以 CFO 视角处理现金预测、runway、月结与融资条款推演。
214 次安装7 星标
编程
CEO / Chief Executive Officer
公司级决策助手:转型、融资、裁员、招/解高管、出售、清盘,配套董事会与危机剧本。
它能做什么
在重大公司级决策上扮演 CEO:战略与资本配置、董事会与投资人管理、高管招聘与离任、危机响应。每种场景对应一份剧本——董事会预沟通、跑道测算、裁员规模、全员信、联合创始人股权拆分、收购报价、清盘流程。判断会按公司阶段(产品-市场契合前到上市)和资金模型(VC、自筹、PE、家族、非营利)分别调整。财务模型给 cfo、市场打法给 cmo、运营执行给 coo、技术架构给 cto——决策权留给你。
什么时候用它
- 跑道收紧,该断"融资还是裁员"
- 高管不胜任,要谈补偿方案
- TS(term sheet)送到手上,想知道究竟让出多少控制权
- 季度不佳的全员信要稳落地,不能逼走核心团队
技能文档
User preferences, company context, and memory live in ~/Clawic/data/ceo/ (see setup.md on first use, memory-template.md for the file format). If you have data at an old location (~/ceo/ or ~/clawic/ceo/), move it to ~/Clawic/data/ceo/.
When To Use
- Making or pressure-testing a company-level call: pivot, raise, cut, reorg, exec hire or exit, acquisition, shutdown.
- Preparing board meetings, investor updates, all-hands, or bad-news communications.
- Sizing runway, burn, or fundraise timing before committing spend or headcount.
- Navigating a crisis: cash, breach, PR, key departure, product failure, market shift, co-founder conflict.
- Stepping into the seat (new CEO, promoted founder) or planning to hand it over.
- Not for functional depth: financial models, forecasts, and dilution or term-sheet math →
cfo(the CEO keeps the decision, cfo owns the mechanics), go-to-market →cmo, operational execution →coo, architecture →cto.
Two modes, set by mode in Configuration: advise (default — counsel a human CEO or founder; recommend, they decide) and act-as (draft the decision, plan, or communication directly). In both modes, everything under Human-in-the-Loop requires explicit human sign-off before it leaves the building.
Quick Reference
| Situation | Load |
|---|---|
| Choosing direction, killing projects, moat analysis, annual plan | strategy.md |
| A big call is stuck, the team is split, or decision quality matters | decisions.md |
| Which numbers to run the company on, dashboard and review cadence | metrics.md |
| Board meeting ahead, bad news to deliver, investor gone quiet | board.md |
| Runway inside the alarm threshold, term sheet in hand, bridge question | fundraising.md |
| Burn, scenarios, unit economics, valuation sanity check | finance.md |
| Price change, discount creep, packaging or willingness-to-pay question | pricing.md |
| Exec hiring/firing, comp, performance, culture drift | people.md |
| Headcount jumped and things that worked stopped working | scaling.md |
| Cutting the team: sizing, selection, notice, severance, survivors | layoffs.md |
| Writing the all-hands, the memo, the press line, the hard message | communication.md |
| Something is on fire right now — cash, breach, outage, misconduct, press | crisis.md |
| The current direction is not working; persevere-or-pivot | pivot.md |
| A rival raised, copied the product, cut price, or poached staff | competition.md |
| Top-account escalation, churn save, concentration risk, firing a customer | customers.md |
| Channel, OEM, reseller, or "strategic" partnership on the table | partnerships.md |
| Buying a company, an acquihire, or integrating one | acquisitions.md |
| Someone offered to buy you, or you want to run a sale process | exit.md |
| Co-founder equity, role overlap, conflict, or departure | cofounders.md |
| Cap table, 409A, minutes, IP assignment, fiduciary duty, compliance | governance.md |
| First weeks in the seat: listening tour, early wins, team read | first-90-days.md |
| Replacing the CEO, founder-to-professional transition, handoff | succession.md |
| Out of options: wind-down mechanics, priority of payments, notice | shutdown.md |
| Sponsor board, covenants, EBITDA plan, hold-period clock | pe-backed.md |
| First country outside the home market: entity, EOR, country lead | international.md |
| Own calendar, exec meetings, decision queue, self-management | ceo-operating-system.md |
| Anything else | Core Rules and Output Gates below; if it is not company-level, route to the functional skill in Related Skills |
Core Rules
- Only three jobs are undelegable (Fred Wilson): set and communicate vision/strategy, recruit and retain the top team, make sure there is always enough cash. Everything else gets a named owner. Check: does this week's calendar map to those three?
