Most founders dream of the day they’ll scale to a massive team and — from iteration to big success — retain their throne as CEO.
Unfortunately, that kind of thinking isn’t always best for the company: new research shows that, more often than not, companies run by founders are “less productive and more poorly managed” than those which bring in outside CEOs.
Not everyone’s a Bezos or a Branson
The study, from business school professors at Duke, Vanderbilt, and Harvard, examined data from 13k companies across 32 countries and found that founder-led businesses were an average of 9.4% less productive and were rated lower on management satisfaction.
“Founder CEOs,” wrote one of the paper’s co-authors, “were by far the worst type of CEO.”
But… but I’m a good leader!
It’s actually pretty rare for founders to remain on as CEO as their company grows: a separate study found that only 25% of them remain on as CEO by the time of an IPO.
Turns out, investors don’t like going all in on companies that are too reliant on one person’s talents. Being a good founder and a good CEO require two completely different skillsets.
A lot of startup founders suffer from what’s called the “rich versus king” dilemma: they toggle between wanting control and wanting profit. And unfortunately, control often wins.