One of my favorite blog posts is on the AVC.com blog. It came out in 2010. It's called What A CEO Does. This is on Fred Wilson's blog. In this blog post, it's pretty short, but it's incredibly powerful. In this blog post, Fred Wilson describes being on a board with another VC and [00:00:30] a search at that board was doing for a CEO of a portfolio company, right? They're looking to hire a new CEO. Fred, I think he was a junior VC at that time, certainly didn't have the experience that he has now, but Fred turned to the more experienced VC as described in this blog post and said, "What does a CEO do? We're looking to hire this position. [00:01:00] What are the foundational aspects of this person's job that we're hiring for?"
As Fred tells the story, the senior VC on the board replied or answered without thinking. He said, "A CEO only does three things." Oh, it's my wife calling. I'll call her right back. Fred responded that a CEO does three things. One, [00:01:30] sets the overall vision and strategy for the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Two, recruits, hires and retains the very best talent for the company. Three, make sure there's always enough cash in the bank. In the story, Fred said, "Is that really it?" The senior VC said that the CEO should be delegating everything else in the business. I think that's right. [00:02:00] I really agree with this.
There's three jobs, make sure there's money in the bank, make sure the company is making good hires, and three, communicates the vision, right? Investors, employees, customers, the market, etcetera. I've been thinking about this a lot and I really think that of those three things, communicating the vision is the most important one. Because when you [00:02:30] communicate the vision frequently and perhaps in a one too many fashion, right, through blog posts, through podcasts, through all hands meetings of the company, when you tell lots of stories, you'll make good hires. You really will.
At least it helps a lot when you're making good hires, especially if a lot of the communicating the vision is also to the press, if [00:03:00] you can get it. You'll make good hires and you'll tend to have money in the bank, right? Because customers will listen to this. Customers will listen to the communication of the vision. I think kind of at the top of the food chain, this three item food chain, is communicating the vision. Something I've been doing [00:03:30] five days a week, I try and do it every weekday, but sometimes in order to hit my number here, I got to do it on the weekends, but something I've been doing is sending a daily audio note to the company about different things that are going on.
I call it the B Cast. I have a channel that it goes out on. I think that's been really helpful. I've gotten some good feedback on it, but I think it's always important [00:04:00] for CEOs to be communicating. That's part of why I do this podcast everyday. It's part of why I do the daily "podcast" of the company. It's not really a podcast, but it's important. I've seen this trend recently. It's not recent. I've seen this trend for a long time of CEOs [00:04:30]
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