I work for an entertainment software startup, and I’ve watched for five years as my CEO has focused the company on creating demos to get investment, and short term deals with large companies using what we have. This has resulted in burnout, attrition, and massive tech debt.
There is a time and place for this, but five years in, we haven’t invested our resources in making an MVP we can build a customer base on. The board is finally asking that we have a revenue plan, but in a recent conversation, the CEO told me he has no plans to make money over the next year or attempt to scale users. His vision is high level, without details on strategy. At this point, the CTO and head a product are pretty much in my corner, sharing my concerns.
I don’t want to just assume he’s an idiot. He’s a gifted talker, but there’s a kind of reality distortion at play that I just don’t get. It’s like he’s ignorant to how software development works, yet is the CEO of a software company. Maybe he just hopes we’ll be purchased.
Point is, how can I help right this ship as a non-founder, but senior level early employee? What should I be empathetic to? What’s a sign that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing?
Does the CEO have a plan, signed off by the board? Budget? Dev roadmap? Strategy? Marketing plan? Vision? Proof of scalability? Etc.
It’s the Board’s job to set these things and monitor/support progress. If you’re on the Board, you should be asking the CEO to produce these things. As an employee, it’s a major alarm bell if the CEO doesn’t have these corporate documents laid out, for senior employee buy-in.
You seem emotionally intelligent, I think all you can do is engage the CEO constructively and supportively. Sorry I can’t be more specific - not enough info.
What would you want you to do if you were in the CEO’s shoes?