Three co-founders walk into a startup. Each one of them asks: "Where's our CEO?"

Four months ago I sent out a flare. Right here on LinkedIn, I shared that, along with two co-founders, I was in the early stages of getting a new startup off the ground. As a trio, we'd been making time on weekends and evenings to see if there was a there there. We had our thesis, our mission, vision and values, our pro-forma, services diagrams and overflowing enthusiasm. But we were missing one, pretty important thing -- a Chief Executive Officer. We were a captain-less team. And so, I posted here letting friends and friends of friends know we were searching for a co-founder and leader.

The response was incredible. Thank you all for the suggestions and connections. I must have received fifty recommendations plus a dozen other “Me Please” hand raises. The response was both astounding (so many amazing candidates) and overwhelming (so many amazing candidates). But, two seasons later, I’m pleased to report back that we found our CEO (co-founders names and faces to be shared at a later date)!

The purpose of this update, and to the extent that it's useful to other startups, is to reveal a bit about the process we undertook and what I learned along the way. In case it's not obvious, the role of a founding CEO is a grueling one. It requires tireless commitment to success, but also to the mission, vision and values. If you are doing the job properly, you are never not selling and you are never not learning and you are never not failing and you are never not empathizing.

Anyone can claim to be qualified for the role (and many people do) but, in truth, very few are. The qualifications have little to do with previous titles or education and much more to do with temperament, perspective and that “x factor” that separates great leaders from good enough bosses. And that "x factor" can be hard to quantify. Having sat in the chair but never having hired a CEO myself, here’s how we went about defining our “x factor” and what the process taught me.

The Process. (thanks & apologies to 76ers fans for the co-optation)

The first round of screening was easy -- we looked for evidence that the candidate had sufficient (a) domain experience, (b) leadership experience or (c) entrepreneurship experience to indicate that any commitment of their time and our time would be worth it. Though beyond obvious, these criteria disqualified more than half of the initial names on our list. We went from fifty-something names to about fifteen just by running their LinkedIn profiles or resumes through these paces.

Next, we started meeting with candidates in three (one for me, one for each of the other co-founders) forty-five minute blocks, getting to know them and scoring each on the following criteria:

• Enthusiasm for the mission
• Appetite for risk
• Ability to sell services
• Ability to grow a team
• Ability to manage a P&L
• Responds well to conflict and challenge
• Commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion

We used a 1-5 linear scale for each, assuming greater weight to the most critical factors. Until all three of us had met with a candidate, we did not discuss our scores with each other. As the board chairperson, who the CEO would theoretically be accountable to, I handled the first interview, and had the option to disqualify candidates before asking my co-founders to spend more time in the process. I exercised that option a few times, but we did, in fact, all meet with a dozen candidates.

Along the way, a couple of strong contenders also disqualified themselves, indicating that the level or risk or fit or timing was off for them. Sometimes this was bittersweet. But it was always clarifying. After the disqualifications, we set a goal to get from twelve to four. This took about a month and a half, which was mostly due to the time it takes to interview people rather than a lack of alignment. In spite of our various perspectives and our commitment to eliminating groupthink or confirmation bias, it was actually not so hard to get to our final four. Our simple rubric proved largely effective and our mission, vision and values kept us in line.

Once we got to four, I reconnected with each semi-finalist to validate assumptions about compensation and readiness. Were they really prepared to take on the work and the risk for the salary, incentives and stock assumptions we had in mind? Were we in the same neighborhood? Were our timelines sufficiently aligned??If there were obvious gaps or significant uncertainty, the consequences could be dire.

Our next goal was to get from four to two and to then spend time with the two finalists in person. But the answers to those previous questions only got us from four to three. And so we did something that three, mostly unbiased, mostly evidence-based co-founders would not normally do. We put the scores aside and just asked ourselves, given only so much time and knowing that this final mile was a significant commitment, was there any one of the three we thought it prudent to say farewell to.

