The document discusses factors to consider regarding leadership transitions from a founder-CEO to a successor CEO. It notes that founder-CEOs are well-suited to the early stages of a startup due to their vision and commitment, but professional CEOs can help scale the business. The key is determining when is the right time for a transition based on where the business is in its lifecycle and what capabilities are needed. It recommends mapping opportunities against capabilities to evaluate whether continuing with a founder-CEO or bringing in an outsider is best to capture opportunities and build the needed capabilities.

1. Executive Brief
Successful Founder CEOs evolve
capabilities and opportunities
Professional CEOs can take a great idea that is established by the entrepreneur to
scale by building process, bringing in their experience of running large organizations,
their influencing capabilities, their network, industry knowledge and financial
sophistication. But can they keep the vision of the founder, their comprehensive
knowledge, moral authority and total commitment to the long term? This is essentially
the decision that both entrepreneurs and investors must consider before looking at
leadership through the life cycle of a start up
Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, a successful founder CEO, offers that professional CEOs
should be brought in early enough so they share the commitment to the startup, which
provides them with the edge that entrepreneurs have along with their own strengths.
However, the ‘choice of early enough’ timing and fit requires a Capability-Opportunity
framework. A clear and detailed diagnosis of current state of capabilities and
opportunities related to startup, a guiding view of opportunities and a clear plan of
coherent action for building capabilities needed to achieve the optimal mix of
opportunities – These are the guiding principles required to support a decision on
continuing with a founder-CEO or bringing in a successor-CEO
Founder /
Experienced
CEO
Founder
CEOs
Experienced
CEO
Founder /
Experienced
CEO
Opportunity
Capability

2. FOUNDER CEO VERSUS SUCCESSOR CEO
CHOICESAND TRANSITION
GSBA 543
Managerial Perspectives and
Leadership
Prof. Carl W. Voigt
Team 9
Team Leader : Alse, Deepak
Pannu, Jasdeep
Shiota, Saburo
Su, Sam
Yildirok, Ece
Yu, Edison

3. Startups have a lifecycle
Start-up businesses go through a life-cycle of launch, growth, innovation, and maturity
for the first time as organizations. They are at the phase of business where
entrepreneurs first have the genesis of a business idea and then set about to execute it.
Entrepreneurs must do this by leading the idea through the processes of discovery,
validation, efficiency and scale. Initially the entrepreneur must function as the CEO of the
start-up (and very often perform many other functions before a team is put together), but
through these stages there is a choice to transition leadership.

4. And leaderships transitions
happen within the lifecycle.
Our approach to understanding factors behind the leadership transition choices at a
startup took the following factors into consideration
• Establish the role of the Founder and CEO through the lifecycle of a start up
• Discuss why there is a difference between typical CEO transitions and the case of
Founder/Startup CEO
• Consider the events leading to a Founder-CEO versus successor CEO choice and
transition during key points in the lifecycle
• Analyse the data that exists on success and failure factors of such choice.
• Look at analytical frameworks for the choice.
• Propose the ‘Capability-Opportunity’ map and look at the leaps needed from the
CEO we choose.

5. From a garden to the farm
Success in the creative startup phase depends on two factors
• Product & Market emphasis
• Clan type Control
As we move to beyond the startup into the phase of building an organisation, the
leader has to transition from operating through control to operating through
involvement and empowerment. Greiner et all, recommend that we should’ locate and
install a strong business manager who is acceptable to the founders and who can pull
the organization together ‘. However, in a rapidly changing environment, where
strategic choices, people leadership and execution of goals are tightly integrated, it is
tough to separate the goals are tightly integrated, it is tough to separate the
entrepreneurial founders from management of the business.
(L. Greiner, Cummings, & Bhambri, 2003)
A founder, especially in the early days, is the soul of the company. The initial spirit and
visionary who sees an opportunity in the market that few people around them can see,
until you turn it into a cash generating machine. And even though your card says CEO,
the organization really needs your founder magic to get off the ground.
Marc Barros, Entrepreneur

