384 lines
18 KiB
Markdown
384 lines
18 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2015-01-15T05:13:47.000Z'
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title: Why we prefer founding CEOs (2010)
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url: http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos
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author: dsaw
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points: 99
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 19
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1421298827
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_dsaw
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- story_8891009
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objectID: '8891009'
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year: 2010
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---
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> “You’re just a rent-a-rapper, your rhymes are minute-maid
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> I’ll be here when it fade to watch you flip like a renegade”
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> —Rakim, [Follow the
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> Leader](http://genius.com/Rakim-follow-the-leader-lyrics)
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When my partner Marc wrote his [post describing our
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firm](http://blog.pmarca.com/2009/07/introducing-our-new-venture-capital-firm-andreessen-horowitz.html),
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the most controversial component of our investment strategy was our
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preference for founding CEOs. The conventional wisdom says a startup CEO
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should make way for a professional CEO once the company has achieved
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product-market fit. In this post, I describe why we prefer to fund
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companies whose founder will run the company as its
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CEO.
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## The macro reason: that’s the way most of the great technology companies have been built
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At Andreessen Horowitz, our primary goal is to invest in the great
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technology franchises. As we looked at the history of great technology
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companies, we discovered that founders ran an overwhelming majority of
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them for a very long time, including:
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- Acer—Stan Shih
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- Adobe—John Warnock
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- Amazon – Jeff Bezos
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- AMD—Jerry Sanders III
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- Apple – Steve Jobs
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- DEC—Ken Olsen
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- Dell—Michael Dell
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- EA—Trip Hawkins
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- EDS —Ross Perot
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- Hewlett-Packard—Dave Packard
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- IBM—Thomas Watson, Sr. (\*)
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- Intel—Andy Grove (\*)
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- Intuit—Scott Cook
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- Microsoft —Bill Gates
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- Motorola—Paul Galvin
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- nVidia—Jen-Hsun Huang
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- Oracle—Larry Ellison
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- Peoplesoft—Dave Duffield
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- Salesforce.com—Marc Benioff
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- Seagate—Al Shugart
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- Siebel—Tom Siebel
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- Sony—Akio Morita
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- Sun—Scott McNeely
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- VMware—Diane Greene
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(\*) While not technically cofounders, Andy Grove and Thomas Watson, Sr.
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were the driving force behind Intel and IBM, respectively. Andy Grove
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was Intel’s third employee (after the two cofounders Robert Noyce and
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Gordon E. Moore). Thomas Watson, Sr. joined as a General Manager of the
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Computing Tabulating Recording Company, but renamed the company
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International Business Machines and turned it into the IBM we recognize
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today.
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In addition, founders run today’s most promising new companies such as
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Zynga (Mark Pincus), Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), Twitter (Ev Williams),
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Workday (Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri) and Fusion-io (David Flynn).
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Two more quick data points before I move on to explain why this happens.
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First, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business just
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published an [analysis of recent exits for high technology
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companies](http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/enabletech/2010/04/28/ugc-founding-vs-professional-ceo-performance-analysis/)
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such as BlackBoard, BladeLogic, Concur, Danger, Liveperson, LogMeIn, and
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Netsuite. Looking across these nearly 50 companies, the study finds that
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founding CEOs consistently beat the professional CEOs on a broad range
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of metrics ranging from capital efficiency (amount of funding raised),
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time to exit, exit valuations, and return on investment.
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Second, for folks keeping score at home, this phenomenon appears to
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extend beyond high-technology companies. Felix Salmon, for
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instance,[points out that Fortune’s editorial staff considered twelve
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other
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candidates](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/11/05/ceos-founders-beat-out-managers/)
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including Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim, and Martha Stewart before naming
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Steve Jobs [the best CEO of the
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decade](http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/05/forbes-names-jobs-ceo-of-the-decade/)
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in November 2009. Salmon points out that “not a single one of the 12
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\[candidates\] is a CEO who was hired to run a company by its board of
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directors.”
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There are certainly exceptions to this rule, most notably Google and
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Cisco (I will address both exceptions later in this post), but the
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evidence is one-sided and overwhelming.
