- Startup Archive
- Posts
- Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO
Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO
Founders frequently ask Frank (former CEO of Snowflake), “Do you think I can be a CEO?”
Frank responds with a question: “Do you want to be?”
He explains:
“If you want to be, you need to become a student of the role because it’s different.”
One of the biggest differences in transitioning to being an “operating CEO” is that a founder’s “reality distortion field” becomes a liability. Frank explains:
“Reality distortion is a very useful thing. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done anything if he didn’t have reality distortion — you have to see the world differently, and you wouldn’t start a company if you didn’t have reality distortion. But when you start running a place for scale and breakout velocity, you need intellectual honesty.”
He continues:
“You need to see the world the way it really is… Not some version of the truth. And by the way, it’s hard. You have to drive for that intellectual honesty with everything.”
A lack of intellectually honesty is where Frank sees a lot of founders go wrong:
“They can’t handle the truth. When they have sales problems, it’s always, ‘Oh let’s get a new Sales VP.’ Well, maybe the product sucks. But that’s a conversation they don’t want to have.”