Viewpoint: CEO = Product Manager | Hacker News Reader

Viewpoint: CEO = Product Manager

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The startup CEO's primary responsibility is keeping the company going, whether that means funding, sales, or product development. The problem is the current need can alter at a moment's notice.

There is a reason Bill Campbell (CEO of Intuit) said your first hire should be product management. I've written about that here: http://softwaremaven.innerbrane.com/2009/10/hire-product-man...

The article's general thought is right: early product management (we generally refer to it as customer development here) is critical. It is just too important to leave in her hands for long!

I'm not sure I agree with the author's view of product management or of how singular control of the product strategy and execution is useful. Good product managers don't insist on having things done their way, they insist on understanding what users want and managing a team towards solving the hard problems related to those user needs. The only reason Steve Jobs is successful in how he approaches product development is because he is the CEO. No other product manager I know of wields that sort of control over the product and the paycheck of those he works with.

Success comes from having the right people do the right things at the right time. I'd rather hire kick-ass product managers to help the rest of my product team do kick-ass things than insist that the team does it "exactly my way".

I'd probably quit if I worked for someone that forced the team to do it exactly his way...

If you were taking a simplistic view of a small company working on their first few products, I might agree with the poster. Usually you wear a lot of hats when you start. However, I've worked as a project manager and later, as a CEO. I can definitely agree with you that your job runs more akin to being a "captain" of the boat, rather than a dictator who pulls all the lines and sets all the sails by him/herself.

Also, any good product manager (or designer, or creative, etc) will do quality work orders of magnitude beyond your own capacities - your job as CEO when working with other collaborators is to choose the right people to get on the bus with you, and make sure they have the right mix of order, incentives and other elements necessary to be successful. You could help determine some comon goal, but usually the execution changes greatly from what you originally expected as your collaborators bring their own skills and interests to the table. It's a beautiful (and hard!) process, really.

CEOs or leaders who fail to control costs, pricing, sales, promotions, etc and instead focus all their energies on product, usually will ruin their businesses in the medium to long run. A CEO makes sure all of those bases are covered, while a product manager does not.

I believe in the collaboration of the team being critical to building great products. And, I believe in getting input and creativity from all parts and players. BUT, in a startup, I do believe that the CEO has to feel direct responsibility for the user experience, and that cannot be delegated. It can be influenced, but not delegated.

And, I believe that it is very, very hard for a startup to succeed when someone beyond the CEO is directing the product. That means the CEO is managing someone else's creation.

I look to Google's return to product management running the company as critical to that company's success. And I think Zuck and Jobs are also testaments to this theory.

When I first developing my startup I thought it was product first, but I soon realized it's customer first. CEO should give a high level direction of the company, connect with customers and feedback to the team. Sure he/she might give their opinions to the pixel level but that's not their primary job. If you're so hung up on building a great product as a CEO without spending enough time to validate with the market, you're wasting your time.

This could be reframed as a debate between the usefulness of different CEO archetypes. I might agree, especially for tech companies (I assume that's what the author means by "Startups"), that the visionary product designer CEO is a very effective one, especially at the beginning. But depending on the company, other archetypes can become at least as useful: the skillful manager, who hires all the right people and maximizes their utility; the negotiator/competitor/strategist who reads the market, plays the press and out-maneuvers other companies; the spokesman marketer who makes the case for his product to the world.

Also, people should realize that Jobs is great at all of these skills, in part because he's a genius but also because he's just really experienced.

Two topics:

The guy focuses on his strengths. Good on him. Not everyone should be him. Talk about that or don't.

This is linkbait. CEOs should post linkbait. Discuss?

dude, your job is to be everything. so yeah, if the pixels are wrong, it's your fault and you have to fix it, but probably not by diving into CSS. its your job to go hire someone that is better than you at UX so you can fix the stuff only a CEO can fix.

http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/30/how-andreessen-horowitz-eval...

Viewpoint: People = Generalizing their own experience

Agree.

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