It Ain’t As Easy as it Looks – - the title of one of my favorite books by Ted Turner, and a great summary of being the CEO of a startup or early stage company. I remember my first CEO gig fresh out of business school.   I thought “pretty simple, get the product out,  then get some revenue, call up the board and report good results, then IPO”.   Wrong !

There is a lot more to it than that – - that is if you want to be successful at it (investor code language for keeping your job !). Here’s a useful road map that you can use to help you maintain perspective and effectively lead your early stage company.  The video below is a short tutorial on how to use the roadmap.  Scroll down further to find the link to the .pdf file of the roadmap:

Click on the image below to download the CEO Roadmap :

What’s your experience in managing this road map ?   Is the balancing act as hard as it seems ?  Have you developed an approach for applying the roadmap that seems to work well for you ?