If you were taking a simplistic view of a small company working on their first few products, I might agree with the poster. Usually you wear a lot of hats when

If you were taking a simplistic view of a small company working on their first few products, I might agree with the poster. Usually you wear a lot of hats when you start. However, I've worked as a project manager and later, as a CEO. I can definitely agree with you that your job runs more akin to being a "captain" of the boat, rather than a dictator who pulls all the lines and sets all the sails by him/herself. Also, any good product manager (or designer, or creative, etc) will do quality work orders of magnitude beyond your own capacities - your job as CEO when working with other collaborators is to choose the right people to get on the bus with you, and make sure they have the right mix of order, incentives and other elements necessary to be successful. You could help determine some comon goal, but usually the execution changes greatly from what you originally expected as your collaborators bring their own skills and interests to the table. It's a beautiful (and hard!) process, really. CEOs or leaders who fail to control costs, pricing, sales, promotions, etc and instead focus all their energies on product, usually will ruin their businesses in the medium to long run. A CEO makes sure all of those bases are covered, while a product manager does not.