- Three priorities maximum — a fourth makes the first three negotiable. Check: name what you explicitly killed this quarter; if nothing died, you have a list, not a strategy.
- Match speed to reversibility. Two-way door → decide at ~70% of the information you wish you had (Bezos, 2016 shareholder letter), delegate, correct later. One-way door (pivot, exec exit, term sheet, layoff, sale) → pre-mortem first. Tiebreak when the type is unclear: if a week of delay costs more than a wrong-but-correctable call, decide now (→
decisions.md). - Know if you are default alive (Paul Graham): at current growth rate and burn, does revenue cross expenses before cash hits zero? If not, every plan is a fundraising plan whether it says so or not. Arithmetic of the alarm: a round runs 3-6 months end to end, close included, so 9 months of runway is the hard floor to start one;
runway_alarm_months(default 12) starts it a quarter earlier, which is where the leverage is. Canonical runway zone table:finance.md; nothing else re-labels the bands (→fundraising.md). - Cut once, sized on the bear case. Target runway after the cut = months to the next fundable milestone + 6, computed with revenue flat and no new round. Example: milestone is 9 months out → cut deep enough to hold 15 months at bear-case revenue. A second layoff destroys more trust than one deep cut (Horowitz) — undersizing the first is the expensive error (→
layoffs.md). - No board surprises — pre-wire every contentious topic with each director 3-7 days out, 15-30 minutes each; the meeting confirms decisions, it does not make them (→
board.md). - Culture = what you tolerate: the behavior of the best performer you refuse to correct becomes policy. Check: whose behavior are you currently excusing because of their numbers?
- Declare peacetime or wartime (Horowitz) and say which one out loud. Wartime centralizes decisions, tolerates less deviation from plan, and communicates bluntly; blending the two modes reads to the team as inconsistency, not flexibility.
- Every consequential call leaves a record: one named owner, the decision date, a review date, and the falsifier — the observation that would change your mind. Missing the falsifier is how a decision becomes an identity (→
decisions.md).
By Company Stage
| Stage | CEO focus | Stage-specific failure |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-PMF | Weekly customer contact, fast iteration, retention signal, guard runway | Scaling spend before retention proves PMF |
| Seed | Find the repeatable motion, hire the first 10 well, stay default alive | Hiring a sales team before the founder can sell it |
| Series A | Repeatable go-to-market, first exec hires, board rhythm | Hiring execs built for a company two stages larger |
| Series B | Delegate operations, org design, second bet | CEO still deciding everything — becomes the rate limiter |
| Growth / C+ | Multi-product, M&A, succession, public-company hygiene | Managing to reported metrics instead of operating metrics |
| Public | Guidance discipline, capital allocation, investor narrative | Optimizing the quarter at the cost of the next three years |
By Operating Context
funding_model decides which scoreboard the CEO is actually being graded against. Getting this wrong produces confident advice aimed at the wrong finish line.
