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The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building Kindle Edition

by Matt Mochary (Author), Alex MacCaw (Author), Misha Talavera (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,069 ratings
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Matt Mochary coaches the CEOs of many of the fastest-scaling technology companies in Silicon Valley. With The Great CEO Within, he shares his highly effective leadership and business-operating tools with any CEO or manager in the world. Learn how to efficiently scale your business from startup to corporation by implementing a system of accountability, effective problem-solving, and transparent feedback.

Becoming a great CEO requires training. For a founding CEO, there is precious little time to complete that training, especially at the helm of a rapidly growing company. Now you have the guidance you need in one book.
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  1. Startups don’t usually fail because they grow too late. They usually fail because they grow too early (i.e., before they have achieved product-market fit).
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  2. There are many reasons to create a company, but only one good one: to deeply understand real customers (living humans!) and their problem, and then solve that problem.
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  3. So start by placing your liquid assets in a brokerage firm. Then invest all the cash into US Treasuries while you decide on your investment strategy.
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Editorial Reviews

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"In the universe of management books, The Great CEO Within has been the most immediately useful for me. It's straightforward and practical, and within a week of reading it, we had adopted many of Matt's systems. A must-read for any CEO or executive who wants to quickly level up." --STEVE HUFFMAN, CEO OF REDDIT

"This book doesn't describe a way for a founder to scale a company. It describes the way for a founder to scale a company." --NAVAL RAVIKANT, CHAIRMAN OF ANGELLIST

"Matt has demystified growing a company by breaking it down into simple steps. These are the essentials that every company should implement to operate more effectively." --BRIAN ARMSTRONG, CEO OF COINBASE

About the Author

As a former founder, CEO, and investor, Matt Mochary knows firsthand the challenges of those roles as well as solutions to the most commonly encountered problems. He coaches Silicon Valley tech CEOs and heads of tech investment firms on how to be the best leaders and build the best organizations possible. Matt is also a filmmaker and the founder of the Mochary Foundation, which helps ex-convicts learn job skills and gain employment.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07ZLGQZYC
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 5, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3904 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,069 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
1,069 global ratings
A guide for CEOs of startups with aspirations to become a large company ($50M+ valuation)
5 Stars
A guide for CEOs of startups with aspirations to become a large company ($50M+ valuation)
The book is written for those planning to grow a large business with hundreds of employees. However, the overview of this professional environment, even if you will work in one provides valuable insights. I would even recommend it for college students to understand the corporate environment and how business operates.The best advice comes from Chapter 29: Recruiting (the part about references). When interviewing about prior jobs, ask for the names of prior bosses and colleagues, and how to spell those names. That indicates to the interviewee that they better just tell the truth. Do this often/for every prior job so you have a large list of potential references. Do not use the list provided by the interviewee. Then choose some and ask the interviewee to make the connection with those who you want to talk with. While talking, hesitation or neutrality is a NO. People are not going to talk badly about someone for a random stranger (you, doing the reference check). People generally don't talk bad about people because it's a risky/dangerous thing. My note: but also be careful as someone may speak very well of an employee who they want to get rid of, or speak neutrally about a current employee they want to keep.
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Top reviews from the United States

otavio
5.0 out of 5 stars Practical guide
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2024
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A lot of insights straight to the point. A humble writing bringing solution and insights from other authors. I loved it
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Rochelle Brenner
5.0 out of 5 stars This book isn't just for CEOs
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2022
Verified Purchase
I’m not even a CEO. I’m a personal-development enthusiast and martial arts school owner. And this one book changed my life because it is valuable for everyone who isn’t a CEO.

What I mean is: If your profession is ____ and you struggle to work with _____, this book is for you. Fill in the blank. If you’re a nurse and you struggle with doctors/computers/administration/patients, read this book.

If you’re an architect or assistant football coach or actor, read this book. By outlining the bigger picture of the roles and formation of a company, each person can better understand their own role and how it fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Imagine if each person can understand their own role how the CEO sees it and then acts on it.

My business is martial arts – my job is to clear the path for my employees and students to succeed. And I need everyone motivated and on the same page: the instructors, the program directors, the part-time instructors, other partner karate schools. All with different roles and personalities. It’s incredible how much the book relates. I use the templates in the book to get and give feedback, to write out internal processes, and ensure we are actually solving the pain point of our “clients” (parents needing help with focus, self-control, confidence etc. for their kids).

The biggest thing is this book is cracking the disconnect between roles – the book accomplishes getting engineers to understand sales people and vice versa. It simply explains the purpose of each and the common pitfalls and interconnections among workers and the result is a broader, bigger vision of the company’s mission. Our instructors do need to understand the enrollment process and our “sales” people need to understand what value our students will get.

