Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky explains why the company has no chief product officer: in product-driven companies, the founder-CEO must own that role. Delegating product away makes founders replaceable, and the company stops being truly product-led.
Chapters
I think the CEO should be basically the chief product officer of a product or tech company. Many years ago, I was reading a blog post by Ben Horowitz saying that a lot of people tell product-led founders or engineering-led founders to step away and delegate their product to other people, but suddenly they delegated away the thing they're best at, the thing that is hardest for them to replace. So we don't have a chief product officer title, but if we had one, it would be me. And the CEO is not the chief product officer, then I don't know if they're a product or tech-led company. Maybe, maybe that's okay if they're an ops company or if they're a marketing company or if they're like not a tech company at all. But ultimately, I think this founder CEO should be that person.