Amp It Up

18Just for CEOs—Dealing with Founders and Boards

This chapter features two special topics that matter most for CEOs and those who advise them—but it also offers insights for those who are below the CEO level yet aspire to reach it someday.

The Challenge of Succeeding a Founder

There's an ongoing debate about the value of retaining start‐up founders as CEOs as their companies grow. In Silicon Valley at least, the pendulum has swung in recent years in favor of founders. Some of the most successful companies in history continued to be led by founders for many years: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, and so on. But these examples don't account for the many start‐ups that were later run into the ground by their founders. So there's no one‐size‐fits‐all solution; some founders make great CEOs, some don't. In general, it's easier to find a start‐up founder with good ideas than an operator to execute those ideas to their fullest potential. It's even rarer to find someone who combines both skill sets.

If you are a CEO but not a founder, you may have experienced the discomfort of having to take over from an illustrious trailblazer. I've had to do this several times, as an operator brought in to help each company advance. Some founders have no CEO ambition whatsoever, which makes the transition easier; such was the case for me at Data Domain and Snowflake. Other times, a founder was CEO for a long time and is reluctant to hand over the reins; such was ...