The answer was “yes.” And the rationale was simple: we wanted to have a clear choice. At that point we had three candidates, one whose profile was appreciably different from the other two. And, of those two whose profiles were similar, we were strongly leaning in one direction. It seemed unproductive to continue a process wherein two finalists were so similar, knowing that -- after many hours of time spent together -- we had already rated one higher than the other. Much better to have a difficult choice than an easy one, we figured. Better to have a diversity of perspective than not. And so, with a heavy heart we said goodbye to an amazing person and moved forward with our two finalists.

Then came the really hard part -- finding time for four busy people (five if you count the fact that there were two candidates) to meet in one location, for the better part of an afternoon and evening. Schedules aligned, we gathered in person and asked our finalists to:

1. Share their most pressing open questions.
2. Collaborate with us on product (service) definition.
3. Present their thoughts on how to take the company to market.

We got to know each other. Drank coffee. Shared a meal. Had lots of laughs. And then we did it again for the second candidate. Suffice it to say, the experiences were as different and amazing as the candidates themselves. There's no substitute for working together in person.

At the end of our process, we were prepared to re-score each candidate if necessary. But first, we took a blind vote to see if there was unanimity in our perspective. There was! Our biases, from the beginning, had been for the candidate's enthusiasm for the Mission and their capacity to collaborate. There was plenty of room to debate. There were countless skills and accomplishments and answers and quirks to compare. The three of us did not agree on every detail. But we agreed where it mattered most. We contacted both finalists, saying "thank you, thank you, thank you, and so long for now" to one and cheering "let's go!" to the other.

That was a couple months ago. Since then, we have been onboarding our CEO while accelerating towards launch. There has been a lot of goal setting. A lot of problem research. A lot of hypothesis development. And a lot of administration -- setting up file directories and collaboration tools, finalizing an operating agreement, stock purchase plans, trademark searches, bank accounts, etc. But, those are the easy parts. The last month has really been about product definition, including tasks, deliverables, delivery model and pricing, as well as the finalization of our financial model, brand identity and initial go to market plan. It's been a delirious whirlwind.

What I Learned.

Our way -- to begin with the idea and the co-founders but not the C.E.O. -- is absolutely not the fastest way to start a company. It’s surely more expedient for the idea and the CEO to exist together at the outset, simultaneously. On the other hand, our way might be a more efficient way in that there’s greater readiness and fit between the startup's thesis, the co-founders and the CEO because of all the time and work we put in.

As for other pearls that revealed themselves during our search:

• The amazing people you meet along the way make you and your startup smarter and more likely to succeed. Time is expensive and precious, but the a sub-par or misaligned founding team can be fatal.
• Clear evaluation criteria is essential to minimize bias from the qualification process but those scores were no substitute for conversations, interactions & collaborations. There are many ways to gather evidence. Facts matter. But feelings are their own kid of facts. And vice versa.
• Predictably, if sadly, many people who say they want to be a startup C.E.O. and believe they are qualified to be a startup C.E.O. are not actually qualified, if only because they are not prepared for the actual risks inherent in the gig.
• It is brutally hard -- depressingly so -- to develop a pipeline of candidates that is more diverse than the census of your own network. We had a goal to identify candidates that resisted the biases of our own connections (lean male, lean caucasian, aged 30-55). And while we succeeded slightly, we did not succeed wildly. I have hypotheses about why this is the case and how we could have done it differently. But, suffice it to say, we tried our very best and our outcome in this area was just "OK."

What’s Next?

The countdown has begun. We have set a date for launch, with the goal of having no fewer than one but no more than two clients kicking off within thirty days of that date. Sometime before that milestone, we’ll introduce ourselves -- the founding team, the name, the mission, vision, values, products and market. Lots to do in the meantime but I cannot wait to open our doors. All these years later, and as cliched as it sounds, there’s nothing like the thrill of starting a startup!