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

Unleashing the Power of a COO: CEOs, Are You Truly Overbooked? With Keith Rabois, Founders Fund

24 Oct 2023 · 1 min

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0:53

Keith Rabois (via a YouTube interview uploaded by Jason M. Lemkin) challenges the conventional wisdom that technology companies should never hire COOs, recounting advice from board member Pierre LeMond. He gives practical indicators for when a CEO needs additional senior leadership (notably: if more than half their upcoming week is already booked when reviewing their calendar on Sunday night) and critiques CEOs who try to hold dual roles such as VP of Product and CEO. The segment focuses on timing, titles, and the trade-offs of hiring a COO versus preserving CEO capacity.

Chapters

I don't think you should necessarily. When I was growing up in Silicon Valley, I had one of the wisest and most experienced people on a board with me, Pierre LeMond. And Pierre said, absolutely, technology companies should never have COO's. And that was the conventional wisdom. And there's a lot of good reasons behind that conventional wisdom. So you're violating the conventional wisdom every time you hire a coo. I think some of the best reasons to do it is if you look at your calendar on a Sunday night and you're the CEO going into your week and more than half your calendar is already booked, you probably need another senior leader. Now, whether that person gets a title of COO is a different question. But you need to have enough flexibility. If you have your time is in meetings or something, if you're ready, like have no time to think, no time for discretionary interaction with people, you are way over consumed as CEO. The second thing is there's been a rise, and I think this correlates with the rise of CEOs. Many, many CEOs today want to play two roles. They want to be VP of Product and CEO.