My friend Eric Marcoullier, multiple-exit founder, coaches startup CEOs now, has a great post that I riff on today: A CEO Has Three Responsibilities. I'd argue the CEO has only one.
About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech, logistics, and marketplace businesses. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $400k to $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.
About Rich Maloy
Rich's mission is to rebuild the American dream through entrepreneurship. He works with early stage startups transforming the world, giving all people the opportunity to grow, learn and earn. With prior careers in finance and sales, he's now focused on startups investing through SpringTime Ventures where he is a Managing Partner. He's a father of two young children and loves sci-fi, skiing, and video games.
Rich:
Welcome to the final week of season one of VC minute. I'll be wrapping up a few final thoughts and then take a break until October. Kicking off today, I have advice for my friend, Eric Marcoullier. Eric is a multiple time founder with incredible exits and investments under his belt. He now coaches CEOs full-time and blogs at obviousstartupadvice.com. Definitely go check it out and subscribe to this blog. My favorite post of his, of all time, is this. A CEO has three responsibilities. One, communicate the vision. Two, hire great people. Three, never run out of money. I'd argue the two and three are actually derivatives of number one, and that a founder truly only has one job: sell the vision. Need to hire great people? Sell the vision. Don't have enough capital to pay those people what they can earn elsewhere? Sell the vision. Never run out of money? Well, you get money from two places, customers and funders. Want to win and retain customers even as your product is not completely solving their pain? Sell the vision. Want to convince big corpo to take a chance on a small startup? Sell the vision. Want to raise capital? Sell the vision. Want to throw the hottest pool party in town? You guessed it, sell the vision. Remember the,"you had one job" memes?. Well, VC Minute is bringing it back like it's 2013. Startup CEO, you had one job: Sell. The. Vision.