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ceo

Founding CEO succession

on Sun, 11/18/2012 - 04:30

In both my venture-backed companies I was founding CEO; but wasn't CEO forever. The data says this is quite typical. Noam Wasserman's book The Founder's Dilemmas, cites the following statistics out of 3,600+ startups surveyed (9,900 founders) over 10 years:

Percentage of startups still being led by the Founder-CEO
  Founding A-round B-round C-round D-round
On 3rd (or more ) CEO 0% 6% 9% 17% 23%
On 2nd CEO 0% 19% 29% 35% 38%
Founder still CEO 100% 75% 62% 48% 39%

If you're a founding CEO, what should you think about this?