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## The underlying reasons
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From a pattern matching perspective, it makes sense that we’d prefer
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founding CEOs, but as I said in an earlier post, pattern matching is not
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knowledge. So, why are great technology companies so often run by their
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founders? And why do professional CEOs sometimes succeed?
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### The innovation business
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The technology business is fundamentally the innovation business.
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Etymologically, the word technology means “a better way of doing
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things.” As a result, innovation is the core competency for technology
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companies. Technology companies are born because they create a better
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way of doing things. Eventually, someone else will come up with a better
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way. Therefore, if a technology company ceases to innovate, it will die.
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These innovations are product cycles. Professional CEOs are effective at
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**maximizing, but not finding,** **product cycles**. Conversely,
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founding CEOs are excellent at **finding, but not maximizing,**
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**product cycles**. Our experience shows—and the data supports—that
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teaching a founding CEO how to maximize the product cycle is easier than
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teaching the professional CEO how to find the new product cycle.
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The reason is that innovation is the most difficult core competency to
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build in any business. Innovation is almost insane by definition: most
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people view any truly innovative idea as stupid, because if it was a
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good idea, somebody would have already done it. So, the innovator is
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guaranteed to have more natural initial detractors than followers.
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Steve Jobs’ return to Apple provides an excellent example. At the time
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Jobs regained control of Apple, the conventional wisdom said that Apple
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was getting killed by “PC Economics” and had to separate the operating
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system from the hardware. Specifically, Apple couldn’t compete with
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Microsoft unless it became more horizontal and let commodity hardware
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manufactures compete while Apple focused exclusively on the OS. The
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professional CEO who preceded Jobs (Gil Amelio) took the conventional
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wisdom to heart. He set out to create an ecosystem of Mac cloners who
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would provide the commodity hardware complement to Apple’s famous OS.
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When Jobs came in and reversed those decisions, most industry analysts
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thought Jobs was insane. Jobs not only killed all the commodity hardware
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and the horizontal strategy; he went radically vertical. In addition to
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the basic hardware and operating system, he added applications (iLife,
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iWork) and peripherals (like the iPod). He even added retail stores.
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Today, people would let Steve Jobs make such a radical turn at nearly
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any company because of the outcome he’s achieved at Apple. But remember
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that when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, he was doing so as the
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co-founder and CEO of NeXT computer, a marginal computer workstation
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company which Apple purchased for less than $500M. Let’s just say he
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didn’t have the benefit of the doubt. What he **did** have: the
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founder’s courage to innovate despite the
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doubters.
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### Innovator’s requirements – what does it take to find the product cycle?
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So where did Jobs get this “founders courage” and what is it? In
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addition to general brilliance, we see three key ingredients to being a
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great innovator:
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1\. Comprehensive knowledge
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2\. Moral authority
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3\. Total commitment to the long-term
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Great founding CEOs tend to have all three and professional CEOs often
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lack them. Here’s why.
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### Comprehensive knowledge
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To create the original innovation to start a company, founders must
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exhaustively understand the technology required, the likely competitors
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(past, present, and future), and the market in all its variations and
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segmentations. This knowledge becomes the foundation on top of which a
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gigantic knowledge pyramid gets built which includes:
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Knowledge of every employee who gets hired and why
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Knowledge of every product and technology decision that gets made
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Knowledge of all customer data and feedback generated from day one
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Knowledge of exactly what’s strong and weak about the code base
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Knowledge of exactly what’s strong and weak about the organization
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This pyramid of knowledge enables new, unique innovative thinking. This
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knowledge is nearly impossible to replicate. Without it, thoughtful
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people lack the courage to bet the company on entirely new directions.
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In retrospect, it seems totally natural that Larry Ellison transformed
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Software Development Labs from a consulting business into a software
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company called Oracle. But would a professional CEO have understood
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enough about the team, the market and the competition to make such a
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radical change?
