Please excuse my ignorance if I should know this already, but nowhere in the article does it explain what makes the author an authority on this particular topic. Perhaps a couple of previous experiences with different types of CEOs, some of which worked vs some of which didn't?
The biggest mistake you can make is to find someone as passionate about your idea and making sure he stays on the top. Become CEO yourself, it's not hard and you don't need to know "business".
What about leadership ability? You describe a number of absolutely necessary talents, but without the ability to lead your team on the task of executing the vision, those talents don't matter for long.
The most important thing for a CEO to do is make sure that Bullshit never intrudes on the technical work. That usually means he or she not only needs to be a "10x" hustler, but also requires coming with the resources to get started on real work already in hand.<p>That's something we struggle with, as technical people. We want to believe that "what makes a good CEO" is meritocratic, but it's largely about contacts. Can this guy get us to full salary on an idea alone, so we can build something? Same for college presidents; they aren't hired for the work they can do, but for the contacts they can bring in to the university.<p>See, part of being a CEO is bridging the gap between the meritocracy we wish to create (because we won't be able to compete if people are already playing political games at <10 people) and the connections-based non-meritocracy of Bullshitland outside. Freedom (or meritocracy, in our case) turns out not to be free, and the CEO's job is to make it happen because most talented people come from the working and middle classes (this isn't a dig against higher classes; it's just that the lower classes are much larger) and have zero in the way of such resources.<p>That requires an extremely rare combination:<p>1. Comes with the resources (i.e. funding, contacts) already in hand.<p>2. Not arrogant about it. The problem is that people who have such resources are usually such dicks about it that they become sources of Bullshit, rather than being able to protect others against it.