What's it like being a chair person of a business in the early stages?

First off, it's hard! There is no 1-2 days/mo "biscuit munching". (that's so late stage, lol)

Your job is to build a powder keg of energy, a cult of belief in the impossible, and you've got to make sure it doesn't blow up. You need extremely hungry commercial people, and super creative geniuses, operating in constructive tension.

You must manage this tension to maximise effect, and to prevent tribalism between these fuels, and stop the whole thing blowing up.

It's a rocket, to send it to the moon, you've got to direct the energy externally, and in a focused way. It's your job to facilitate this, and your weapon is your NEDs, workshops, meetings and 1-2-1 chats.

The Enemies of Success

Your biggest enemy is being drawn into a tribe, and losing perspective. This tribalism will lead to group-think and you'll disable your ability to moderate. A couple of good NEDs will help you check yourself here, so it's important you help them maintain perspective to all sides of the problem too.

Your second biggest enemy is if the hunger becomes applied internally rather than externally - your organisation loses trust, gains politics and then your creative talent evacuates.

Your third biggest enemy is the loss of focus and directional strategy, your sales people will start saying yes to all sorts of opportunities and you'll turn from a product business into a project business - a nice lifestyle business, but the death of a venture.

Weeding Out Complacency

You've got to hire and fire the board to remove complacency and concentrate this energy. And complacency looks very different in the commercial side to the technical side.

Commercial complacency is the opposite of strategy and focus, i.e. opportunism and FOMO. Saying yes to every opportunity that comes through the door to blame the technical team for failing to deliver product, whilst being out on the golf course. No ICP, no outbound campaigns, the product you have will be "too hard to sell", the stuff you're selling is the stuff your team hasn't built yet and it will be "super important".

Technical complacency is the opposite of the 95 hour week, it's watching the clock, delivering to a spec sheet rather than understanding the customer. The passion is all gone from it, and it is now a job.

Allies and Overall Mission

In doing this job, your 3 biggest allies are the lead investor, the CEO and the Founders (Ideally the Founder is the CEO, but they don't always have the commercial skills), and the biggest problem is to manage their egos and conflicting interests.

Your mission - as Peter Thiel puts it - is to "extend the founding", which in the rocket analogy is the period that the rocket burns (without blowing up). Hint: You're almost certainly going to need the founder - somewhere in the business, although they may need some encouragement to find the right role.