6. How’s the
Founder
CEO
succession
different ?
The decision regarding transitioning leadership, sometimes
is made by the entrepreneur themselves, but is usually
called for by other stakeholders such as the venture
capitalists who hold stock in the company and invest in it.
There are considerations regarding relevant capabilities,
experience and strengths through the stages of the lifecycle
all the way through (often) an IPO. At different stages,
different capabilities are called upon. Initially, the discovery
and validation of the idea is very often made by the
entrepreneur and these may require vision, product
knowledge and great communication abilities, but efficiency
and scale may require a different set of capabilities
altogether.
These decision points, along with the addition of
stakeholders along the way, make it critical for a leadership
transition to be considered. Should the entrepreneur
continue to lead the idea and the company into growth, scale
and past Greiner’s concept of five phases of growth for a
business? Or is there a need to bring in a CEO at a certain
stage to provide the right impetus to carry the organization
along the path of growth, competitive advantage and
success? The challenge is the hostile environment for
startups and the fractional chance of success overall - which
means every bit of advantage needs to be optimised to
increase the chances of success.
T h e
c r i ( c a l
differences
between
l a t e r -­‐ s t a g e
s u c c e s s i o n
a n d
F o u n d e r -­‐ C E O
succession
include
the
higher
level
of
a<achment
between
Founder-­‐CEOs
and
t h e
fi r m s
t h e y
create,
the
much
l a r g e r
e q u i t y
holdings
of
Founder-­‐
CEOs
(which
give
them
much
more
control
of
the
firm),
the
fact
that
many
F o u n d e r -­‐ C E O s
remain
in
the
firm
(even
though
it
is
being
run
by
their
successors),
and
the
fact
that
nearly
all
e a r l y -­‐ s t a g e
succession
events
i n v o l v e
o u t s i d e
successors
(in
contrast
to
later-­‐
stage
succession
research,
which
has
focused
on
the
insider-­‐outsider)
(Wasserman,
2003)

7. The Founder’s Dilemma
Noam Wasserman notes that successful Founder-CEOs are a rare breed and “…fewer
than 25% led their companies’ initial public offerings.” (In an analysis of 212 American
start-ups in the late 1990s and early 2000s). He also notes that Founders don’t transition
easily. “Four out of five entrepreneurs, my research shows, are forced to step down from
the CEO’s post. Most are shocked when investors insist that they relinquish control, and
they’re pushed out of office in ways they don’t like and well before they want to
abdicate.”
The reason investors bring in professional CEOs is to lead the company through the
project to the process stage, argues Derek Lidow in his article on entrepreneurship
(Surviving a Start-Up’s Transition from Projects to Processes), which entrepreneurs can
find difficult to do. The entrepreneurs themselves have a choice to make an efficient
transition of leadership depending on their choice of control against cash .

8. Show me the money or
show me the product!
Noam Wasserman found two events central to the Founder-CEO succession
• Completion of Product Development
• Raising of each round of financing from outside investors.
Product development and roadmap aspects are primarily a product strategy concern that
combines creative skills in understanding customers, buyers and markets in conjunction
with technological evolution. Financing aspects show how the business model of the
enterprise is evolving to generate value for its various stakeholders. Only founder CEOs
cross the “Valley of Death” but the capabilities required after funding are different.
In essence, the Founder-CEO succession question is largely about who is to be trusted
with the severe accountabilities of an evolving enterprise.
…and then you can go !

9. 40% of startups continue
with Founder-CEOs
Founder CEOs have the advantage of founding vision, the influence they have built in
their organization and ownership stakes. However, 30% to 50% of firms go into an IPO
with a non-founder CEOs at the helm(Jain & Tabak, 2008). This can be attributed to
factors such as the influence of venture capitalists, founder personality and traits, size of
founding team, governance structure, ownership structure, independence of the top
management team and the size of equity financing within the firm. The challenge
however is only about a tenth of 1 percent (0.10%) of U.S. firms ever achieve revenues
of more than $250 million in sales. A tiny 0.036 percent will grow to reach $1 billion in
sales.

