The CEO of a startup must be the primary product manager

One of my more controversial viewpoints is that the CEO of a startup must be the primary product manager.

My extreme position on this is that I am personally responsible for every last pixel that makes it onto the screen. There is no better use of my time than to ensure the user experience maps exactly to the vision my co-founder and I have for the site.

In fact, I’d sooner let someone else manage “the business” then to turn my attention away from the user experience.

In my first company a lot of people cautioned me not to focus on the product, rather to focus on managing the managers. This was entirely wrong. There’s a reason why Apple is so successful - Steve Jobs owns the product. I once had someone lecture me not to be Steve Jobs. They said that everyone hates working for Steve, don’t be Steve Jobs. F-that. Steve Jobs wins. You win by insisting it’s done the way you want it done and ensuring that the company’s most tangible asset — the user experience — is exactly the way you want it to be.

Your thoughts?

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team member’s perspective,...far more exciting when company leaders are working by their...
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About

Betashop is the website of Jason Goldberg,
Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Fab.

Jason founded Fab in 2011 with Bradford Shellhammer (Chief Design Officer) and Nishith Shah (Chief Technology Officer).

Fab is everyday design.

Fab’s mission is to help people better their lives with design. Millions of people around the world use Fab to discover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting designers, and to share their favorite design inspirations. Smile, you're designed to.

Some have called Fab "the fastest growing E-commerce company on the planet." We like to say we're just doing our best to serve up great design that makes people smile.

Fab now serves more than 11 million members across 26 countries. Fab grew sales by more than 500% in 2012, one-third of which comes from users of the Fab mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. In February 2013 Fab was named the #5 most innovative company in the World by Fast Company. Fab won the award for Best E-Commerce Company of The Year at The Crunchies in both 2012 and 2011. It's all very humbling and inspiring. The truth is we celebrate our challenges more than our successes at Fab and we're really still just getting started.

Fab is the fourth company Jason founded. Jason previously founded fabulis, socialmedian, and Jobster. In 2009, following the sale of socialmedian to XING AG, Jason was Chief Product Officer at XING, based in Hamburg, Germany. Before starting Jobster in 2004, Jason led product and business initiatives at both T-Mobile USA and AOL Time Warner. In a prior life, Jason spent 6 years working 100 hours a week for Bill Clinton in the White House.

Jason is also an investor in and Board Member at RJ Metrics. He is also an investor in BlackJet and Twitter. Notable prior investments: TweetDeck.

Jason is a product guy. He loves to blog, loves transparency, and loves trying to make people smile. Jason shares everything about Fab on his blog, betashop, at http://betashop.com.

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