
I became CEO at 20. Here's what I learned - sus_007
https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/998660806005768192
======
afarrell
> Find a great mentor

This is harder than the sentence makes it seem. Subproblems involved in
finding a mentor include:

1) Knowing yourself well enough to know who would make a good mentor for you.

2) Finding and asking someone in a way that is not functionally equivalent to
asking someone "Hey, could you commit to spend an unbounded amount of time
helping a stranger?"

3) Asking well-framed questions that set your mentor up for success in helping
you.

Does anyone have recommendations or advice on how to better frame the "find a
mentor" problem or how to accomplish it?

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
That one strikes me as hindsight advice. As in, something happened to work
well for me, so I'm listing it as advice for others, even though it's likely
not really actionable. Not quite "win the lottery", but for every ten people
who seek a mentor, I'm going to guess that nine of them either can't find one
or find one who doesn't contribute to their success.

~~~
throwaway37585
Doesn’t this assume that _trying_ to find a great mentor has non-positive
expected value, which is probably not true?

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
Well, if it's time better spent on other things, or if the mentor gives bad
advice (or worse, actively undermines you), then it's a bad idea. I don't see
any evidence that a positive outcome is any more likely than a negative one,
but we tend to only hear about the positive ones.

~~~
throwaway37585
> if the mentor gives bad advice (or worse, actively undermines you), then
> it's a bad idea.

We’re talking about expectation here, not clairvoyance or hindsight.

> I don't see any evidence that a positive outcome is any more likely than a
> negative one

You don’t see any evidence for seeking mentorship to accomplish your goals? Is
this what you’re saying?

------
kuon
I created my company at 18yo while being a programmer/geek. For me the utmost
important thing is to focus on communicating with people (employees and
customers). Being a CEO is 99% human management.

For someone like me, with poor social skills and mostly "logical brain", it
was really hard. I say "was", but after 16 years, it still is.

Also, while it might seem "good", don't try to manage your company like
family. You will have to take difficult decision, you will hurt people. Just
be straight and honest with people.

Treat human problem first. Speak one on one with every human around you on a
regular basis. Be discrete and protect everyone's privacy.

Finally, find someone you can exhaust to, you will rage, you will cry, you
will feel lonely, and if you don't have support, you will perish. For me it
was/is my wife but I find myself lucky.

~~~
mkirklions
Got my first contractors last year, I had some rough moments.

My first contractor I learned the hard way-

>Train people well

>Dont overdemand

------
mkesper
In one page:
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/998660806005768192.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/998660806005768192.html)

~~~
SenHeng
Thank you!

Twitter really isn't the right place to write a blog post.

~~~
rorykoehler
It's where the audience is

~~~
ourcat
..momentarily. In a sea of distraction... ;)

~~~
rorykoehler
No different than any other site. For what it's worth i read this thread all
the way through the first time i saw it

------
toomanybeersies
If only the CEO at my old company was this self aware.

I don't think he even once owned up to screwing up. I ended up leaving the
company due to irreconcilable differences. In our last meeting, I tried
talking to him about how I thought there were problems on both sides of the
table (specifically in regards to communications skills), I was quite happy to
admit that I had problems and had fucked up from time to time, but he
absolutely refused to admit that he had done anything wrong.

~~~
abritinthebay
This is 9/10 CEOs I’ve dealt with, sadly.

~~~
TheKarateKid
Maybe people in power or executive positions are. It probably was a factor in
how they got there.

------
wruza
This “give up on details and grow” always make me feel bad. Basically, i feel
it like you’re trading your inner self and idea for money and few other
respectable things. I understand that this is inevitable if you _want_ to
grow, but usual results (big companies around) do not really impress me in any
way. It feels like creating a bubble to sell it to anyone.

I believe that core value is in things that are created by focused groups of
professionals, and all that 300-500 growth along with ‘success’ badges is a
marketing cancer that kills it all. Does anyone experience similar issues(?)
with this topic?

~~~
CamTin
Totally agree. The idea that was should all strive for some nebulous quality
called "leadership" and all talented people should want to be in charge of
other people, rather than doing interesting work, drives so much needless
workplace suffering.