The other thing that makes this book different is what I believe is the author’s Zone 4 – his perception of the emotional connection in business roles. He navigates the sterile underbelly of business formation and financial processes with valuing people, maximizing their abilities and creating a tier of support. And it’s not “fake” motivational speaking. It’s logical considerations to get people to be better workers by liking their job, recognizing their co-workers strengths, and acknowledging the value of other people’s jobs in the same industry. In summary: this book is a chokehold on problems, strikes hard and kicks ass.

I typically read about one business book a month and a business podcast a day and now I’m carrying around this one book with my laptop so I can keep referring to it. I am actually having my staff of 15 martial arts people read it to help in their individual roles. As a martial arts franchise owner, I got to get a lot better with this book. Karate people are notoriously bad at business and if a tactical guide to a tech business can help us, it can help anyone. Not quite at the billion dollar improvement yet, but I'm happy with the month over month results.
12 people found this helpful
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Brett Steingo
4.0 out of 5 stars Ignoring this book would be akin to neglecting your duties as a Founder/CEO
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2020
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The Great CEO Within provides a comprehensive overview of the many areas of life and business one needs to consider and improve to be successful as an entrepreneur. It starts with the basics – with a strong focus on personal habits and characteristics – but goes a lot further than the usual “tips and tricks” with practical recommendations and specific methodologies that are easy to understand and implement.
As an entrepreneur with over 6 years’ experience, I found myself re-visiting a lot of basic behaviours and noticeably improving aspects of my daily performance as a result. Mochary summarises key learnings from a wide variety of business book authors and formulates them into implementable steps. He also makes it easy for the reader to highlight gaps in one’s understanding and performance and recommends the most appropriate books to turn to for more detailed reading on the relevant topics.
Some of his suggestions are counter-intuitive or even in conflict with advice you might have read or received elsewhere, but he does a convincing job of substantiating his recommendations despite the obvious effort to keep the book compact and concise. As one example, Mochary suggests that 50/50 partnerships sound nice, but that the risk and problems resulting from a stalemate in decision-making outweighs any potential upside. This makes sense, though I have heard the opposite argument – a favourite of Raymond Ackerman (a successful businessman and entrepreneur whom most South Africans will be familiar with) - who championed the virtues of “true (50/50) partnership”. While there is very little advice in the startup space based on longitudinal or academic studies, these recommendations are based on Mochary’s extensive experience as a serial CEO who has worked with thousands of startups and reflect obviously deep insights and understanding.
For new entrepreneurs – the practices of “GTD”, “Inbox Zero” and ‘top goal focus’ are critical and clearly game changes in how one operates on a day-to-day basis. If you are unfamiliar with these practices, or if you simply have not yet managed to master them – read this book immediately.
For me, the most introspection-invoking section was the chapter on the ‘Energy Audit’. It helped me clarify some major considerations in my current business and provided the confirmation I required to take definitive action. That insight alone in conjunction with the “zones of competence / incompetence framework” - provided enough value to justify the time and money spent on the book for me personally.
One or two sections of the book were clearly targeted towards a US audience which left me searching for comparisons and wondering if the advice could be equally applied in my situation (in South Africa). The investment recommendations provide one example – a suggested portfolio of US treasuries and equities probably inaccessible to most South Africans. I was also a bit surprised that the author did not suggest any precautions against the vulnerability of fiat currencies or consider alternative investments such as physical gold and silver or even Bitcoin / crypto.
The numbers used also jerk you quickly out of “let’s get started mode” to “aim freaking high” – with the stated aim, early on in the book, being to build a business with revenue of $ 100 M. Psychologically most people can only realistically imagine earning 50% more than what they have access to right now and this seemed like a bit of a moonshot for me (with a new business at around $ 3 - $3.5 M USD per annum). The obvious result was that I found some ideas in this book that were immediately implementable and valuable to my business as well as others that I needed to put into storage – knowing that they will be invaluable resources in the future.
One aspect of the book I really appreciated was the recommendation of specific tools and apps. These include tools for managing one’s personal wealth as well as all aspects of one’s business. As a result, we have tried a few and (so far) adopted Monday.com in our business.
A significant section of the book is based on ideas from the Conscious Leadership Group (https://conscious.is/). The ideas summarised here are all useful to think about and consider introducing to some degree, but I felt that a more balanced overview of experiments and experiences might be required to implement successfully. Concepts of appreciation, play and empathy for example felt like they needed to come with a warning as to when the pursuit of these ideals goes too far and could begin to impact negatively. The conflict resolution process is something I will definitely try when appropriate but the injunction that the “more powerful person in the conflict” should express a will to reconcile with the “less powerful person” or be fired, seemed to disregard certain extreme situations – especially difficult to communicate ones such as scenarios outlined in “Snakes in Suits” by Babiak and Hare which outlines the masochisms of corporate psychopaths.
The book is packed with practical operational advice for scaling up including the types of people to hire – from where and at what stage of your business. As someone with a strong Product Management background, I really appreciated Mochary’s understanding of the space which is often presented in a confused way in startup books. The clear explanation of the importance of an independent ‘Product’ function outside of Sales, Marketing and Engineering is something I feel many startups – as well as large corporates – fail to understand much to their own detriment. Some of his practical suggestions were completely new to me and certainly avenues that I plan to investigate further.
A wide range of additional topics are covered including how to hire lawyers, allocating titles, setting and managing KPIs/OKRs, when to raise money and how to remunerate early hires.
Overall, an extremely useful read. Obviously not everything in this book will be immediately relevant to any one entrepreneur as it covers aspects of your business for consideration from, let’s say $1M to $ 100 M per annum but I can almost guarantee that anyone with a business in this range will take away at least three key ideas, tools, practices or methodologies that will significantly improve your business. It’s an easy read and would be almost silly to deprive your business of this input.
8 people found this helpful
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Daniel V. Rusteen
5.0 out of 5 stars A guide for CEOs of startups with aspirations to become a large company ($50M+ valuation)
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2023
Verified Purchase
The book is written for those planning to grow a large business with hundreds of employees. However, the overview of this professional environment, even if you will work in one provides valuable insights. I would even recommend it for college students to understand the corporate environment and how business operates.

