Many of my favorite VPs of Sales are now becoming CEOs. Many. And I am so happy for them. Many SaaStr OG’s have pulled this off, and I’ve watching many from Sterling Snow, CRO at Divvy joining Redo as CEO, to our own Brendon Cassidy, CEO at HiveFive, pull it off.
I have one bit of advice though as you watch them go from CRO to CEO: it’s a much, much, much, much bigger jump from CRO / VPS than you can ever imagine.
And they agree 😉
It’s now all on the line.
And 95% of you have never actually shipped a production into production. Committed code. Dealt with a SEV-1. Or even know what a truly great CTO looks like.
You can do it. Just realize it’s 10x harder than you imagine. Maybe 100x harder.
Just because you sell it, does not mean you can build it. And leading a great team is not the same as going from 0 to 1.
The Emotional Rollercoaster of Being a Startup Founder: Your Family Will Never Truly Understand pic.twitter.com/kG51LQpIlL
— Jason ✨👾SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) June 10, 2024
You’ll see. My best advice for VPS/CRO turned CEO:
- Make absolutely, positively sure you have a 10/10 CTO. If you don’t know, find a 10/10 CTO and have them interview your CTO. Whatever you do, don’t cut corners here. If you can’t find a 10/10 CTO, wait until you can.
- Figure out how to survive, for real, for 2-3 years making even less than you planned. Yes, this is hard. No one cares.
- Figure out how to work 24/7. Not literally … but how to survive having to think about work all the time. Not just about how to crush the quarter. CROs think this is a little different. They learn it’s a whole new league of responsibility, stress, and all consuming-ness.
Go Forth and Conquer. Just budget for all of this 😉
(image from here)
The post My Best Advice for CROs/VPs of Sales That Are Ready to Be CEOs appeared first on SaaStr.
via https://www.aiupnow.com
Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow
