Hot Seat Quotes

“That’s your job. To make something out of nothing. To pull together all the disparate threads: recruiting (with no money), fundraising (with no reputation), and delivering joy (with no product). You must fabricate the chicken and the egg. Simultaneously.”
― Dan Shapiro, Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook

“Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick (Arrow, 2008).”
― Dan Shapiro, Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook

“For some strange, doomed reason, startup CEOs are cursed to hire lousy people to do the job that they themselves used to perform. This seems absolutely bonkers at first glance. If you were a technologist, you know great technical people. You’ve got a first-rate network. You know how to interview. You know the gotchas and the must-haves. The CTO is the one role it seems like you couldn’t screw up! But I’ve seen this happen time and again. And I think I know the culprit: our friend from the previous chapter, the Impostor Phenomenon. We know that startup CEO is necessarily a “fake it till you make it” job. The first-time CEO is woefully underequipped for the job at hand. When CEOs feel like their value is questionable and their competence is in doubt, they are prone to leaving themselves a place to come home to. And I think that’s why you see so many CEOs hire crappy people for the job they used to do. It’s”
― Dan Shapiro, Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook

“The CEO’s greatest influence on the company isn’t her contributions to the product, the strategy, or even getting the company funded. The CEO’s greatest contribution to the company is the wizardry required to hire a team that is going to be amazingly effective at executing the company’s strategy. Great CEOs hire teams that are far better than they have any right to expect. Put succinctly, a core competency for a CEO is to “date up.” This”
― Dan Shapiro, Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook

“Some lead by example, like Rand Fishkin of Moz (formerly SEOmoz), who says his goal is to create a hundred new millionaires — then issued additional stock grants for every Moz employee as a part of the Series B funding, directly out of his personal holdings, to ensure that a financing round wouldn’t be dilutive.”
― Dan Shapiro, Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook

“Try to avoid single-trigger acceleration for nonfounders whenever possible. Not only is it sure to cause issues during M&A (the acquirer will be worried that everyone will vest and leave after the transaction), but an acquirer may make changing these terms a condition of a deal, which just leads to ugliness when you inform people that they no longer are getting the deal that you promised them (or telling the investors that you’re scuttling the sale of your company because Chris in sales wants more money).”
― Dan Shapiro, Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook