Nobody is suggesting that a large company CEO is "special." It's a different set of skills, that's just a fact. And, the idea of a CEO of a rapidly scaling comp

Nobody is suggesting that a large company CEO is "special." It's a different set of skills, that's just a fact. And, the idea of a CEO of a rapidly scaling company to learn through on the job training isn't always a good one. People learn by making mistakes and the marketplace isn't very forgiving -- too many mistakes and the company is toast. There's nothing classist about it. You could train an army corporal to become a general. But you can't just take an army corporal all the way to the experience needed to become a general in a year or two. It takes generals 20+ years before they have the skills to lead thousands of soldiers. To suggest that any reasonably smart corporal can go from leading a squad to leading a division in a few years of on-the-job training is just ludicrous. If I'm wrong, then please provide some data. Actual data, not anecdotes. Nobody is saying that a corporal can't ever become a general. The suggestion of classism is implying that a corporal can't become a general because he's not of the right class. Of course a corporal can become a general (at least in the US Army) -- which is the very opposite of classism. We're just saying that a corporal doesn't become a general through a few years of on the job training and that a corporal doesn't become a general while on the battlefield. What I'm saying is that a good large-company CEO is gets those skills over years of experience. If a founder-CEO slowly scales, then perhaps on-the-job training would work. But when an org goes from 10 people to 1000 people in a few years -- it would take an extraordinarily lucky person to be able to handle that transition without prior experience.