10. Founder-CEO firms tend to
outperform outsider-CEO firms
Eleven percent of the largest public U.S. firms are headed by the CEO who
founded the firm. Founder-CEO firms differ systematically from successor-
CEO firms with respect to firm valuation, investment behavior, and stock
market performance. Founder-CEO firms invest more in research and
development, have higher capital expenditures, and make more focused
mergers and acquisitions. An equal-weighted investment strategy that had
invested in founder-CEO firms from 1993 to 2002 would have earned a
benchmark-adjusted return of 8.3% annually. The excess return is robust;
after controlling for a wide variety of firm characteristics, CEO
characteristics, and industry affiliation, the abnormal return is still 4.4%
annually
Companies where Founders
continued as CEOs beyond
startup phase
• Scott Cook- Intuit
• Mark Zuckerberg -Facebook
• James Goodnight – SAS
• Stephen Wolfram – Wolfram.
Companies where outsiders
became CEOs
• Dick Costolo – Twitter
• Michael Scott - Apple

11. Some industries even have
higher ratio of founder CEOs
The results indicate that founder characteristics, governance structure, ownership
structure, and extent of VC influence are all influential in determining the likelihood of
founder CEO at IPO. There seems to be a negative relationship between founder age
and probability of founder CEO at IPO. For founder CEO firms, 62% of founders have
career experiences in marketing/sales and product R&D functions compared to 45% of
founders for non-founder CEO IPO firms.The mean size of the founding team for founder
CEO firms is 1.61 compared to 1.08 for non-founder CEO firms – Founder CEOs who
remain CEOs at IPO tend to have larger founding teams.Greater the number of board
seats occupied by VCs, the lower the probability of founder CEO at IPO.
(Jain & Tabak, 2008)

12. Can we understand the
transition and its challenge ?
Though Greiner, Bhambri et all, built the 4-D transformation model from a large
corporation CEO perspective, it has substantial applicability in context of the Founder
CEO versus Outsider-CEO. The environmental slack and organizational receptivity
tradeoff will often decide if attempts to replace a founder-CEO with successor CEO will
be successful. Of special interest from a CEO choice perspective, is the ‘CEO Action
Orientation’ aspect of the 4-D model. Throughout the phases of growth, CEOs need to
demonstrate different behaviours and capabilities to keep growing the organisation.
Professional CEOs with experience have often dealt with these cycles either in partly
mature organizations or with other startups. Founder CEOs find that they need to
learn, be flexible and evolve through the various stages from product to process.

13. Do we know
if the founder
CEO suffers
from the
effects of five
frictions ?
W h e n
e n t r e p r e n e u r i a l
leaders fail to keep
p a c e w i t h t h e i r
companies, it is
often not due to their
weaknesses, but
rather an overuse of
their strengths. Their
intense drive and
ability to juggle a lot
of balls at once and
q u i c k l y c h a n g e
d i r e c t i o n s , s o
important in the early
s t a g e s o f
development, can, if
n o t r e c o g n i z e d ,
undermine them in
later stages.
Mcfarland, Keith R.
(2008-01-15). The
Breakthrough
Company: How
Everyday
Companies Become
Extraordinary
Performers (Kindle
Locations 865-867).
The Doubleday
Religious Publishing
Group. Kindle
Edition.
Founder-CEOs can retain advantage only provided they
upgrade capabilities and if the imperative is driven by
innovation and product superiority
. When the firm enters the stages where the core focus in
management and financial science as well as investor
confidence, professional CEOs retain an edge. Founders
flourish in an environment of long term vision and constant
product innovation (such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s
refusal to carry banner ads for short term financial gain,
leading to less intrusive and more contextual advertising,
with far greater payoffs and consumer acceptance -
therefore continued growth. Facebook also kept reinventing
its critical Newsfeed algorithms to stay relevant. A Founder
CEOs ability to identify five frictions and stay ahead of those
while retaining a core product and market focus, will place
him/her in a position of advantage.

