Kevin SuraceKevin Surace is an AI pioneer, inventor, author, and human effectiveness authority helping people thrive while AI reshapes work and life.

The CEO Dream Comes With A Brutal Reality

22 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:59

In this brief segment, Kevin Surace challenges the popular notion that becoming a CEO is an aspirational dream. He explains that the role of a startup CEO is fraught with relentless responsibilities: constant fundraising, hiring and firing, managing payroll, vendor relationships, and handling the inevitable angry customer escalations. Surace emphasizes that while success stories are celebrated, the vast majority of funded startups—about 900 out of 1,000 in a recent Silicon Valley cohort—fail within a year or two, underscoring the harsh reality behind the CEO title.

Chapters

Everyone thinks becoming a CEO is the dream. He's been one since his 20s and says most people have no idea what they're signing up for.
Everybody wants to be a CEO, which is a funny thing. I want to be a CEO of a startup. And I'd say, are you sure? Are you sure? Because look, the thing is, is if you're a CTO or you're head of marketing or you're all these other things, you focus on your area. But as CEO, you basically hire and fire. You have to raise money all the time. You're always raising money. You're dealing with payroll issues and vendor issues, and you always deal with the customer issues. And there will always be customer issues. And the happy customers don't make it to your desk. By the time a customer got to your desk, they're really angry, you know. And lastly, if you're doing startups, you know, you might have to do 3 or 5 or 10 before you hit it out of the park. And yes, there's people who every single one, they happen to hit it out of the park, but those are the ones we read about. You don't read about the literally 1,000 entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that got funded this year, of which 900 and some odd will die in a year or two.