

How to find a CEO for your startup? - gdhillon

Does anyone has experience with finding/hiring a CEO (technical or non-technical) for your startup. If, yes then please share your good/bad experiences. What were the terms, how did you find one.<p>Basically, someone who can do the salesperson role in getting funding be the front-face of the company.<p>Thanks,
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trussi
\---A Few Questions---

Are the hacker or the hustler?

Any co-founders? If so, what's their role?

Do you have a built MVP? Any beta testers? Any paying customers?

If no built MVP, how much longer before it's built?

How long is your runway (in months)?

\---General Advice (without answers to the above questions)---

I'm a technical single founder building a B2B SaaS product.

My advice doesn't apply to anything B2C because I'm an introverted computer
geek (i.e. I know nothing about inter-personal communication!!).

Assuming, you are a technical single founder, building a B2B product with a
built MVP, here's my advice...

Don't waste time raising outside money. Go get friends & family money.

If you need more than $50k (the F&F limit) to get you ramen profitable, then
your business model or product is wrong. By wrong, I mean, not efficient
enough. You need to keep working the value proposition.

Raising money takes time. If you are a single technical founder, that time is
MUCH BETTER SPENT BUILDING A PRODUCT.

If it's your idea, YOU HAVE TO SELL IT. You are the face of the company. If
you can't sell it, go get a day job or work for another startup. Nobody
understands your vision. Part of the sales process is to get customer
feedback. Only you will be able to properly interpret that feedback within the
context of you vision.

This above point is based on the theory that ideas are noting, implementation
is everything. The most important component to _successful_ implementation is
you (the idea person) understanding the customer need. You have to have direct
face-time with the customer. Anything else is like playing the telephone
game...stuff gets lost in the translation.

\---End Brain Dump---

If you can answer the questions above, I can give you some more specific
advice.

Keep us posted on your progress.

------
gdhillon
Trussi,

Here's my answer to your questions:

Are the hacker or the hustler? Hustler but learned to code to implement my
idea.

Any co-founders? If so, what's their role? 3 co-founders (including me). 1
Technical, 2 of us learned to code to help build prototype. We keep wearing
developers/business analyst hats.

Do you have a built MVP? Any beta testers? Any paying customers? Prototype
should be done in next 3 weeks or so. We are building Platform for consumers
so B2C model.Planning on signing up small group of users to Beta test.

If no built MVP, how much longer before it's built? 3-4 weeks

How long is your runway (in months)? Not sure what you mean by runway. But
after beta launch, we have about about 3 months more of dev work to implement
all of the remaining features.

~~~
trussi
Your question implies that you (or the other biz dev) can't sell and can't run
a company and need to recruit somebody to help.

[Below is a bit harsh, but use the critical feedback to grow and improve. I'm
honestly trying to help, not just criticize.]

What are you and the other biz dev person doing all day?!

What value do you (and the other biz dev) bring to the table?

From my perspective, you two should be busting your balls selling. One should
be selling the product to customers to gain traction. The other should be
selling the product to investors.

You both should be on the phone, road, plane, train or in a lobby waiting for
a meeting all day, every day.

You don't need a product to sell first. That's a first-timer's excuse for not
getting out there and making it happen.

It seems like you really need to step up the hustle level here.

I'm available via phone and email anytime to discuss this further. Feel free
to reach out any time. Like I implied above, I want you to succeed and would
like to help in any way I can.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.

------
gdhillon
I don't mind the harsh criticism, i actually love it. Makes me wana try even
harder. Now what I do all day? I got a full time job where i work 8-10 hours.
Then remaining time I put into implementing my idea. What we have implemented
in last 2 months doing part-time would take full times teams even longer. So I
know a thing or two about busting balls.

Anyways, post your # and would love to chat with you and hear about your
personal experiences and achievements.