14. Get Out and come back
Strategic imperatives of the transition from
entrepreneur to Founder CEO
• Capture and grow market
• Adapt with the constantly evolving early-stage
market
• Scale the organization and its operations
• Shift from low cost focus to optimum costs
focus.
• Creating structural speed advantage
• Build the organization and orchestrate its
culture
The CEO who takes up this challenge will
• Need to have the courage to make choice
between the strategic imperatives
• Set the agenda on how progress will be
achieved and others
• Enable his team to evolve from entrepreneurial
instincts to structural agility.
• Network and influence to generate ideas as
well as energy within the organisation while
bringing people and ideas from outside into a
growing enterprise.
……Or Stay on and learn

15. Insider or outsider – It is
capabilities and opportunities
that matter
The choice of a founder-CEO versus successor CEO is guided by two questions
• Where do we want to be?
• What do we have and what do we need to build?
Our scan of the situation as well as prior research has evolved into a ‘Capability-
Opportunity’ map that recommends factors and scenarios to consider when making a
choice between Founder CEO and Outsider-CEO
Founder /
Experienced
CEO
Founder
CEOs
Experienced
CEO
Founder /
Experienced
CEO
Opportunity
Capability
Defined
Evolving
Evolving
Defined

16. Consider your organizational
and current CEO capability
The Opportunity scale focuses attention on what the firm needs to have/build to go from
being a startup firm to an enterprise.
• Cultural Transitions
• Power Structure and Distribution of Equity
• Organization Design
• CEO’s interpersonal skills and the ability to transition from Control to collaboration.
– Ability to ask the questions that will transform his/her team
– Ability to learn and adapt
• Competencies
– Market and channels
– Process
– Resource
– Geographical
The Opportunity scale focuses attention on what the firm needs to achieve as it goes
from being a startup firm to an enterprise.
• Market definition
• Clarity of Business model
• Competitive Landscape
• Growth rates
………..then choose the CEO who
captures opportunity

17. Twitter tells us a story about
leaders in startups
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and
Noah Glass. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with more than 100 million
users who in 2012 posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion
search queries per day. In 2013 Twitter was one of the ten most-visited websites, and
has been described as "the SMS of the Internet”. As of February 2015, Twitter has more
than 288 million monthly active users.
Jack Dorsey, the Founder CEO, was named by MIT as one of the top 35 innovators in
the world under the age of 35. He is talented at identifying and pursuing ideas and
innovations. For example, when he first saw implementations of instant messaging,
Dorsey wondered whether the software's user status output could be shared among
friends easily. Dorsey and Biz Stone decided that SMS text suited the status message
idea, and built a prototype of Twitter in about two weeks. Dorsey started as the CEO
and oversaw the startup through two rounds of capital funding by the venture capitalists
who backed the company. Dorsey played the part of a Founder CEO working towards a
win with a creative idea that fits a new opportunity and can be pursued relentlessly with
the agility of a small size company. The company’s strategy and execution plans relied
on his idea of the "the SMS of the Internet” during this early stage.
Jack Dorsey
• Founder CEO
• 2006-2008
• Great Idea – Inconsistent
Product
Evan
Williams
• Product CEO
• 2008-2010
• Better Product – No
Business Model
Dick
Costolo
• Business CEO
• 2010-Current
• Evolving business
model with a
defined market

18. Alook at Twitter
Evan Williams:
Williams is co-founder of Twitter. In 2008, William took over the role of CEO from Jack
who wanted to focus attention on this other early stage ideas like Square Inc etc.
Williams is an experienced serial entrepreneur who has founded several companies and
worked in Google.
Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan co-founded Pyra Labs to make project management
software, a note-taking feature spun off as Blogger, one of the first web applications for
creating and managing weblogs. Williams invented the term "blogger" and was
instrumental in the popularization of the term "blog". Pyra survived the departure of
Hourihan and other employees, and was eventually acquired by Google on February 13,
2003. In 2003, Williams was named to the MIT Technology Review as one of the top 100
innovators in the world under the age of 35. Williams left Google in October 2004 to co-
found Odeo, a podcasting company. In April 2007, Odeo was acquired by Sonic
Mountain. While, Williams is creative in ways similar to Jack, he has more
entrepreneurial experience that makes him a suitable person who can take over Jack
Dorsey’s role and grow beyond the startup stage.
Dick Costolo is the current CEO of Twitter and was the COO of Twitter. On 4 October
2010, Williams stepped down from the CEO position to completely focus on product
strategy. Dick Costolo took over the role of CEO at Twitter. He had started his career as
a consultant at Andersen Consulting for seven years. He had also previously been on
the founding team of the web feed management provider FeedBurner. After Google
bought FeedBurner in 2007, Dick Costolo became an employee of the search giant. After
the acquisition, Costolo began working in other areas of Google. Dick is an example of
someone who has gone through various stages of the entrepreneurial cycle in varied
roles. Moreover, Costolo also worked as a COO of Twitter. At this stage, Twitter needed
someone who can focus resources on big bets, build structure and systems essential to
a pre-IPO and post-IPO enterprise and collaborate with the product strategist, Evan
Williams, in growing a sustainable business model around Twitter as a product and
platform. In 2013, Business Insider referred to him as "one of Silicon Valley's most
impressive CEOs”, and TIME Magazine named him one of the 10 Most Influential U.S.
Tech CEOs. (1)
Twitter is a prime example of how changing opportunities and capabilities
influence CEO choice. As it has evolved from an idea to a product and a business
enterprise, it has needed a CEO change to adapt and succeed. Each of Twitter’s
CEOs has an entrepreneurial background but their roles have primarily centered
around the capabilities they were able to bring to the table and the opportunities
they chose to pursue.

