The CEO Funding Test
Ask 'if I were CEO, would I fully fund my own team?' to expose whether your work is survivable.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 95%
A single provocative question that forces a product team to evaluate its own existence from the perspective of the person who signs the checks. If you cannot confidently answer yes, you have identified an existential risk before the next round of layoffs identifies it for you. LeMay uses it as a perspective shift, not a gotcha.
Origin
Developed by Matt LeMay across his consulting practice with hundreds of product teams and articulated in his book 'Impact First Product Teams.' He frames it as the question he asks most teams first.
Core principles
- 01The existence of your team is not a 'righteous fact of the universe' — it is an investment decision someone can reverse
- 02If you (closest to the work) cannot answer the funding question, no one higher in the org can either
- 03Answering proactively and collaboratively beats waiting for someone to answer it 'at you' via layoffs
- 04A hesitant 'I think so' is itself the signal that action is needed
How to run it
- 1
Pose the question to yourself and the team
Ask literally: 'If you were the CEO of this company, would you fully fund your own team?' Sit with the discomfort rather than rationalizing.
Pro tip Watch for the tell — 'I think so' or 'yeah, yeah, yeah' with the gears visibly turning means the answer is really no.
- 2
Use the gentler reframe if the direct question feels confrontational
Ask instead: 'What's one sentence you'd want to be able to say at the end of this year that would leave you feeling awesome about this team's work?' Imagine running into the CEO in the hallway.
Pro tip You'll get very different answers from different team members — that divergence is the raw material for alignment.
- 3
Convert a shaky answer into concrete changes
If the team can't answer confidently, ask: do we need to change our purview, our goals, or who we talk to? Turn the anxiety into a specific list of adjustments.
Watch out Do not stop at diagnosing the discomfort — an unanswered funding question that produces no change is just a scarier status quo.
In the wild
LeMay describes his own former mindset as a PM: he believed his job was to find the next most defensible thing to build, build it, celebrate, repeat forever, assuming his team would 'always be there for all time.' It never crossed his mind that someone might look at his team on a spreadsheet and ask 'who are these very expensive people, do we actually need them?' because he was never in the room for those conversations.
→ Recognizing this blind spot became the founding insight for asking teams the funding question so they confront the spreadsheet view before someone else does.
Common mistakes
Assuming assigned work must be important
LeMay assumed that if he was given 'work around the work' it must be critical, otherwise they wouldn't have hired him. He calls this an unsafe assumption — being assigned a task is not evidence the task matters to the business.
Treating the question as rhetorical
The value is in actually answering it with the team and acting on a weak answer. Asking it, feeling briefly uncomfortable, and moving on changes nothing and leaves the underlying risk intact.
Is it for you?
Best for
Individual product managers and teams at medium-to-large or non-tech companies who fear layoffs and are unsure whether their work is business-critical.
Not ideal for
Teams that already have a crisp, revenue-linked answer to why they exist and simply need execution help.
From the transcript
“if you were the CEO of this company, would you fully fund your own team?”
“frankly, most of the people I ask that question to don't know the answer right away”
“the idea that my team came at a cost to the business that at some point somebody might look at my team on a spreadsheet…”
“What's one sentence you'd want to be able to say at the end of this year that would leave you feeling awesome about this team's…”
From the episode
The one question that saves product careers
Matt LeMay