By Chris Zook, Harvard Business Review
Some of the most successful venture capitalists, like Andreesen Horowitz have been quite vocal about their strong preference for investing in businesses where the founder is the CEO. In fact, most of the great tech firms — just think of Oracle, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and so many others — had founder CEOs, often for a long time.
In his blog, Ben Horowitz lists three reasons his VC firm prefers founder CEOs: founders have the moral authority to make the hard choices, they know the detail of the business and have better instincts, and they have a long-term perspective on investments and building a company that lasts.
Full article available at Harvard Business Review.
Chris Zook is a partner in Bain & Company’s Boston office and has been a co-head of the firm’s global strategy practice for twenty years. He is a co-author of a number of bestselling books including Profit from the Core and The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth (Harvard Business Review Press, June 2016).