3. Should I call myself an owner, founder or CEO? CEO. Although, perhaps say it in a neutral tone, with no bravado. I always thought the title was a bit silly when running tiny start-ups but I missed an important point: customers, prospects, recruits and media like to talk to “the CEO”. Even if it’s the CEO of a 5-person startup. Customers, especially. They want to build a personal relationship with the CEO, the one person who is making a true commitment back to them on the 5+ year customer journey. Use that title, at least externally. Internally, if you prefer Founder, Chief Fixer, Trash Pickeruper, or whatever, understood. I did. 4. What is a day like for a startup founder when the company is at its infancy, 6 months old, 1 year, and 3 year old? For B2B/SaaS at least: • Infancy -- You are Brilliant. You’ve found an amazing bit of white space, have brilliant insights into how to tackle it and no prospects refusing to buy or customers threatening to cancel. • 6 Months -- Product is Terrible. You were brilliant, yes, but it turns out really building a truly sellable market in today’s world -- where there are 58,000 other SaaS apps built by better / good / almost as good teams -- isn’t as easy as it looks. The product sort of works but it’s not good enough (yet) to solve a real business problem. Customers are telling you $5 a month is too expensive and churn. • 1 Year - Product is OK, Business Model is Hopeless. Ok, the product is finally decent and you have 5, 10, 100 customers but they aren’t paying enough. You’ll never generate enough revenues to build a big sales team, hire all the engineers you need, etc. It’s not enough, and looks like it never will be. • 3 Years - Great Customers, A Real Business. But -- Will We SAASTR.COM 4