The only nitpicky note I have is that Elon Musk was NOT a founder of Tesla. He was brought in after - even though it was a year after (small time span).
PS - both of my successful exits were Pro-CEOs but with the founders still present in some capacity.
OK but this ignores the (very) large universe of Founder CEOs who crashed and burned. Sure there are founders who are capable CEOs - and more power to them - but it ignores the many failures.
Secondly professional CEOs generally come in much later - and also typically when the company is in some degree of distress (otherwise why replace the founder?) - so benchmarking them against founder CEOs on metrics such as growth rate doesn't really seem valid.
Chris, I appreciate the well though out perspective. Thank you for reading.
There certainly is some survivorship bias. But that cuts both ways. There are a lot of professional CEOs who come in around series C and never make it to IPO.
I don't agree that professional CEOs only come in when there is a problem. I've seen many come in when there is untapped potential (they can go EVEN BIGGER) or the original founder wants to go back to what they enjoy - building product - and get away from the day to day admin.
The only nitpicky note I have is that Elon Musk was NOT a founder of Tesla. He was brought in after - even though it was a year after (small time span).
PS - both of my successful exits were Pro-CEOs but with the founders still present in some capacity.
Great call out. I learned that about Elon after the fact
Fascinating read CJ.
And props on the Pinkman quote 😀
Thanks for noticing. He’s my spirit animal
OK but this ignores the (very) large universe of Founder CEOs who crashed and burned. Sure there are founders who are capable CEOs - and more power to them - but it ignores the many failures.
Secondly professional CEOs generally come in much later - and also typically when the company is in some degree of distress (otherwise why replace the founder?) - so benchmarking them against founder CEOs on metrics such as growth rate doesn't really seem valid.
Chris, I appreciate the well though out perspective. Thank you for reading.
There certainly is some survivorship bias. But that cuts both ways. There are a lot of professional CEOs who come in around series C and never make it to IPO.
I don't agree that professional CEOs only come in when there is a problem. I've seen many come in when there is untapped potential (they can go EVEN BIGGER) or the original founder wants to go back to what they enjoy - building product - and get away from the day to day admin.