, 42!!!!)
- FahadUddin92 8y agoYeah. 40 is a good age. I have read that article.
- ataturk 8y agoThat's because they're getting pushed out of corporate jobs at that age.
- Clubber 8y agoI wonder if it has to do with 20 more years of experience, or 20 more years of dealing with, and being sick of other comapanies' BS. Maybe both.
- manigandham 8y agoThey are just as smart, with 20 more years of experience, and now also very large networks which can get them what they want much faster. The key in almost every successful business is relationships, and those always take time to build.
- veddox 8y agoIn theory yes - in practice, the extra two decades of experience are almost impossible to fully compensate.
- brightball 8y agoThe best advice I can give to somebody in the technology mold who finds themselves in the business leadership chair is this: learn and delegate. There are 3 core parts to just about any business today. 1. Technology 2. Business Administration 3. Sales Odds are if you are on this board, you will be pretty comfortable with #1 or at least be interested enough to learn more. For #2 there are companies who can help you a lot. Become a client of a quality accounting firm who can provide you with at least basic guidance on some of the financial side of things. Become a client of an HR firm when you get to the point of hiring employees. The structure of these companies is worth every penny for a small business. They streamline employee paperwork, act as a co-employer for you, help you with things like employee handbooks and software, allow you to offer benefits as part of a much larger entity and allow you to delegate all of the questions related to this stuff from you directly to experts. They will even advise you if something you are doing could get you in legal hot water. If you get sued, they get sued. For #3...take a sales class. Hiring good sales people is important, but I learned far too late in the process that I did not truly understand sales. I wasted a lot of time on people thinking that I knew what I was doing. Sales education is usually a very, very foreign concept to technology focused people. Even if you aren't going to be doing it, taking a class so you understand that side of the business better will make your life a lot easier.
- riku_iki 8y ago> take a sales class. Which class you would recommend? :-)
- triviatise 8y agosandler is by far the best method suited to technical people that I have seen. Ultimately in sandler you do not persuade or pitch. You dont talk about benefits, features, or yourself. "You cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar" You ask questions to understand the problem and help guide a prospect to a yes or equally good, a no. Other complementary books are SPIN selling, (where spin is an acronym for types of questions) challenger sales, and getting naked. They all advocate for a consultative approach to sales where you ask questions vs. pitch.
- redm 8y agoI'm sure this will be unpopular, but these kinds of posts seem out of touch with the reality of a startup. I'm trying to imagine a founder starting a company and sitting down with this 15 point checklist. In my experience, things happen fast and much more organically, and so a list like this is great in hindsight, I don't see anyone trying to tick each box off and getting anywhere.
- growtofill 8y agoI imagine this to be food for thought. If, after reading this thread, you'll learn and implement at least one item of that checklist, that would still be a win.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoDoes anyone else think it's kind of luck having this kind of success? Its like a lottery winner giving life lessons.
- zerostar07 8y agoI don't think he's pretending to do be doing something else. It's not advice for "how to be a CEO at 20".
- nickthemagicman 8y agoNo I mean it's cool that he's giving this advice but why do they have to put 'at 20' in the title. Also most of the advice is really common sensical or vague.
- zerostar07 8y agoit's what he said
- throwawaydream 8y agoNope. Luck is an ingredient in success, though not the only one. The idea that all successes could/should be boiled down to luck does an injustice to the ability of humans to impact outcomes. Also I would look at it as lessons learnt from someone who had the privilege of being part of a journey that few of us have.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoNot a lot of tech startups in Sudan, simply because the environment makes much more of a impact than Human Beings on `outcomes`. Human beings have much less ability to impact outcomes than they like to think they do. It's mainly luck.
- strictnein 8y agoYou're comparing success in the US to success in Sudan. Success is relative, and most importantly relative to others who have grown up in similar situations.
- symlinkk 8y agoCan someone tell me what is company (Mixpanel) even does? Does it just track what pages your users click on in your UI and then show the metrics in graphs?
- vthallam 8y agoYes. That's exactly it does and more. Like, you can trigger an event for all or the important actions on the product, track them, create funnels or whatever and analyze. It's a pretty popular product.
- robax 8y agoWould anyone here have reservations joining a company with such a young CEO? I’m dubious of our tech culture’s inclinations to drop out of college and start a business. It feels like setting yourself up for failure. Like joining the NBA having only watched it on TV.
- mojowo11 8y agoAs with most anything, it probably just depends on the person. Probably most 20-year-olds are not ready to helm a company. Some exceptional few probably are.
- isuckatcoding 8y agoFunny when you go on the mixpanel glassdoor, many of them talk quite negatively about this CEO (I believe he stepped down recently) Not to say the advice is bad
- hartator 8y agoI was CEO at 21 bootstraped with full time employees and profitable. I think the only thing I have learned is to be more confident in the choices I make, and don’t 2nd guess so much. There is no secret to success, no miraculous connection, and no magical idea. Try to understand the world the best you can, and bring as much value as you can. And that can apply to everything.
- tabtab 8y agoHere's a "compressed" summary: 1) Listen more than talk. Take notes and ponder for later meetings. 2) Meetings are not bad things if done right. 3) Don't be afraid to delegate; resist instinct to micromanage left over from co's smaller days. 4) Don't let big problems fester, confront them directly. 5) Recognize your weaknesses & mistakes, admit to them, apologize freely, and try to constantly improve. We are all imperfect. 6) It can be brutal and lonely at the top, don't take it personally. Get a therapist if you need to, and socialize with other CEO's to not feel alone. 7) Don't let your ego and emotion rule you.
- gabrielcsapo 8y agoReally interesting concept, the site looks almost identical to what I would expect form stripe.
- notananthem 8y agouBlock Origin blocks mixpanel, not entirely sure why, assuming its spam
- sigi45 8y agoWhat is this twitter thing? Blogs for ants? :(