Starting a company is a demanding experience for it’s CEO. It’s not because of the entrepreneurial lifestyle or the feeling of living the life of an early Mark Zuckerberg. Starting a company requires its founders to start with nothing but an idea, growing this idea into a valuable offering and scaling it to profitable business.

While going through these stages, the job profile of a founder and CEO changes significantly. The ability to adapt to these changing requirements is the ultimate test for a startup founder.

In the history of many startups the following leadership types can be observed:

The CEO as Product Architect

In the very early stages it is necessary to be a CEO with a deep technical understanding and the ability to put together a prototype or demonstration that is able to convince customers to pay for it. In that early stage, if you are a non-technical CEO and you are trying to sell a solution, you better team up with a technical co-founder to be able to convince potential customers.

The main task in this stage for the CEO of a startup is to hustle. To do everything that is necessary to find the next paying customer. To be the one in your startup with the deepest understanding of customer needs, technological aspects and business rules in that certain industry.

The CEO as Product Architect focuses on all aspects that are necessary to build proof that an idea can be turned into a valuable product offering.

The CEO as Process Architect

Your startup has been able to win the first customers, the value proposition is solid and the technical implementation actually works. The next step is now to grow the company beyond yourself and your core team because there are only 24 hours in a day - even for a CEO.

As the CEO of it is now your task to setup the organization so that it can work without you. The CEOs time is limited and answering customer support emails is not the best use of a CEOs time if there is enough money to hire somebody else to do it.

The CEO has to define processes, rules and templates how certain things should be done within that company. It’s not necessary to create ISO-9000 compliant standard operating procedures, but it is necessary to write down how things are done in this company.

How are refunds handled? How do we move our sales leads through the sales funnel? How much discount do we give? How do we handle requests for partnerships? How do we recruit more employees?

These are all questions that will be raised in a growing company and the only to way to keep growing is for the CEO to delegate these tasks to somebody that is working directly for the CEO and who has the task to document all activities in that particular domain. The CEO will still be involved in critical decisions, but his direct reports will work on most issues by themselves.

The CEO as Process Architect focuses on defining processes and documentation so that everything that can be delegated will be delegated.

The CEO as Company Architect

Assuming earlier delegation activities have been successful and your company is still growing, CEOs reach the point where their organization is so big that they have to add another layer and the people working directly for them are now in charge of other people who do the actual work.

At that stage it is not smart to try to get directly involved with employees and their work. It has a simple reason: If you pass one of your direct reports and you go to one of the employees directly, your direct reports might rightfully be irritated. Yes, the CEO is in charge of the whole company and is - theoretically - allowed to do these things. But it’s not the CEOs job to participate in work that has been delegated to other people.

The startup CEO in that stage of a company has the responsibility to build the company. This means to focus on the task and activities that are necessary to run the company efficiently, keep the company growing and achieve the strategic goals.

The CEO as Company Architect focuses on the optimal design of the company as system of processes to achieve the long-term vision of the company.

Aspiring CEOs: To Transform or not Transform?

It’s obvious that these different stages of startups require a very different skillset from their CEO. The ultimate questions for a growing startup CEO is:

Should you work on your skills and shift your focus as your company keeps growing? Or will you hire somebody else to do this task so that you focus on the domain that is most interesting to you?

This is a deeply personal questions and both options have their positive and negative aspects. At the end it’s all about who you chose to work with - regardless of whether you are handing over the CEO responsibility to somebody else or you commit to developing your skills to become a company building CEO.

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