"Leadership" has to be one of the biggest scams in the history of
civilization, because it is actually really hard not to buy in, even when you
don't want to. Are there great leaders? Maybe, I guess? Or are we all just
propagandized (by the shitty leaders we actually have) to think that they
exist? I've certainly never met one, and the only examples that seem plausible
are far enough in the past (Lincoln, FDR), or so tied up with other,
ideological identities (Moses, Martin Luther), wealth and power (any
President, CEO, etc), or traumatic/dramatic events (military leaders) that
nobody alive can remember them personally or objectively.

We're a hagiography-driven species and it gives the impression that you're
somehow a failure unless you're one of the lucky apes with enough "leadership"
to get one written about you.

~~~
jadedhacker
I have been coming around on RMS. When I was younger I thought he was awesome,
then I started to think he was unrealistic, now I'm coming back to awesome (if
extremely cantankerous).

~~~
spookthesunset
I dunno man. RMS-styled leadership can only work in very narrow markets. And
even in his market (free software), I'd argue his success has been hampered by
his complete lack of pragmatism. Being an unchanging, unbending visionary has
a very high risk of losing relevancy and/or pissing a good swath of people
off.

RMS is a something, but not exactly what I'd call an excellent role model for
leadership. Especially for anything outside of the narrow niche of Free
Software. His leadership style would never, ever work in a for-profit company
or, especially, a startup. There is no room for unbending, unwavering
principled stands in a startup--you'd completely lose your shirt and go
bankrupt if you never changed your startup.

~~~
jadedhacker
I agree with you. I think his style of leadership is as a movement leader, not
a corporate leader. Whether he is effective as a movement leader is a
question, but I think he is starting to be more relevant again with the kinds
of questions we are asking these days about control and privacy.

Movement leaders often become unpopular for a time before they become relevant
again. For instance, MLK was exceedingly unpopular after his anti-Vietnam
speech until his death. I don't mean to put RMS on the same level as MLK, he's
just the prominent example of that pattern that springs to mind.

------
brightball
The best advice I can give to somebody in the technology mold who finds
themselves in the business leadership chair is this: learn and delegate.

There are 3 core parts to just about any business today.

1\. Technology 2\. Business Administration 3\. Sales

Odds are if you are on this board, you will be pretty comfortable with #1 or
at least be interested enough to learn more.

For #2 there are companies who can help you a lot.

Become a client of a quality accounting firm who can provide you with at least
basic guidance on some of the financial side of things.

Become a client of an HR firm when you get to the point of hiring employees.
The structure of these companies is worth every penny for a small business.
They streamline employee paperwork, act as a co-employer for you, help you
with things like employee handbooks and software, allow you to offer benefits
as part of a much larger entity and allow you to delegate all of the questions
related to this stuff from you directly to experts. They will even advise you
if something you are doing could get you in legal hot water. If you get sued,
they get sued.

For #3...take a sales class.

Hiring good sales people is important, but I learned far too late in the
process that I did not truly understand sales. I wasted a lot of time on
people thinking that I knew what I was doing. Sales education is usually a
very, very foreign concept to technology focused people.

Even if you aren't going to be doing it, taking a class so you understand that
side of the business better will make your life a lot easier.

~~~
riku_iki
> take a sales class.

Which class you would recommend? :-)

~~~
triviatise
sandler is by far the best method suited to technical people that I have seen.
Ultimately in sandler you do not persuade or pitch. You dont talk about
benefits, features, or yourself. "You cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a
seminar"

You ask questions to understand the problem and help guide a prospect to a yes
or equally good, a no.

Other complementary books are SPIN selling, (where spin is an acronym for
types of questions) challenger sales, and getting naked.

They all advocate for a consultative approach to sales where you ask questions
vs. pitch.

~~~
brightball
Sandler is what I did as well.

------
systemtest
At one of the best companies that I worked at, the founder acknowledged that
he was only good at creating things, not running them. So he hired someone for
the day-to-day stuff so that he could focus on company growth and creating new
business units. Worked out great.

------
te_chris
I really like this, but I can't help but think that encouraging young people
to throw away the best time of their lives being startup founders has been a
massive mistake and will be looked back on as stupid by future generations.

I tried it, thought I wanted it, but when it failed the relief that I could
keep fucking up and partying was immense. Some friends are now very successful
founders, and while they say they're happy, that they don't regret spending
their youth 'businessing', this is always said with a pang of insincerity.