The best advice comes from Chapter 29: Recruiting (the part about references). When interviewing about prior jobs, ask for the names of prior bosses and colleagues, and how to spell those names. That indicates to the interviewee that they better just tell the truth. Do this often/for every prior job so you have a large list of potential references. Do not use the list provided by the interviewee. Then choose some and ask the interviewee to make the connection with those who you want to talk with. While talking, hesitation or neutrality is a NO. People are not going to talk badly about someone for a random stranger (you, doing the reference check). People generally don't talk bad about people because it's a risky/dangerous thing. My note: but also be careful as someone may speak very well of an employee who they want to get rid of, or speak neutrally about a current employee they want to keep.
Customer image
Daniel V. Rusteen
5.0 out of 5 stars A guide for CEOs of startups with aspirations to become a large company ($50M+ valuation)
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2023
The book is written for those planning to grow a large business with hundreds of employees. However, the overview of this professional environment, even if you will work in one provides valuable insights. I would even recommend it for college students to understand the corporate environment and how business operates.

The best advice comes from Chapter 29: Recruiting (the part about references). When interviewing about prior jobs, ask for the names of prior bosses and colleagues, and how to spell those names. That indicates to the interviewee that they better just tell the truth. Do this often/for every prior job so you have a large list of potential references. Do not use the list provided by the interviewee. Then choose some and ask the interviewee to make the connection with those who you want to talk with. While talking, hesitation or neutrality is a NO. People are not going to talk badly about someone for a random stranger (you, doing the reference check). People generally don't talk bad about people because it's a risky/dangerous thing. My note: but also be careful as someone may speak very well of an employee who they want to get rid of, or speak neutrally about a current employee they want to keep.
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One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Vincent
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book. Easy to read
Reviewed in Canada on October 14, 2023
Verified Purchase
Easy to understand practical leadership for bigger enterprises
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R. Hofmann
5.0 out of 5 stars Just Wow
Reviewed in Germany on January 14, 2023
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The insights and recommendations provided in the book are priceless as well as presented in a straight and precise manner. A MUST READ for current and future entrepreneurs.
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Rene
5.0 out of 5 stars Great advice, without wasting your time
Reviewed in Sweden on December 24, 2022
Verified Purchase
Short book with quick useful lessons that gives condensed advise instead of wasting your time
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Puru Gupta
5.0 out of 5 stars A lot of take aways
Reviewed in India on November 22, 2022
Verified Purchase
A lot of actionable take aways, some as reminders, some as reinforcements, while others as hacks that you might not have realized. A brilliant book for anyone in a decision making role in a startup!
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A playbook for CEOs and senior leaders
Reviewed in Brazil on September 28, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book is short and sweet with the list and brief descriptions of what makes a great CEO.

As someone who aspires to become a CEO, the book does a great job of making a checklist of things that the CEO must do to have a successful company: from the finances to the HR processes.

What I especially enjoyed in this book is how Matt Mochary appropriately values culture and company environment as much as other aspects in the context of founding and maintaining a healthy company.

I recommend this book to anyone interesting in learning about effective leadership, start-ups, and what a great CEO must do.
2 people found this helpful
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