The Two Jobs of a CPO 5 minutes read.
"I suspect that the dichotomy between these two roles [strategy and culture/process] is also why Chief Product Officers are one of the harder positions to fill once a company gets to scale. The skills that get you hired as a CPO are all about product culture and process setting. But the skills that keep you from getting fired are all about strategic alignment, and finding that alignment with a high-octane, highly confident CEO is an entirely different skill. A lot of companies hire product culture builders because the skillset is portable, and these hires then fail to lock-in on where the company should go." -- Spot on. It's hard to find a CPO who can do both parts effectively, but when you do, magical things happen as you both know where you want to go while having the confidence in building a map to follow.
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Keith Rabois: "I Tell Founders Not to Worry About Runway. Worry About Lift." 2 minutes read.
The notion of using funding to lift the company (product-market fit) rather than extending the runway is a healthier framing to consider: "If you think about lift in a plane context, a company is only valuable if you achieve lift. Runway is a tactic for achieving lift, and you may need to extend the runway so that you have more time to get lift. But unless you’re actually achieving lift with that extra time, it doesn’t help you."
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