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### Moral authority
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Often, true innovation requires throwing out many of the foundational
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assumptions of the company. If the company is significant, doing so may
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be extremely difficult for the professional CEO. The company’s core
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belief system is often entangled in those assumptions. Since the
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founding CEO made the assumptions in the first place, it is much easier
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for her. An excellent example of existing, invalid assumptions
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paralyzing a whole set of companies recently played out in the music
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industry.
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The music business has been continuously disrupted and revolutionized by
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the underlying technology since the outset. In fact, it’s still widely
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referred to as the “record industry,” because the entire business was
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created by the invention of the vinyl record. For the first few decades
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of the industry, songs were never longer than 3 minutes due to a
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technological limitation (the record would skip if the grooves were too
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thin). The album itself is a construct that originated with the total
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number of songs one could fit on a 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute (RPM)
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vinyl record. In the 80s, the invention of the CD completely revitalized
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the industry and led to (literally) record-breaking sales.
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Despite this dynamic history, modern record company executives badly
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missed the most sweeping technical innovation—the Internet. How was
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that possible? By the time the Internet arrived, all of the original
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founders of the record companies had been bought out, retired, or died.
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The new, professional CEOs were unwilling to let go of the most basic
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assumptions driving the cost structure of their businesses.
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Specifically, they wouldn’t give up their stranglehold on distribution
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and the value they placed on owning the recording.
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They were proficient at running the current business, but lacked both
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the courage and the moral authority to jeopardize the old business model
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by embracing the new technology. The transition would have been far
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easier if these executives running the companies had invented the old
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models. The founders of the music industry likely would have ditched old
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assumptions, because they would have been nuts to do continue believing
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an assumption that no longer makes sense.
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Conversely, Netflix, run by cofounder Reed Hastings, provides an
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excellent counter-example. Faced with a similar transition (from
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distribution of the physical recording to electronic distribution of the
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bits), Netflix let go of its old assumption that customers wanted DVDs
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mailed to them, invested in innovation and produced a series of
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brilliant new offerings (streaming video to Xbox 360, Sony Playstation
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3, Tivo, Wii, connected DVD players, and a host of devices) that are
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enabling them to transition smoothly. Hastings wasn’t married to the old
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distribution model precisely because he invented it.
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### Total commitment to the long term
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Founding CEOs naturally take a long view of their companies. The company
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is their life’s work. Their emotional commitment exceeds their equity
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stake. Their goal from the start is to build something significant. They
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instinctively know that big product cycles come from investment and that
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even the biggest product cycles will eventually fade. Professional CEOs,
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on the other hand, tend to be driven by relatively shorter-term goals.
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They are paid in terms of stock options that vest over 4 years and cash
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bonuses for quarterly and yearly performance.
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Investments in innovation do not pay out in the current quarter.
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Typically, they don’t even pay out in the current year. If you care
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about your bonus this year, you are directly incented not to make
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investments in new inventions as you will incur the expense, but reap no
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profits.
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Any serious innovation requires a heavy investment. Beyond the up-front
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cash, costs may include lower growth, bad publicity, and internal
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grumbling as existing features atrophy. Recently, we’ve seen Facebook’s
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founding CEO Mark Zuckerberg make a series long-term bets. He’s
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radically revamped critical features such as the feed used by hundreds
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of millions of people. He’s made bold changes to key policies such as
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privacy and platform. For years, he’s avoided taking any revenue
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inconsistent with optimizing the user experience.
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By committing to the long-term, he put himself under tremendous pressure
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in the short-term. The press broadly questioned his business acumen and
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Facebook’s ability to generate any meaningful revenue. Bottom feeding
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publications such as Valley Wag even went so far as to call for his
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resignation. Employees leaked to the press that they thought he should
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sell the company, and some quit due to temporary declines in page views
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and user growth. We now know these critics were wrong and Zuckerberg was
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right, but would a professional CEO have taken these risks and endured
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such vicious attacks for unseen, long-term benefits?
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In theory, any professional CEO can rise to the challenge of being a
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great long-term CEO, but they have to commit to innovation and adopt the
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three characteristics above. We’ll now take a look at two professional
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CEOs who have done just that.
