#GlueCon 2013 Notes: Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic

Keynote: Confessions of a Tech CEO Who Still Loves to Code Everyday – Lew Cirne, New Relic

• New Relic was a “Do Over”, now has 50k customers, 250 employees, 3 offices, 100 billion metrics a day, $115M in financing
• “I don’t do typical CEO stuff”
• The last company he felt that he had to do certain things and be a certain type of person, now he does what he skilled and loves to do, redefining the CEO role within the organization
• Last year, released New Relic for Mobile Apps
• Working the last 3 months with 4 developers to build the next product in a cabin near Mount Hood
• New product announcement next month
• Lew’s github commits show when he was raising money and when he was building software and inspiring engineers
• “Developers are the new CEOs”
• 4 Lessons learned along the way:
  • Lesson 1: Surround yourself with exception people
    • They need to love to do what they do, have complementary skill sets, and that can execute while you are away developing product
    • Mondays at 9:30am has a standing meeting with his leaders, perhaps an occasional meeting with others – they handle the rest of the execution
  • Lesson 2: Do what you love
    • Find complementary skills so that you can do what you love and are good at
    • Trust those around you to fill in the gaps and provide time to do what you love
  • Lesson 3: Don’t be afraid to re-invent often
    • Even your own platform, API, or career
    • In his last company, he said ‘yes’ to all people when they dangled checks in front of him
    • At New Relic, chose to skip customization, reduce friction on the front-end interface/experience
  • Lesson 4: Disrupt yourself
    • Apple launched Nano and killed the Mini (the #1 product on the market)
    • This requires supporting people around you (team, board of directors)
• They are trying to create an evergreen growth engine that builds new products before people need them
• This should reduce time while increasing revenue
• CEOs should focus on producint this revenue with their time/skills (via code for developer CEOs)
• This requires disrupting yourself, rather than slowing down and becoming complacent
• The results: His team is 2X more productive and worth 2X more than his last company

Update: The slides are now available