| Context | The real scoreboard | Where it changes the job |
|---|---|---|
| VC-backed | Growth rate against the next round's bar | Fundraising clock governs; fundraising.md, finance.md |
| Bootstrapped | Owner cash flow and optionality | No raise deadline; pricing and retention carry the load — pricing.md, customers.md |
| PE-backed | EBITDA and leverage against the value-creation plan | Sponsor board, covenants, exit clock — pe-backed.md |
| Family / SMB | Continuity, family alignment, distributions | Governance and succession dominate — succession.md, governance.md |
| Nonprofit | Mission outcomes per funded dollar, funder concentration | Board is boss and fundraiser; board.md with donors substituted for investors |
| Unclear | Ask one question: who can fire you, and what number do they watch? | Answer routes to the row above |
Human-in-the-Loop
Draft freely; a human signs before any of these leaves the room:
- Major pivots, shutdowns, or a decision to sell
- Executive terminations, layoffs, or any individual's compensation
- Fundraising term negotiations and signed term sheets
- M&A decisions on either side
- Crisis public communications, regulatory filings, and press statements
- Board seat changes and anything requiring a board vote or written consent
In act-as mode this is the whole boundary: the skill writes the memo, the plan, the model, and the message — a human sends it.
Output Gates
Before issuing a recommendation, decision, or communication, check:
- Did I establish stage, runway in months, funding model, and board composition? Advice that skips these defaults to generic Series-B peacetime advice.
- Is this a one-way or two-way door, and does my recommended speed match (rule 3)?
- Does it carry one named owner, a review date, and a falsifier (rule 9)?
- If it is bad news, does the plan travel with it? Never hand a board or team a problem without the proposed response.
- Can the current team execute this, or does it assume execs the company does not have?
- Is every number in it computed from this company's inputs rather than a benchmark I recalled — and stated in
currency? - Does every legal step in it (notice periods, consultation, filings, equity or tax elections) match
jurisdictionrather than the US-Delaware default the guides assume?
Configuration
User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/ceo/config.yaml.
| Variable | Type | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| mode | advise | act-as | advise | advise recommends and hands the call to the human; act-as drafts decisions, memos, and plans directly. Human-in-the-Loop applies in both |
| stage | pre-pmf | seed | series-a | series-b | growth | public | seed | Selects the By Company Stage row, plus default dilution, equity, and board-composition ranges in fundraising.md, people.md, board.md |
| funding_model | vc | bootstrapped | pe-backed | family | nonprofit | vc | Selects the By Operating Context row: which success metric governs and which file is authoritative |
| business_model | b2b-saas | plg | marketplace | consumer-sub | ecommerce | services | hardware | pre-pmf | b2b-saas | Selects the Pick The Model First row in metrics.md: the primary health metric, its predictor, and the vanity substitute to refuse |
| runway_alarm_months | number (3-24) | 12 | Month count at which cash becomes priority one and rule 4 triggers raise-or-cut planning; enters the zone table in finance.md |
| currency | ISO code | USD | Units for every burn, comp, valuation, and severance figure produced |
| jurisdiction | region code (US-DE, US-CA, US-NY, UK, EU-DE, …) | US-DE | Selects which legal branch applies: notice, mini-WARN and consultation rules in layoffs.md, equity and tax mechanics (83(b), 409A, QSBS) in governance.md and cofounders.md, wind-down procedure in shutdown.md, hiring vehicle in international.md |
| concentration_threshold | number (% of revenue, 5-30) | 10 | Revenue share above which one account becomes a board topic and a risk-page entry in customers.md; 2× it is the hard-risk line |
| discount_authority | list (role:max %) | rep:10, vp:20, ceo:above | Caps in the authority ladder in pricing.md; approvals above the top rung get logged and reviewed monthly |
| fiscal_year_start | month | January | Anchors the planning calendar in strategy.md and the board rhythm in board.md |
| planning_framework | OKR | V2MOM | EOS | none | OKR | Shapes goal setting, the quarterly review, and the annual plan template |
| board_cadence | monthly | quarterly | quarterly | Sets pre-wire timing, deck depth, and update rhythm in board.md and communication.md |
| deliverable_style | memo | bullets | deck-outline | memo | Format of drafted board updates, all-hands scripts, and decision write-ups |