19. CEOs growing a startup
need to bridge a transition
A clear and detailed diagnosis of current state of capabilities
and opportunities related to startup, a guiding view of t
opportunities and a clear plan of coherent action for building
capabilities needed to achieve the optimal mix of
opportunities – These are the guiding principles required to
support a decision on continuing with a founder-CEO or
bringing in a successor-CEO
Small/Mid-Size Entrepreneurial Enterprise
Leader is Sovereign Organization is Sovereign
Strategy as adaptation
Focus resources on a few big
bets
Character Reflects Tribal Clan Systematic Character Building
Win because we’re small
Win through structural
advantages
Rely on our own ideas
Incorporate the best outside
ideas
Build commitment for the vision
Question fundamental
assumptions
Mcfarland, Keith R. (2008-01-15). The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become
Extraordinary Performers (Kindle Location 420). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle
Edition.

20. For Further Reading
• Fahlenbrach, R. (2009). Founder-CEOs, Investment Decisions, and Stock Market
Performance. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 44(02), 439. doi:
10.1017/S0022109009090139
• Greiner, L., Cummings, T., & Bhambri, A. (2003). When New CEOs Succeed and Fail:
Organizational Dynamics, 32(1), 1–16. doi:10.1016/S0090-2616(02)00134-1
• Greiner, L. E. (1998). Evolution and revolution as organizations grow. 1972. Harvard
Business Review, 76. doi:10.1111/j.1741-6248.1997.00397.x
• Jain, B. A., & Tabak, F. (2008). Factors influencing the choice between founder versus
non-founder CEOs for IPO firms. Journal of Business Venturing, 23, 21–45. doi:
10.1016/j.jbusvent.2005.11.001
• Rumelt, R. P. (1995). Inertia and Transformation. In Resource-Based and Evolutionary
Theories of the Enterprise: Towards a Synthesis (pp. 101–132). doi:
10.1007/978-1-4615-2201-0
• Wasserman, N. (2003). Founder-CEO Succession and the Paradox of Entrepreneurial
Success. Organization Science. doi:10.1287/orsc.14.2.149.14995
• Mcfarland, Keith R. (2008-01-15). The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday
Companies Become Extraordinary Performers
• (1) http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/instagram-now-has-more-users-than-twitter
• http://mashable.com/2010/10/04/twitter-down-again/
• "Innovator of the Year Awards". WSJ. Magazine (Dow Jones). 2012. Retrieved March
18, 2013.
• http%3A//www.matthewmckinnon.ca/kingoftheblogs.html&r=http%3A//
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Williams_%28Internet_entrepreneur%29
• http://www.justintimemanagement.com/the-7-stages-of-business-life-cycle
• h<p://reidhoffman.org/if-­‐why-­‐and-­‐how-­‐founders-­‐should-­‐hire-­‐a-­‐professional-­‐ceo/
• h<ps://hbr.org/2014/03/surviving-­‐a-­‐start-­‐ups-­‐transi(on-­‐from-­‐projects-­‐to-­‐processes/
• Rumelt, Inertia and Transformation, 1995.