There's no right way to live your life, and people will take different paths,
but more and more it seems like the myth of founder, the desirability of it,
is a farce sold by VC's who want to turn £2 million into a 10x google
acquisition.

~~~
charlesdm
You can do a startup, but grow organically. No one says you need to play the
VC game with crappy odds and low chances of payoffs.

Alternatively, if you need to raise investment (once you have established the
model actually works) there are alternative ways to fund the business (i.e.
family investment funds who want to be your longer term partner rather than
flipping it in two to five years)

I'd rather take a 50% chance on owning a smaller niche business (think
Convertkit) that does a few million a year, of which most profit ends up in my
pocket, than playing the VC game with low odds and hoping for a $100m exit.

The only ones for whom the odds are great, are VCs. They'll make back their
entire fund on one or two investments as part of their portfolio and will
pocket a healthy amount of carried interest as a result, on a massive amount
of money. But they're not the ones slaving away. And their management fee
makes sure they're always well compensated and living well.

~~~
exelius
Actually the VCs don’t make out so well either; VC as an asset class generally
underperforms the public markets. A few whales (Kleiner, Sequoia, et al) run
the market, and they’re market-makers who prop up valuations and bring in
other folks.

VC is a gladiatorial ring where rich people do economic battle with each
other. But it’s largely zero sum with some small, highly localized gains.

~~~
charlesdm
Very true. To be honest, it's a bit of a crapshoot, but in comparison to other
asset classes VC managers are very well compensated for the mostly meager
returns they deliver.

If you're a two person VC fund managing €50m, and you return 50% in 10 years
on that money, you'll make close to €5M + a €1m management fee for 4 to 7
years.

The only reason why I assume that is, is because it's not super closely
aligned with the performance of the stock market (well, it sort of is -- you
often need public companies to acquire some of these startups).

~~~
exelius
Right, even then you have more funds end in the red or very close to break-
even than the black. It’s definitely a portfolio game.

My hypothesis is that the Unicorns need public-company levels of financing but
don’t want the oversight used to have to go public to get money. But now that
Goldman and SoftBank are writing $10B checks, they can also set terms
favorable to late stage investors. This can wipe out many of the mid-late VC
investors’ gains, but they are under pressure to take the money in the short
term just to get to an exit, so they agree to it.

I actually think that what took Travis Kalinik down was the fact he diluted
his early investors so much they just want to get to an IPO. That wasn’t going
to happen any time soon under Travis. The sexual harassment stuff was legit,
but his days were always numbered once he diluted as much as he did.

Anyway just some speculation. Would love to hear others’ opinions.

------
tabtab
Here's a "compressed" summary:

1) Listen more than talk. Take notes and ponder for later meetings.

2) Meetings are not bad things if done right.

3) Don't be afraid to delegate; resist instinct to micromanage left over from
co's smaller days.

4) Don't let big problems fester, confront them directly.

5) Recognize your weaknesses & mistakes, admit to them, apologize freely, and
try to constantly improve. We are all imperfect.

6) It can be brutal and lonely at the top, don't take it personally. Get a
therapist if you need to, and socialize with other CEO's to not feel alone.

7) Don't let your ego and emotion rule you.

------
tomcam
16/ Learn to read financial statements. Read them every quarter at least.

~~~
WalterBright
This should be taught in high school. It's amazing that high schools teach
nothing about how business works in a market society.

~~~
swalsh
Probably depends on where you go to school. My high school was in the middle
of a pre-trump era industrial region of WI. High school was teaching us the
basics to go work in a factory.

However I did learn to read, and a book on the bare basics of accounting is
like 200 pages.

~~~
mitochondrion
When you say "pre-Trump-era industrial region", do you mean that there is now
more industry there, or less?

~~~
swalsh
There were many small manufacturers, and I think 2 very large ones near me.
When I was around 13 I think, one of the big ones closed down, and many of the
small ones followed soon after. It went to Democrats every year (but the
margin was dwindling over time). 2016 it finally flipped completely. I think
there is a trickle of new things coming back, but I don't think it is
correlated with Trump in any way. I describe it as pre-trump because, at least
to me, I get a very vivid picture of a region with a long history of
successful industry that's dried up, and the only thing people have left in
the area is retail and healthcare.

~~~
mitochondrion
To be fair, the sort of people who used to live there then are not of a kind
with the variety that live there now. Most of those who could leave —
undoubtedly like yourself — did.

------
partycoder
You want to avoid information loss ("telephone games") and distorted
information.

Once in a while you need to go straight to the source and get information
first-hand.

Talk to employees at random once in a while. Conduct surveys. Evaluate
managers.

Bezos replies to random emails, even if only with a question mark. Jobs
answered to customer service calls.

If you find jerks exploiting information asymmetry at the expense of the
company, fire them.