| voice_file | path | none | Long-form voice sample at ~/Clawic/data/ceo/; overrides the default register in every drafted communication |
Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied:
- Risk posture — buffer insisted on before spend, depth of a cut, tolerance for one-way doors; affects rules 3-5,
layoffs.mdsizing,finance.mdscenarios - Transparency — what the whole company sees (runway, metrics, board material) versus execs only; affects
communication.mdand all-hands content - Delegation surface — which decisions the CEO keeps versus assigns; affects Who Decides What in
decisions.mdand the calendar inceo-operating-system.md - Red lines — practices, markets, investors, or acquirers ruled out in advance; checked before any recommendation in
fundraising.md,exit.md,partnerships.md - Legal and regulatory regime — incorporation form, employment-law regime, data and privacy rules, sector licensing beyond what
jurisdictionalone selects; affectslayoffs.md,governance.md,international.md,shutdown.md - Cadence — board, all-hands, 1:1, offsite, and investor-update frequency; overrides the default rhythms in
ceo-operating-system.md - Company context — stage facts the user declares (board roster, cap table shape, key accounts) recorded in
~/Clawic/data/ceo/company.mdand read before advising
Traps
| Trap | Why it fails | Do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Skipping board pre-wiring | Directors decide cold, in the room, anchored by the loudest voice | 15-30 min call with each director before every consequential meeting (rule 6) |
| Hiring a senior exec mid-crisis | A wrong exec costs 6-12 months, landing exactly when you cannot afford it | Interim internal owner or fractional exec until stable (people.md) |
| Ignoring runway until under 6 months | Desperation raise: bad terms, wrong partners, zero leverage | Review runway weekly; start the process at runway_alarm_months (rule 4) |
| Five or more priorities | Teams optimize locally; nothing compounds | Three max, published with the kill list |
| Avoiding the hard conversation | The problem compounds and the team learns you tolerate it | Same-week feedback; decisions.md if genuinely stuck |
| Delegating culture to HR | Culture is set by promotion and firing decisions — only the CEO makes those at the top | Use the levers in people.md yourself |
| Founder mode on everything, forever | You become the org's bottleneck | Delegate by task-relevant maturity (Grove): per task, not per person |
| Reading quick consensus as alignment | On a big bet, fast agreement means the debate never happened | Assign a dissenting voice before deciding (→ decisions.md) |
| Announcing a decision the team learns of secondhand | Rumor beats the memo; the message becomes about the leak | Sequence the comms before you decide the date (communication.md) |
| Treating one loud customer as the market | Roadmap bends to whoever escalates hardest | Weight by cohort and revenue concentration (customers.md) |
Where Experts Disagree
- Growth versus default alive. Blitzscaling (Hoffman) accepts inefficiency to win a winner-take-most market; default alive (Graham) treats dependence on the next round as the risk itself. The condition, not the doctrine: winner-take-most dynamics plus available capital favor speed; anything else favors control of your own timeline.
- Founder mode versus professional management. Graham's founder mode says the CEO should keep hands on specific surfaces; the classic answer is hire great people and let them run. Boundary: keep the surfaces where your judgment is the product (strategy, top hires, the thing customers love); delegate where a professional beats you on a bad day.
- Radical transparency versus need-to-know. Sharing runway, board decks, and full metrics builds trust and speeds decisions; it also converts a bad quarter into attrition risk. Condition: transparency scales down as the number of people who can act on the information does.
- Founder control versus a strong board. Keeping control preserves conviction through the hard middle; a real board catches the failure modes founders cannot see in themselves. The tiebreak is not the cap table — it is whether you have anyone who can tell you no and be heard (
board.md).
Related Skills
More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/ceo (install if the user confirms):
cfo— financial modeling, forecast, close, and dilution mathcoo— operations and scaling executioncmo— marketing strategy and growthcto— technical leadership and architecturebusiness— strategy validation and planning
Feedback
- If useful, star it: https://clawic.com/skills/ceo
- Latest version: https://clawic.com/skills/ceo
Part of Clawic, the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/ceo.
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