Agreed, and just one of many false assumptions. He assumes an early startup CEO must always have a later stage startup CEO skills ("you must have all 4 magic u

Agreed, and just one of many false assumptions. He assumes an early startup CEO must always have a later stage startup CEO skills ("you must have all 4 magic unicorn skillz"). During the early period, you need product execution first and foremost and not a lot of cash to do it. An engineer-turned-CEO is well equipped to wear the many hats to build a product on a budget. Once the startup starts hitting revenue strides, the startup can tap into advisors to fill the knowledge gap (but more than likely, the VC will try to replace the founder CEO with a "gray hair" anyway). He ignore the fact there is an engineering scarcity. As the OP stated you can't "fake" being a CTO. You need fulltime engineering/product person focus throughout the startup's lifespan. However, once you are an established startup, even "experienced" CEO are a commodity. Contrast that to the dev landscape (OP already covers all the perks of an engineer's job because of said scarcity). He assumes engineers who aspire to be founders are naive. The engineer background founders I know (ones who are actually doing stuff) are rarely disillusioned by how hard a startup is. If anything, they are overly risk-adverse being more inclined to make decision based on quantitative data. What tickles me the most is the notion that engineers have had it so good and and are WAY too spoiled to become CEOs. Break out the violins.