Hire for what you don't do well

We’ve all read the stories. How Zuck coded all of “TheFacebook”. How the Doordash guys got Google Voice routed to their phones; took the orders, placed the orders, and delivered the food. Or how the Zappos founders used their garage as a warehouse and stocked it from Walmart using their minivan. That’s hustle and grit. There’s a difference between that and trying to do everything yourself.

Do things that don’t scale

That’s what Paul Graham, YC founder, refers to as doing things that don’t scale. Eventually you need delivery drivers, a warehouse, etc. (Well, except Zuck–that scaled; it was software). AI has made it very easy to do lots yourself, things that before you might never have dreamed of doing. But learning to delegate is the key to being a successful CEO over the long term.

The only thing the founder/CEO can’t delegate*

Founders raise money. That is the only task that you absolutely cannot delegate. Investors want to know your vision from you; they want to meet you and decide for themselves if you can execute. Of course, if you have supportive VCs or angel investors, they might help. But the founder owns this process.

The asterisk: there comes a point later in a company lifecycle when you can delegate some aspects of fundraising. Typically this happens at Series C or later, though it varies by industry, and is dictated also by round size. If you are raising $100mm or more, bankers will be willing to help you. And, it’s probably a good idea to have a CFO on your staff to manage that cash pile. You might even replace yourself as CEO, in which case fundraising responsibility would fall to that person. For some companies this happens very early (Google, UpWork, many others).

A friend running a unicorn startup realized she wasn’t enjoying the day to day, so she hired a great CEO to take the company to the next level. I have tremendous respect for that choice. Perhaps because I know so many miserable founder CEOs who want to let go but feel like they can’t.

Zone of genius

The concept of zone of genius comes from the work of Gay Hendricks. It’s work where not only do you excel, but also you feel energized and alive. You can be excellent at something but not enjoy it–maybe even loathe it. Not to pick on lawyers, but this probably describes more than a few. Some really enjoy the work; others started on the law school path and could never get off. Randy Komisar, early Kleiner Perkins partner, is one example. After a couple decade career as a lawyer he realized he didn’t like it that much, and switched to VC.

In Hendricks’ personal performance paradigm, there are four zones: incompetence, competence, excellence and genius. Obviously if you are incompetent, delegate. This goes for all things–especially the big ones, where competence is not as obvious, like selling your company. Why would you learn that one on the job? If you are competent or even excellent at something but don’t enjoy it, the sooner you can delegate it the better. Then you can focus on your zone of genius.

The zone of genius is where you both excel and enjoy the work. May we all be so lucky to find ours. For me, if it’s helpful, I loathe process-oriented work, even though I am perfectly good at it when it needs to get done. A small example: I enjoy recording podcasts. But the actual publication of them drives me nuts. I don’t want to learn how to edit them; I don’t want to spend time correcting audio and video, writing descriptions, show notes, the rest of it. So I delegated that work. It also helped to know the people I delegated it to loved it, and were far better at it than I’ll ever be.

What surprised me about the zone of genius is that you may not know what it is. That’s because you didn’t have to work hard to be good at it, or maybe you did but it didn’t feel like work.

It seems to me the best are living in their zone of genius, which might be broader than others. For example Ansel Adams took photographs and developed them; other famous photographers delegated the development. It’s a very different thing being in a literal dark room versus being out in the Sierras with a camera. But Ansel Adams was perhaps the greatest because he was excellent at both. Same for sports. Being a great athlete is what makes some NFL quarterbacks, well, NFL quarterbacks. But being a great athlete and a great student of the game is what makes a Tom Brady or Joe Montana.

Outside of your zone

No founder ever started a company because they loved managing immigration paperwork. Delegate that. Or because they enjoyed sending cold emails. That’s why I’m building skyp.ai. Some things aren’t worth learning; immigration processes and cold outreach are good examples. That doesn’t make it not worth doing–it’s absolutely worth doing. Just not yourself.

Some founders enjoy doing these things that they could delegate. I respect that. I think being in the weeds, looking at things up close, putting hands on them, is the way. But this is only necessary if it is either core to your business–or not going well. You only see Elon go sleep-in-the-factory-founder-mode when things are going badly. When they’re going well, he spends his time jetsetting, in DC doing DOGE things, or on the app formerly known as Twitter making all of our lives more interesting.

Opportunity cost is the invisible killer, and when you are operating outside your zone of genius you are incurring opportunity cost. You could be in your zone of genius but you’re not. I believe in supporting employee’s immigration status. That is not a given–some very successful founders decline to, and I respect that position, especially given how distracting it can be. But in doing that, time is taken away from other things. Customers, product, tech, who knows? The opportunity cost of spending your time on something outside of your zone of genius–especially if it is not critical to your company’s success–should scare you.

What to delegate first