Ryan DeissCo-Founder & CEO, The Scalable Company

Founder Skills Tier List (from $200M CEO)

7 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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1:06

In this concise monologue, the speaker—drawing on experience as a $200M‑scale CEO—rates the most critical founder competencies for companies around the $500K revenue milestone. Each skill is assigned a tier (S, A, B, C, D) with brief justification. Copywriting and storytelling earn the top S tier, underscoring their power to drive sales and brand narrative. Financial literacy and public speaking receive A grades for their role in managing the business’s numbers and acting as the company’s public face. Hiring, delegation, recruiting, and public speaking are placed in the B tier as emerging but not yet primary concerns. Decision‑making lands in C, reflecting that early founders can afford to make mistakes and learn. Negotiation is a D, deemed less urgent at this stage. The speaker repeatedly stresses that sales is the foundational skill—without the ability to sell, all other competencies are moot.

Chapters

Copywriting. S. If you can write good copy, you can own the world. Hiring. Uh, I'm gonna say B. It's not as important yet. Delegation. I'm gonna say B also. It just isn't as important a skill, but it's coming up. Negotiation. D. I mean, it matters, but it's just not at $500K. Financial literacy. A. It's time to start figuring it out. You kind of need to know how the math is mathing. Recruiting. I'm gonna say B. Again, it's, it's important. It's just, it's not the main focus yet. Public speaking. A, because at this point you need to start being your company's brand ambassador in public speaking, whether it's on a stage or on social like I'm doing right now, is a big part of your job. Decision-making. C, and it's not that making good decisions doesn't matter, but at this point you should be able to make a lot of bad decisions, still survive it. Storytelling. A, you gotta be able to tell, in fact, S, I'm gonna bump it up to S 'cause you need to be able to tell stories about your business if you wanna sell. And you need to start developing the skills now because they're gonna be essential later. Sales. Yes. Everything comes after sales, and if you don't know how to sell, you're screwed.