~~~
Already__Taken
Similarly doesn't Musk ban acronyms for things in his companies? "Knowledge
should take the shortest path" may be a quote.

------
jacquesm
This is actually a pretty good list, but like all such lists emulating it
won't bring you success.

~~~
ggg9990
All lists of this type are not “do this and you’ll succeed” but rather “don’t
do these and you’ll increase your likelihood of failure.” Just like looking
before you cross the street won’t ensure you survive, but not looking will
make it quite likely you won’t.

~~~
wenc
Right -- in most systems, there are a few correct answers, and many wrong
ones. The search space is vast.

In this kind of environment, it can be valuable to to learn to avoid vast
classes of wrong answers, and this can be done without 1st hand experience --
someone's already done the hard and expensive work for you. Warren Buffet is
attributed to the quote, "It's better to learn from other people's mistakes."
Every failure is a de-risking exercise for someone else.

In the startup ecosystem (like most evolutionary ecosystems), it's not
necessarily _your failures_ that make you stronger. Instead it is all the
failures in aggregate that make the rest of the _system_ stronger. And the way
it does that is to have people learn from observing failures that have
occurred, and doing better.

(whether this actually happens or not is another story; humans are full of
foibles.)

------
joejerryronnie
Surprisingly insightful! I half expected to be shaking my head thinking "oh,
the follies of youth, he'll learn the hard way" \- but this is a really good
list.

~~~
AstralStorm
Missed the most important one: learning from others instead of making mistakes
yourself. (And the general list lacks humility - apparently no CEO can be
humble anymore ever. Overconfidence rules.)

~~~
noir_lord
A saying I like.

> Experience is learning from your mistakes, wisdom is learning from other
> peoples

I apply this as much as I can, for example when looking at a new technology I
bypass the people raving about it and look for the negative cases first.

I don't immediately accept whatever they say as valid but I do take notice.

It helps me avoid falling for the hype around "new and shiny".

~~~
Mtinie
I agree, it’s a very valuable way to look at things. I appreciate the
assertion because it requires (a least) two steps:

* Introspection — A recognition of mistakes made where you had a part, and the ability to translate that learning into future beneficial actions,

* Extrospection — A recognition and study of peers’ actions and outcomes and how these are applicable to your own life.

John Maxwell offers a variation on the theme which goes one step further:

“It's said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns
from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others's
successes.”

------
redm
I'm sure this will be unpopular, but these kinds of posts seem out of touch
with the reality of a startup.

I'm trying to imagine a founder starting a company and sitting down with this
15 point checklist. In my experience, things happen fast and much more
organically, and so a list like this is great in hindsight, I don't see anyone
trying to tick each box off and getting anywhere.

~~~
growtofill
I imagine this to be food for thought. If, after reading this thread, you'll
learn and implement at least one item of that checklist, that would still be a
win.

------
bigiain
"4/ Over time, you will feel like all you’re doing is spending time in
meetings but not getting any real work done. You are though. Your job is now
helping other people through the medium of meeting. Don't resist it, embrace
it. Now's the time to design it to be fun & productive."

:sigh:

Yep.

------
robax
Would anyone here have reservations joining a company with such a young CEO?
I’m dubious of our tech culture’s inclinations to drop out of college and
start a business. It feels like setting yourself up for failure. Like joining
the NBA having only watched it on TV.

~~~
mojowo11
As with most anything, it probably just depends on the person. Probably most
20-year-olds are not ready to helm a company. Some exceptional few probably
are.

------
z3t4
8) Attack problems, not people. Don't avoid confrontation

~~~
k__
So important.

