Why Founders Make the Best Leaders

[Liberty]

Food for thought:

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/steve-jobss-law-why-founders-make-better-leaders/244439/

 

 

Outsider, non-founder CEOs are often overvalued because many corporate boards think the answer to their problems is a superstar CEO with an outsized reputation. This leads them to overpay for people who are good at creating outsized reputations through networking, interviewing, and taking credit for other peoples' achievements--all bad indicators of future success.

 

I think this doesn't just literally apply to founding the company, but also to owner-managers founding the company's current model (ie. Berkshire from the day Buffet came on board was pretty different from what it was before, even if Buffett didn't create it. Same for EBIX from the day Robin Raina came on board).

 

There was a comment on another forum about how these new star CEOs are more loyal to the board that put them there, while founders are often more aligned with shareholders.