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Every CEO was a CEO for the first time at some point. Of course it's better if someone has had the chance to gain leadership experience prior to that, but ther
by hobofan 6y ago
Every CEO was a CEO for the first time at some point.
Of course it's better if someone has had the chance to gain leadership experience prior to that, but there are also a big chunk of responsibilities in a CEO role that other mid-level management positions won't prepare you for either. Given that (at least im my field) a PhD graduate usually had leadership over a bunch of Master/Bachelor students for the duration of their PhD, there is usually at least some experience to build on.
- curiousllama 6y agoEvery engineer printed hello world for the first time at some point, but that point isn’t the time you should put them in charge of a mission-critical codebase. It’s not that they’ll never be good leaders, it’s that it’ll take a while to get there, and that timeframe might be measured in failed startups.
- hobofan 6y agoAs someone who was more or less a "Hello World engineer" (at least not far from it) when founding my first startup, I couldn't agree more. The article expands a bit on why it's not a good idea to hire a CEO, and I mostly agree with that part, though not so much with having no business person on the founding team.
- DrAwdeOccarim 6y agoAlso, I think most commenters are not weighing how much different running a biotech startup is compared to a software startup.