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## Understanding the exceptions – why do professional CEOs succeed?
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Two spectacular exceptions to the founding CEO rule are John Morgridge
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at Cisco and Eric Schmidt at Google. Let’s look at how these two
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overcame the issues illustrated above and massively
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triumphed.
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### Eric Schmidt–Getting the goodness of the founders and combining it with the know-how of the professional
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Eric Schmidt has been a spectacular success at Google. He hasn’t just
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maximized the original product cycle (which was built around
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search—although he’s done a brilliant job of accomplishing that feat),
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but he has also overseen the creation of important new product cycles
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such as Android and Google Apps. Interestingly, he did so by teaming
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with the founders and gaining the benefits of their knowledge, moral
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authority, and long-term vision. This may seem like an obvious strategy,
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but shared leadership and control are incredibly difficult to achieve.
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Doing so involves intense communication, deep humility, and some hard
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compromises. Almost nobody ever pulls it off. And that’s why Eric
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Schmidt is such an important exception.
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### John Morgridge—All by himself
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John Morgidge is another spectacular counter-example of the non-founding
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CEO building a tech powerhouse. John took over as the company’s second
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CEO in 1988, a role he held until he became chairman in 1995. With John
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as CEO, Cisco grew from $5m to $1b in revenue and from 34 to 2,250
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employees. He also took the company public in 1990.
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How did he do it? In speaking to many Cisco employees over many years
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and observing the dynamic, innovative product and M\&A strategy that
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enabled them to defeat fierce competitors such as Wellfleet and
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Synoptics, I believe John Morgridge may have been the greatest
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professional CEO in the history of the high tech industry. He worked
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tirelessly to develop the characteristics outlined above as well or
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better than any founder. He was smart, knowledgeable, tough, innovative,
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courageous, and, unlike most professionals, legendarily cheap. He once
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said that if you can’t see your car from your hotel room, then you are
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paying too much. As a result of this magical combination of qualities,
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he achieved complete moral authority. He is proof positive that a
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professional CEO can build a great technology company. At the same time,
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he is the ultimate exception.
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In the best case, you may find the next John Morgidge. If you do, hire
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him\! Otherwise, here is our general rule of investing. If you hire a
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professional CEO into a company that has found a large product cycle,
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the professional will be able to maximize that product cycle, but likely
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won’t find the next one. If you hire a professional to find the product
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cycle, get the jelly, because your company will soon be toast.
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## Are all founders CEO material?
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The simple answer is “no.” Being CEO requires a tremendous amount of
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skill. The larger the company becomes, the more skill that’s required.
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Steve Blank does an excellent job of illustrating many of these required
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skills in his [outstanding Scalable Start-up
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series](http://steveblank.com/). We almost never meet a founder who has
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these skills at the time they found the company.
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Therefore, the founder must learn the skills required to run the company
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on-the-job. Doing so is often a miserable, debilitating experience. I
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can attest first hand to the frustration and exhaustion associated with
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being responsible for hundreds of employees while learning how to do the
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job. I constantly made mistakes a more experienced CEO wouldn’t make.
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These mistakes can be costly in terms of money and jobs.
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So, why would any founder want to learn to be CEO on-the-job? Because
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doing so is the most sure fire way to build a great company.
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How does one know if they have what it takes to be the long-term CEO of
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the company? In our experience, there are two required characteristics:
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1\. Leadership as described in my early post [Notes on
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Leadership](http://bhorowitz.com/2010/03/14/notes-on-leadership-be-like-steve-jobs-and-bill-campbell-and-andy-grove/).
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2\. Desire—not necessarily the desire to be CEO, but the burning,
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irrepressible desire to build something great and the willingness to do
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whatever it takes to get there.
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If the founder has these characteristics, then we would encourage them
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to give it a try. If they fail, we will help them look for the next Eric
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Schmidt or John Morgridge.
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## Footnote
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Special thanks to Yujin Chung
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([LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/in/yujinchung),
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[Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/enderdoon)), MBA ’10 at the Wharton
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School, for his analytical and research support.
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