Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Understanding CEO Decisions: The Real Impact of Investors

15 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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0:55

A short transcript excerpt from a YouTube talk arguing that CEOs (and CROs) are heavily judged for decisions like layoffs, but these decisions are often reactive to rapidly changing macroeconomic and banking-policy conditions rather than malicious intent. The speaker defends investors and company leaders, acknowledging some responsibility (e.g., overfunding) while emphasizing that most actions were not taken for wrong reasons.

Chapters

And then you're judged after each board meeting. And the CRO is the most judged of all. Yeah, it just is. Yeah. And, and your investors are not the bad guys who, you know, invested too much money intentionally and forced this company to take this path. There's so much blaming in the market of, of oh, this CEO is a bad person because they had to do a layoff. The CEO, the macro conditions changed faster than ever in the history of banking policy in the US So a CEO is just reacting to the game on the field and that doesn't make them a bad, bad meanie. No. There's elements of truth in it, right? There's always hints of truth, like maybe the VCs overfunded you, maybe the CEO should. But, but, but mostly it was, it was done for not the wrong reasons. Right. And then almost and then no one cares. It wasn't done out of malice.