0/ The Chief of Staff role has reached a tipping point, from startups to trillion-dollar companies. I've talked to ~100 CEOs, from @NotionHQ, @Patreon, @blendlabsinc, @benchling and more, all asking same q:
How should I hire a chief of staff?
Here's what I tell them š§µ
"Move fast and break things" is outdated advice for startups.
Software ate the worldāand there's more competition than ever.
Our startup learned the hard way to ignore this advice, and this is what happened:
Is the situation actually complicated or is it really quite straightforward, but you're making it complicated because it requires a lot of courage to make the straightforward decision?
The frameworks that got us here, of jobs-to-be-done or product-market fit, will be insufficient going forward. For founders to have extraordinary outcomes, they will have to find alpha in markets that arenāt easily understood.
Which is to say, technology alone wonāt be enough. The other essential ingredient will be taste.... See more
Collapse the talent stack every chance you get . As I reflect on the teams I āve led and hundreds of start-ups Iāve worked with, there is a consistent unfair competitive advantage iāve witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer... See more