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Developer CEO thinking = "How do I make this work?" Sales CEO thinking = "How do I get his money?" For many tech people, the product is the goal - getting som

by miahi 14y ago

Developer CEO thinking = "How do I make this work?" Sales CEO thinking = "How do I get his money?" For many tech people, the product is the goal - getting some techie thing going. The other things (like: funding, getting some type of customer) are just tasks that have to be done but they don't really know or care about. Between them, the tech people are quite open (as the tech culture is based on Internet and open source) so any kind of question is fine - and when they find somebody that knows how to do the "other tasks" they try to get into details, as they don't have them. For many sales people, the customer is the goal - attracting the customer to get his money. The other things (like: product/tech) are just tasks that have to be done but are done by someone else. Usually sales people are not talking shop (customers) between them, even if they work at the same company, so every time you ask them something they immediately wonder why did you ask that question, what is your hidden purpose and how they can benefit from it.

jusben1369 14y ago
I would say in this case our goals were identical. Meet with the hope that striking up a relationship could help our organizations either now or in the longer term. If not, perhaps the personal professional connection would be beneficial at some future point. So our goals were the same but our paths quite different.
zaidf 14y ago
For many tech people, the product is the goal - getting some techie thing going. I agree with the first part("the product is the goal") but your second part("getting some techie thing going") sounds like one of the biggest myths. May be it was true at one point but building a great product no longer is seen as a tech-only undertaking. It requires talking to customers, identifying needs, understanding the quantitative value of what you are building in addition to the technical stuff.
SatvikBeri 14y ago
I would actually break successful CEOs into Developer CEO, Product CEO, and Sales CEO. The Sales CEO tries to figure out what problems people have, and convince them that his company/product can solve those problems. The Product CEO takes the hundreds of problems that exist in the market and come up with a product that solves a decent subset of those problems. The Developer CEO figures out how to actually build such a product. They're responsible for solving hard technical problems and pushing the limits of what's possible. (There is also a lot of overlap-a good CEO is usually an extreme generalist)
- oscargrouch 14y ago
  You are right. The old school industrial(and cartesian) thinking of separate things by classes, but imposing them to people just leaded to bureocracy , and people who cant see the whole scenario well, leading to bad decisions being made.. Its sad that our education systems still are compartimentized by areas.. with some avant-garde leading from some institutions of course being the exception.. we need broad and sistemic abrangence of knowledge, information and perspective.. the world is much more complicated these days.. it cant stand the expert alienation neurosis anymore.. or we all gonna fail to excel and live in the human kind golden future we all spect
- temac 14y ago
  This is a good description of sales people, product people and developer people, but how does it relates to CEOs?
  - SatvikBeri 14y ago
    Every successful founder-CEO I know of is a generalist who's especially good at one of these 3, and their cofounders or early hires make up for their weaknesses in the other two areas. That said, at large companies the dynamic is different. I know of one excellent CEO at a 5000 person company who spent almost no time on product, market, or operations. Instead, he spent all his time on the human element. Making sure that there were strong training programs, making sure that it was easy to transfer from one department to another (and instituting policies that managers had to transfer star employees every two years or less), cutting through a lot of bureaucracy to make sure that star players could get promoted commensurate to their talents, etc. The company's performance and stock price skyrocketed during his tenure, and he was considered one of the best CEOs the company ever had.

by miahi 14y ago

jusben1369 14y ago

I would say in this case our goals were identical. Meet with the hope that striking up a relationship could help our organizations either now or in the longer term. If not, perhaps the personal professional connection would be beneficial at some future point. So our goals were the same but our paths quite different.

zaidf 14y ago

For many tech people, the product is the goal - getting some techie thing going. I agree with the first part("the product is the goal") but your second part("getting some techie thing going") sounds like one of the biggest myths. May be it was true at one point but building a great product no longer is seen as a tech-only undertaking. It requires talking to customers, identifying needs, understanding the quantitative value of what you are building in addition to the technical stuff.

SatvikBeri 14y ago

I would actually break successful CEOs into Developer CEO, Product CEO, and Sales CEO. The Sales CEO tries to figure out what problems people have, and convince them that his company/product can solve those problems. The Product CEO takes the hundreds of problems that exist in the market and come up with a product that solves a decent subset of those problems. The Developer CEO figures out how to actually build such a product. They're responsible for solving hard technical problems and pushing the limits of what's possible. (There is also a lot of overlap-a good CEO is usually an extreme generalist)

oscargrouch 14y ago
You are right. The old school industrial(and cartesian) thinking of separate things by classes, but imposing them to people just leaded to bureocracy , and people who cant see the whole scenario well, leading to bad decisions being made.. Its sad that our education systems still are compartimentized by areas.. with some avant-garde leading from some institutions of course being the exception.. we need broad and sistemic abrangence of knowledge, information and perspective.. the world is much more complicated these days.. it cant stand the expert alienation neurosis anymore.. or we all gonna fail to excel and live in the human kind golden future we all spect
temac 14y ago
This is a good description of sales people, product people and developer people, but how does it relates to CEOs?
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  Every successful founder-CEO I know of is a generalist who's especially good at one of these 3, and their cofounders or early hires make up for their weaknesses in the other two areas. That said, at large companies the dynamic is different. I know of one excellent CEO at a 5000 person company who spent almost no time on product, market, or operations. Instead, he spent all his time on the human element. Making sure that there were strong training programs, making sure that it was easy to transfer from one department to another (and instituting policies that managers had to transfer star employees every two years or less), cutting through a lot of bureaucracy to make sure that star players could get promoted commensurate to their talents, etc. The company's performance and stock price skyrocketed during his tenure, and he was considered one of the best CEOs the company ever had.