(When I frame myself as a technical leader, there's a quick assumption that I don't grok sales/marketing. If I introduce myself as a "Harvard MBA & angel investor", there's an immediate conclusion that code is beyond me... Nice to know that, when both are presented, the engineer wins. :) )
That said, sales is one of the easiest areas to hire for. I respect sales very much, most of my co-founders in the past have come from sales and I've learned a lot from them. But enterprise salespeople pay for themselves, have less/no expectation of equity, and expect to bounce from job to job every year. At some point I'll need a sales leader to manage a sales team (subdivide industries/regions, hire/fire, etc.) But that's not a founder-level role.
The biggest thing I need is going to be a great CFO. I'm getting into the logistics business (software eats fulfillment?), which is pretty capital-intensive. Debt is a better instrument for this than equity, but I have neither the time nor the temperament to secure that.
I'm broadly anti-VC, but may end up pitching primarily for the credibility with lenders & institutional investors.
Was that a result of learning about executive summaries in your MBA program, or just something you picked up along the way?
For web content, we think of "above/below the fold". For executives/investors, the analogue is "above/below the [first screen of my blackberry | iPhone alert]".
"The inverted pyramid is a metaphor used by journalists and other writers to illustrate how information should be prioritized and structured in a text (e.g., a news report). It is a common method for writing news stories (and has adaptability to other kinds of texts, e.g., blogs and editorial columns)."