The Founder Conundrum: Why Leaders are Rethinking the Move to Founder-Led Companies

In the past 12 months, we’ve seen an uptick in searches to replace founder/CEOs with professional managers who have experience growing a business. If you haven’t already seen it, check out Paul Graham’s latest post, “Founder Mode”. While Paul looks at the challenges that founder/CEOs face, we wanted to dig deeper into a different perspective and ask, “What do candidates think?” It’s fair to discuss what is lost and what is gained when a founder retains their leadership of a growing and scaling company — and we’ll let you peruse Medium and LinkedIn for all of those hot takes. But what about the perspective of their teams and the trusted leaders they will inevitably need to hire as they grow? Our hunch is that behind every Steve Jobs is a Tim Cook … and the “Tim” perspective is one that should not be lost in this discourse. With this hunch, we took to our network to ask the question, “Do leaders even want to work for founders any more?” Download the whitepaper to read our findings and some key takeaways for candidates, founders, CEOs, and investors.