[john_moscow]

As an engineer running his own business, that had to learn all those skills the hard way, I can tell you - you can't.

The job of a startup CEO is a 100% full-time hustling. Use observation and negotiation skills to strike deals that will benefit them (the CEO) in the long run. If the CEO is one of the founders (or hired by investors with proper skills in setting incentives and making contracts), the benefit of the CEO will be aligned with the benefit for the company. If a bunch of engineers lacking these skills hire a CEO excelling at them, the CEO's first priority will be to replace the founding engineers with someone replaceable and loyal as soon as the chance of a payoff appears on the horizon. It sucks for the company long-term, but it happens left and right, because that's the job of a CEO - take advantage of suckers that cannot negotiate and hustle. And there are numerous shenanigans in their arsenal to pull that off (stock dilution, creative voting rights/board structure, etc).

The best advice I can give you as an engineer - you can rewire your engineering brain to do all those things. Just like you study examples for a framework before starting to use it, research what similar companies do, how do they find customers, how do they handle pitches, etc., and try to replicate it. Just as you may conclude "I need a better PC to build this library" you will likely think "I need better presentation skills to give that speech", so go ahead and practice them! Join your local Toastmasters, try to launch a blog and get some consistent followers, set goals and accomplish them. Once you get the hang of it, you'll see it's no different from having to refactor your code to avoid drowning in exponentially rising complexity. Just another skill to acquire and use.