By W. Casey Asbill-Beck | Uncategorized
William Casey Asbill-Beck
ENT – 600: Entrepreneurial Planning
Blog Topic Eight
Discuss scaling issues as a startup evolves through various stages to maturity (Chapter 10, The Founder’s Dilemmas; “Transitioning from a Startup to Growth-Stage Company”).
Failure, Success, and Founder – CEO succession are examined in this chapter of the Founder’s Dilemmas. As we have read through the Founder’s Dilemmas, Noam Wasserman guided us through various examples of how founders and CEOs make mistakes. Part of the moral I will be taking away from the Founder’s Dilemmas continues with the idea I ended on in the last blog topic. That is, participating in founding, owning, and operating a business is inherently risky. This means, everyone is bound to make mistakes in the business world. What Wasserman’s examples all seem to have in common is their ability to learn from their mistakes, instigating positive change, and continuing forward.
In the pursuit of a start up business growing into a thriving company one defines roles, hires additional founders and finds investors. Titles are given along with their associated responsibilities. Decisions are made in start up and transition stages that will alter the course of your company in the preforming stages later down the line. Throughout the growth of ones company, change will no doubt occur. Change in the roles, responsibilities, job titles, number of board members, and individuals on the board or investors will all fluctuate with the progress of the company. As a result of whatever change may occur, founder-CEO’s may need to explore the idea that another individual may be best suited for the CEO title.
The ideal style of CEO succession is a voluntary one triggered by the founder. This is when the founder-CEO decides to step aside for a new CEO. This method offers the least amount of stress. Another scenario is when a board member triggers change because they believe the founder-CEO to be poorly handling responsibilities. There is another scenario in which the founder-CEO is preforming and still must succeed their role. Wasserman refers to this as the paradox of entrepreneurial success. Sometimes a CEO is not capable of adapting and growing with the company they built. Their skills could be extraordinary in some aspects that were once helpful for business startup, but their skills could be out dated or no longer required for where the company is at.
Just because a founder-CEO may no longer have that position they may still have a place in the company. All of these methods of succession described have their own outcomes. Some individuals completely leave the company while others find a new position suited to them.
Possibly one of the hardest dilemmas a founder-CEO will face is when to recognize the opportunity to bow out gracefully, and on your terms. As Wasserman concludes it is pointed out that founders can gain some control over when they lose control of the startup by getting ahead of the board and initiating the succession themselves. When you love something, sometimes you have to learn to give it away.
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