I saw a title of "14 Ways" and was ready to criticise, but this is an impressively practical list. Two additional qualities I prioritise in a startup CEO are 1

I saw a title of "14 Ways" and was ready to criticise, but this is an impressively practical list. Two additional qualities I prioritise in a startup CEO are 1) the knack for making friends with a room full of strangers under hostile circumstances and 2) a terrific amount of empathy. Social comfort has obvious applications in sales & fundraising, while empathy is key for knowing how far to go with the other points you raised. For example, buffering the team from pain is good, but going too far removes their sense of agency and destroys morale. Same with firm decision-making.. the balance between spending time explaining and simply saying "do it" is a very human issue with big long-term performance implications. So many questions in a startup are completely arbitrary... how much equity do you give to that early employee? When's it going to do more good than harm to ship the entire office out to the pub for an afternoon of camaraderie? Each member of an early startup has exclusive access to such a significant chunk of the company's institutional memory that being able to walk that efficient/emotional line seems increasingly important. While I largely agree that a traditional management education/experience is damaging, I do think that theory & book learning have important roles to play. The biggest is an understanding of how your industry fits together and how the business models work (which you could certainly pick up from a uni course or book if anyone chose to teach it). You see a lot of websites using subscriptions because that's what the sites they use do when there's actually a much better model out there for them.