15 Things Successful CEOs Want You To Know

As a young CEO of a growing company, I find that the most valuable insight I’m gaining these days has been from other CEOs. Certainly this realization isn’t revolutionary – YPO, EO, Mindshare and a host of other organizations are set up just for this kind of knowledge exchange.
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But who has time for that? This is a social media world. We’re live in 140-character sound bites. So I decided to ping my favorite CEOs via Twitter to see what kind of wisdom they could drop on me. Here’s the great advice they shared.

Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify
Figure out what the top five most important stuff is, focus relentlessly on that and keep iterating. Less is more.

Dennis Crowley, CEO, FourSquare
Don’t let people tell you your ideas won’t work. If you have a hunch that something will work, go build it. Ignore the haters.

Sarah Prevette, Founder, Sprouter
​Just do it. Get it out there, absorb the feedback, adjust accordingly, hustle like hell, persevere and never lose your swagger.

Sarah Lacy, CEO, PandoDaily
Follow your gut. it may be wrong, but you won’t regret it if you fail. You’ll regret it if you ignore your gut and fail.

Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist
Treat people like you want to be treated. Apply to customer service.

Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO, VaynerMedia
Do work for your customers, not for press or VCs. The end user is what matters long term.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO, Automattic
Only reinvent the wheels you need to get rolling.

Jason Goldberg, CEO, Fab.com
Pick one thing and do that one thing — and only that one thing — better than anyone else ever could.

Alexis Ohanian, CEO, Reddit
Make something people want. Then give more damns than anyone else about it and you’ll make something they love.

Chris Brogan, President, Human Business Works
Buy@ericries’s book. Beyond that? Build a platform. This is the big year.

Matt Howard, CEO, ZoomSaferStartup wisdom:
The number one job of a CEO is to not run out of money.

Brian Wong, CEO, Kiip
Always be learning from others. Whenever you meet someone, you don’t want something from them, you want to learn from them.

Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja, SCVNGR and LevelUp
Something my dad taught me: Ask forgiveness, not permission!
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Hooman Radfar, Founder, Clearspring
Give away the wins, own the loses. Your job is to curate greatness.

Alexa Hirschfeld, CEO, Paperless Post
Users and employees are key predictive indicators of a company’s success; press and investors generally months behind.

Author: Peter Corbett (@corbett3000) is the CEO of the creative agency iStrategyLabs, and is the founding organizer of DC Tech Meetup.