I know too many people who get into trouble because they don't confront others
and hope problems will solve themself

~~~
z3t4
And when the final drop hits the goblet everything is spilled on the person.
eg. If you let things accumulate the problem always _seem_ to be the person.

------
isuckatcoding
Funny when you go on the mixpanel glassdoor, many of them talk quite
negatively about this CEO (I believe he stepped down recently)

Not to say the advice is bad

------
hartator
I was CEO at 21 bootstraped with full time employees and profitable.

I think the only thing I have learned is to be more confident in the choices I
make, and don’t 2nd guess so much. There is no secret to success, no
miraculous connection, and no magical idea. Try to understand the world the
best you can, and bring as much value as you can. And that can apply to
everything.

------
sigi45
What is this twitter thing? Blogs for ants? :(

------
kevinsmithvan
You can become CEO at 20 or 40, what matters is how you deal with it, what you
make of it. If you can maintain a calm head, get your priorities right, age is
not a hindrance.

~~~
baxtr
I think it is though. There was a discussion recently on HN about an article
that said that the average founder age of the most successful startups was
42...

(btw: yes, 42!!!!)

~~~
Clubber
I wonder if it has to do with 20 more years of experience, or 20 more years of
dealing with, and being sick of other comapanies' BS. Maybe both.

~~~
manigandham
They are just as smart, with 20 more years of experience, and now also very
large networks which can get them what they want much faster.

The key in almost every successful business is relationships, and those always
take time to build.

------
symlinkk
Can someone tell me what is company (Mixpanel) even does? Does it just track
what pages your users click on in your UI and then show the metrics in graphs?

~~~
vthallam
Yes. That's exactly it does and more. Like, you can trigger an event for all
or the important actions on the product, track them, create funnels or
whatever and analyze. It's a pretty popular product.

~~~
symlinkk
I'm surprised that's worth millions.

~~~
nojvek
People have users who use their products. If someone can help make you better
are understanding how your users are using your product so you can make it
better by removing bottle-necks, wouldn't you pay for that?

------
nickthemagicman
Does anyone else think it's kind of luck having this kind of success?

Its like a lottery winner giving life lessons.

~~~
zerostar07
I don't think he's pretending to do be doing something else. It's not advice
for "how to be a CEO at 20".

~~~
nickthemagicman
No I mean it's cool that he's giving this advice but why do they have to put
'at 20' in the title. Also most of the advice is really common sensical or
vague.

~~~
zerostar07
it's what he said

------
gabrielcsapo
Really interesting concept, the site looks almost identical to what I would
expect form stripe.

------
notananthem
uBlock Origin blocks mixpanel, not entirely sure why, assuming its spam

------
yy77
in summary: 1\. start a company (that might be the easiest one in his
expereince!) 2\. Find a VC 3\. Find good mentor to enter the group of "rich
people".

------
rplnt
Yet he uses twitter to deliver list of lessons/insights...

~~~
raesene9
and why not? Looking at his post he's already got considerable engagement and
here it sits (as I type) on the front page of HN.

He's made a list where each point fits a single tweet, so it's not awkward to
read, and twitter makes chaining posts pretty trivial (plus of course it can
be unrolled easily).

Sure he could have done a "traditional" post somewhere like medium, but would
that really have made a difference to the message he's delivering?

------
tiffanyh
uBlock Origin blocks [https://mixpanel.com](https://mixpanel.com)

That seems like a Big Deal (TM) if you're a company selling web analytics.

~~~
whatever_dude
I believe uBlock Origin blocks all analytics scripts, no?

For context, Mixpanel is a big player on the Analytics field. Their service is
pretty good IMO. I believe they were the first big company to aggregate
demographics in a way that allowed clients to construct a view of their
audience based on cross app use - eg "30% car enthusiasts".

They also publish a lot of their data publicly, so you know, day, the
percentage of public iOS 11 penetration with a good degree of confidence.

~~~
nojvek
Link to said trend reports:
[https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_11](https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_11)

[https://mixpanel.com/2017-product-benchmarks-
report/](https://mixpanel.com/2017-product-benchmarks-report/) Industry
Benchmark report

------
mcherm
Why, oh WHY do people attempt to use Twitter as a means of communication?

~~~
baxtr
I hate it too, but I guess

\- low barriers: easier than setting up a blog, as easy as FB

\- reach: Twitter is a good platform to reach a lot of relevant people outside
your own network

------
ehosca
Is this DJ Khaled?

