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I've been in largely the same situation as OP - early-stage startup, rushed work on an MVP requiring far too many bells and whistles, CEO doing a crucial demo before potential investors who would likely make or break the company. The crucial difference in my case was that the CEO was whipsmart, and a natural salesman; he knew his market, he knew his audience, and he knew our work. He ran through the app enough times in advance of the demo to know it inside and out, and he prefaced his demo with boilerplate warnings that it was an MVP/prototype and that bugs were to expected - he did this so effectively that it almost seemed like he had them excited about the prospect of seeing bugs. When the inevitable faults in the application / backend did occur, he was able to gracefully roll with the punches and sustain the momentum: he joked his way past it and adjusted his approach as he ran through the failed step again (having correctly guessed at what the problem was with his input the first time around). The investors could see - as our CEO had emphasized up-front - that the shortcomings were superficial, and that both the app and underlying system were fundamentally solving the problems they were meant to solve - and doing so in novel ways for the vertical we were in, with much better UX than that vertical was accustomed to. That company succeeded by any measure, and is still running strong today. And at least 80% of why it succeeded, imo, is because of the quality of its earliest employees, both C-level and technical. A CEO may not need to be a one-in-a-million kind of guy or gal, but they definitely do need to be one-in-a-whole-lotta-thousands, at the very least - if they're just another thoroughly average individual with an oversized ego and a 'fake it till we make it' ethos, you are screwed - no amount of unpaid blood, sweat and tears in the trenches will save you. We were lucky enough to have an inspiring and intelligent CEO who brought in critical voices rather than yes men, and who at the early stages of the company's life would often directly interface with the coders who were designing the apps and systems he and his sales people would be pitching to potential investors, partners, and customers. And when your company has ~5-20 employees, that's absolutely how it should be - all doors should be open. Rigid management hierarchies are no more than adult make-believe at this stage, and indulging in them is inherently toxic. Anyways, I suppose OP's story is really just an old and universal one: bad management will fail, and it will always find someone else to blame for its failures. |