Scale Yourself: Why Great Founders Don’t Always Make Great CEOs
Dorothy Spence, Founder of Imaginal Ventures, shares her opinions on founders being CEOs.
If you don’t know the name Bill Rasmussen, don’t feel bad. He’s not a household name, even though the revolutionary company that he founded is an iconic global brand. So why doesn’t everyone know who he is? The answer is simple: in 1980, two years after he founded ESPN, he was pushed out of the company that he had created. And over the last 40 years, Rasmussen, who is now nearly 90 years old, has watched from the sidelines as his brainchild has gone from fledgling upstart to worldwide behemoth.
The business world is littered with tens of thousands of Bill Rasmussens—founders who had the vision and the tenacity to create companies but were ultimately unable to lead them to success. No entrepreneurs ever dream that they will be pushed out of their own companies, but that’s actually the norm, rather than the exception. In fact, few founding CEOs are still at the helm when their companies receive a series B funding. That’s because the skills that are required to get a company moving are not the same ones that create long-term success. Even the much-lionized Steve Jobs spent 20 years in the wilderness before Apple invited him back to save the company.
So how can founders who want to remain in control of their companies stay ahead of the curve and keep themselves from getting sidelined as their organizations grow? It starts with the recognition that the skills and capabilities that it takes to start a company are different from the ones it takes to run a company. But when you break that down even further, it takes completely different abilities to run a five-person company, a 20-person company, a 100-person company, and a thousand-person company. That’s why a founding CEO who is used to being in complete control of every aspect of his or her business may not be the right fit as a company scales up because the delegation and management skills just aren’t there.
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