On my journey in this field, I've encountered investors who believe that a CEO with a programming background should transition to a CTO role. This stems from a perception that companies need a well-rounded "C-suite" with specific expertise in each area. While this perspective persists, counter-examples abound. Tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Elon Musk (Tesla), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia) all have strong technical backgrounds and have led their companies to immense success. Similarly, Brian Armstrong, an ex-programmer, is the CEO of Coinbase, a leader in the cryptocurrency space.
Despite these examples, the notion that a company requires a non-technical CEO remains a persistent comment from some investors. This raises the question: at what point does holding someone's technical background against them, without clear justification, become a form of prejudice?
I can't remember the name of the bias, but you are not seeing their perspective. The investors might have encountered many techie CEOs who have failed. It is worth considering that this prejudice exists for a reason.
Now, I am not saying it is true, but being a CEO for a start-up requires a bit (lot) of salesmanship. I do not have that gene. A lot of techie people do not have that gene.
On the other hand, at one company I worked with the CEO was so non-techie he had very little credibility. There were times we had to have follow-up meetings with investors without him to have more meaningful conversations.
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170 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 5 Mar
at what point does holding someone's technical background against them, without clear justification, become a form of prejudice?
It is always prejudice. If you are judging a person based on a classification and not them as an individual on their merits that is prejudice by definition. The thing is, all hiring includes prejudice. It is impossible to completely remove. The reason is that we all have experience or are influenced by the opinions of others. This is why many firms have hiring committees to try to level out prejudice.
Having said that following the pattern of others is easier than breaking the pattern. The risk reward ratio skews to following "best practices".
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wise words.
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183 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 5 Mar
I suspect this is only a theme among investors that have never been founders or even operators in a serious way (outside of other money moving schemes). Are you talking to investors that were founders?
at what point does holding someone's technical background against them, without clear justification, become a form of prejudice?
That's literally the definition of prejudice.
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IMHO its investor that are bankers / PE / trader background...
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 5 Mar
That explains it. Is this for a later round?
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Being CEO is really just about a handful of things, when “times are good” anyone can do the job and still be successful. Reiterating what your alluding to.
I believe to be a great CEO you need a lifetime of experience, and that only comes with time. You can read a ton of great books out there but unless you’ve been through it, it’ll never be enough. Which is why I now recommend getting out of your comfort zone quickly when starting a company. You will surprise yourself very quickly what you can accomplish. If you are unable to do this whether your technical or not than yes they are right.
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Not to mention the old school of Jobs, Gates, and Ellison (who's now actually CTO, but was CEO for years). I don't think techie are inherently good or bad as CEOs, but I do think there's a breed of businessperson who thinks only people with MBAs can do the job, and they're clearly wrong.
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so true a comment...
"there's a breed of businessperson who thinks only people with MBAs can do the job"
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It’s ok to have one MBA type to provide a different perspective
It’s a problem if you hire multiple MBA to set goals and culture for a tech company
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80 sats \ 0 replies \ @brave 5 Mar
This is some serious prejudice for techie CEO but most of them are doing so great
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Mark Z. was clueless about how to make money with Facebook in the early years.
If they had hired a person with a more suitable background, probably Meta would now be worth even more.
It took a while for MZ to learn all those skills. It's not a natural thing.
Of course people can learn, but it's way more efficient to hire the right person that already knows what to do.
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Ok, going through the names given, both in the OP's post and in comments :
  • Zuckerberg of Facebook : terrible CEO of a terrible company
  • Armstrong of Coinbase : terrible CEO of a terrible company
  • Gates of Microsoft : terrible CEO of a terrible company
  • Ellison of Oracle : terrible CEO of a terrible company
The world in general, and the industry sectors they were part of, would have been much better off without each of the companies listed above (i.e. their companies have had a massively deleterious impact).
So not making a good case for 'techie' CEOs on the basis of these four.
Now moving on to the three other names I see mentioned.
  • Jobs of Apple : not a 'techie' and Apple's net impact on the world is somewhat up for debate
  • Elon of Tesla & Spacex : definitely a techie (despite what the deniers say). I would argue both companies have had a strong positive impact on the world, so here's the first definite win for techies as CEO
  • Huang of nVidia : the person and company I'm least familiar with, so not well placed give an opinion here
So I'm giving 1 win from 5 techie CEOs identified. Of course, there are a lot of bad 'non-techie' CEOs too, so one could ask whether 20% success rate for 'techieness' is even that bad compared to the industry standard. But still, I don't think you've necessarily got a winning argument here.
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The argument is about discriminating against CEO from a techie background. Terrible company does not mean the company is not successful...
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We discriminate all the time (e.g. I prefer eating lamb over beef). Discrimination is an essential tool (even though it is sometimes misused / abused). So the point I'm making, even though I'm mostly playing the devil's advocate, is that maybe the discrimination is somewhat justified when you see what horrible companies 'techie' CEOs can create.
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Discrimination of skills not discrimination of backgrounds
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All the bad CEO listed above were successful CEO because they increased profits and shareholder value.
The job of a CEO is to increase profits and shareholders value
Any CEO who accomplishes that is good or successful
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The job of a CEO is to increase profits and shareholders value
We disagree here.
Two distinguished Harvard Business School professors–Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine—recently declared in Harvard Business Review that maximizing shareholder value is “the error at the heart of corporate leadership.” It is “flawed in its assumptions, confused as a matter of law, and damaging in practice.” Bower has long held this view: back in 1970, he told NPR that maximizing shareholder value was “pernicious nonsense.”
Jack Welch, who in his tenure as CEO of GE from 1981 to 2001 was seen as the uber-hero of maximizing shareholder value, has been even harsher. In 2009, he famously declared that shareholder value is “the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy... your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal… Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.”
But despite these denunciations, the “pernicious nonsense” of shareholder value has spread. Shareholder value thinking, say Bower and Paine, “is now pervasive in the financial community and much of the business world. It has led to a set of behaviors by many actors on a wide range of topics, from performance measurement and executive compensation to shareholder rights, the role of directors, and corporate responsibility.”
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Let me rephrase.
CEO main job is to increase profits. More profits will increase shareholder value.
CEO is judged on profitability and making company more valuable.
I also meant long term value of company, not shareholders value per se but long term value is correlated with shareholder value
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There is a bias against techies by investors even techie investors.
Being in charge of a company is different from being in charge of technology. Non tech attributes like leadership and charisma and business skills in operations and strategy and hiring are more important for CEO type positions
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Could it be a case of resource optimisation? That the person who has rich domain expertise/technical knowledge fulfills the role of the CTO because he is the best person to help the company navigate all assorted technical challenges?
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Really?
Who holds this opinion? If anything I always hear the opposite. Since Mommy Su pulled AMD back to the top of their game VCs are pushing for techies back into the leadership?
It might also depend on the company. There are just some companies where supply lines, marketing/sales or financing are more urgent issues than the tech itself.
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I think an illustrative example is Intel who's actively having to fight AMD who was trailing behind them for a decade due to Intel giving their company over to MBAs and underpaying engineers.
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No questioning at all. These are just prejudices. However, this is complicated to understand. As you have given examples of those from technical background and being successful. There are many examples of people with a non technical background and successfully established a tech company. Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky, Jack Ma, Reid Hoffman, Evan Thomas Spiegel and Ben Silbermann were all non-tech founders, and are all incredibly successful.