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If you don't know how to do something yourself, you wont even be able to identify someone who is better than you in that field.

I've seen people who don't know how to market their product go out and try to hire a marketing guy. You might luck out and get someone perfect for you, but I've never seen it.

Usually they just end up wasting a lot of money and learning some hard lessons.

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So how do you hire effectively as a CEO? There are too many areas for you to be knowledgeable, yet you need to be able to hire top talent across a variety of areas.

The method I've found is to ask people I respect a lot, "Who is the best X that you know?" Then call/email them, saying, "I'm the CEO of Y, and I'm trying to find out what a good X looks like. So and so said you're the best she knows. Can I have 30 minutes of your time?"

Do 5 of these, and you'll have a good idea of what someone good looks like. (And those 5 may give you some candidates)

This is very difficult though because things like "organizes the team to hit quota every quarter" can come in many different manners.

You hire CTO and let him do his job. How you hire CTO? You learn intimately how to hire for such positions, what their day to day jobs are, etc. Only then you can evaluate canidate for CTO position.

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