chapter five
5 Being a freshman CEO
This anecdote covers
- Surprisingly difficult things can hit you right away even on your first ever CEO gig
- A biggie is raising money. There is no class in how to do it. How can you learn it fast?
- But THE most important thing to get and keep your eye on? Cash!
When it was my turn to be a freshman CEO, I had been hoodwinked into taking on a venture-backed turnaround (see Anecdote “A Venture-Backed Turnaround Is an Oxymoron”). Being a freshman CEO is really really hard all by itself without the turnaround part. As I took over this turnaround, I had to do layoffs, raise a new round of financing, run board meetings, suddenly lead a team I had been part of just the day before, hire a new head of sales (the former one left when the CEO got canned), bring on a CFO, rebrand and reposition the company, manage international operations, and create a new financial plan—one we could hit, or else I would follow the recently fired CEO right out the door. And all this had to happen right away!