Podcast: Naval Ravikant, co-founder of AngelList, explains why you don't need to be CEO

The companies that succeed are always reinventing themselves and their products

Regardless of positional title, creative people within a company need to have the opportunity to control their time in a way that optimizes and maximizes their creative potential

If you let operations bog down the subconscious mind of a creator, their creations will never come to fruition.

• Traditional CEO: raise money, communicate the strategy, recruit and retain the team
• Product CEOs: provide product vision
• Sales CEOs: provide sales leadership

Discussing burdens as a CEO is hard as our board could lose faith in you and your employees could stop following you

There is incredible pressure, because many times the investors are investing in the founder just as much as the product.

CEO is the job you take because there is no other choice, you don’t trust anyone but yourself to make the venture successful

• CEO is a high-stress, people management role.  
• The CEO is the company psychiatrist, always dealing with people issues.

If you’re the founder of a company, you’re probably world-class in something

There is someone out there that is world-class in the things you don’t want to do

Don’t just hire off of skill though, you will only truly hand over the reins if you believe they have a like-minded ‘founder mentality’

Recruit founders who have failed through no fault of their own

An example could be a founder who had the best product in a category that just didn’t have a market fit. These people have a ‘founder mentality’ and haven’t been burnt out yet.

Naval no longer keeps a calendar but is busy all day long. But, he prioritizes whatever feels most important to him at that moment.

• Even when you have to do unpleasant things, at least you do them without them being forced upon you.
• You can only live this lifestyle if you’re willing to disappoint people’s initial expectations of you.