> Fred is a VC with a reputation for pushing founder CEOs out Fred is a prolific VC with a lot of investments. At scale, eventually any investor is going to ha

> Fred is a VC with a reputation for pushing founder CEOs out Fred is a prolific VC with a lot of investments. At scale, eventually any investor is going to have companies that have outgrown their CEO. I think two things are simultaneously true: 1) Founder-run companies are, on average, better performers than companies that have replaced their founders with career CEOs. This only works if the founder can grow into the CEO role as the company scales. 2) Not every founder is capable or even interested in transitioning to the CEO role of a growing company. If the founder is unable or unwilling to grow into the CEO role, it’s better for everyone to replace the founder with a more qualified CEO. I’ve worked at two startups where it was obvious that the founder only retained the CEO title because they wanted to remain top dog at their own company, but they didn’t really want to do the work of being a CEO. In both cases (one <$100m startup, one >$1b unicorn) it was painfully clear to everyone that their was a leadership vacuum at the top. Other C-levels and VPs were constantly exiting the company because they were forced to do the jobs of the CEO while someone else took the credit. In one case, the CEO was ignoring important business meetings to come work alongside the engineers, “just like the old days”. But he had long since fallen behind the technology curve and was trying to force engineers to do things like he did 10 years ago. It’s not fun to be forced to choose between obeying your CEO or doing things the right way. We all wished he’d just let us do our job and go back to filling the leadership void at the top of the company.