HACKER Q&A
📣 throwaway29991

25-person company, solo-founder. How should I allocate my time?


Hello. I am the owner, of a tech startup with almost 30 people on board. I spend 80% of my time on programming (nothing fancy, cruds etc.) and 20% on the rest of the stuff (managing, hiring). I've heard that CEO's should do things that others can't (sales), but I really hate selling and love coding.

I want to grow my startup, so my question is: is it possible with my attitude? Are there any examples of other companies that were run by shy coder?

Not sure if I would ever be able to allocate 80% (or even 100%) of my time to sales-related activities.

edit: I found this article accurately funny: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/company-growth-25-employees/

  👤 aksss Accepted Answer ✓
The bitter reality is that nothing happens for a business until sales contracts get signed. Sales can be intimidating although there are some brain hack tricks to it. For instance, if you believe your product can help solve a problem and can talk about that, and see the angle of how it helps make a human’s life easier, and can (with conviction) help someone understand this, that’s sales. Also, the high you get from succeeding in sales is what keeps a lot of salespeople in it. It’s like crack. So you may not like the idea of smoking crack from where you’re sitting now, but try some and then tell me how you feel. /s

That said, hire a salesperson. Even with the above, you are not a career salesperson and will likely struggle for years to learn and build basic skills that you should just pay for. Career salespeople have industry relationships, a personality that makes people want to engage with them, usually a lot of resources for schmoozing. The best is to find a semi-retired one that still wants to get those highs and keep a foot in an industry but has left full time corporate employment. Think about a DINK in their 50’s that maybe is also a property owner or has sources of passive income. They can be had on a 1099 and often you can work out creative comp plans (commission, etc). You’ll outgrow them hopefully at some point and need to think about an W2 sales strategy guy down the road, but a 1099’r can be a good option to deliver vital operating cash while growing.

👤 yann2
You aren't stating why you want to be CEO. Thats should be the starting point.

If you are planning to raise funds to scale (which usually translates to scaling marketing and sales teams) then expect investors to pile on pressure to hire someone who is comfortable in that role.

If you dont need funding its a different story, but growth will take its own sweet time. Nothing wrong with that imho.

👤 gus_massa
If you are not doing the sales, who is doing the sales? Is your business bootstrapped? Do you have investors? Is it profitable?
👤 yujian
I remember watching a video on youtube where a guy who created a 3D laser visualization tool hired a few CEOs to work for him while he was the CTO/lead engineer. I think you can certainly do that, but yeah I'm curious how you're even able to stay afloat with no sales :o
👤 system2
May we know how you even got to this point which is a successful business which employs 25 people?