Chapter 10 of The Founder’s Dilemmas made me think about something that is easy to overlook when starting a business: the person who starts the company may not always be the person who should run it forever.
When a business is small, the founder is usually involved in almost everything. They may be making the major decisions, talking to customers, managing employees, handling finances, and figuring out problems as they come up. That can work when there are only a few employees, but the needs of the company can change significantly as it grows. At some point, the skills needed to start a company may be different from the skills needed to manage a much larger organization.
Wasserman (2012) discusses how founder-CEOs can eventually be replaced, either voluntarily or by the board. I think the involuntary side of this would be especially difficult because the founder may feel like they have already proven themselves by getting the company this far. There can be a strong emotional connection between the founder and the business, especially if they have spent years building it. However, growing a company can create entirely different challenges from starting one, and the board or investors may believe that a different type of leadership is needed.
What I found most interesting is that succession does not necessarily mean the founder has to disappear from the company. A founder could potentially move into a different role that allows them to focus on strategy, the vision of the business, relationships, or another area where they add the most value. I think that is an important distinction because it makes succession seem less like losing the company and more like recognizing that the company has changed.
It also made me think about the difference between being the person who creates something and being the person who manages it once it becomes much larger. In the beginning, a founder may need to be comfortable taking risks, making quick decisions, and doing things without much structure. As the company grows, there may be more employees, more customers, more regulations, more financial responsibility, and more complicated decisions. The leadership style that worked when there were five employees may not work the same way when there are fifty or five hundred.
I think the hardest part would be recognizing that change personally. If I built a company from the ground up, I would probably feel very connected to the idea that I should be the one making the decisions. It would be difficult to hear that someone else might be better suited to lead the company through its next stage. At the same time, if the goal is to build a company that lasts, the founder cannot make every decision based on what feels personally important.
This made me think about my own future business because I would not want to build something that completely depends on me. Obviously, I would want to be involved and have a strong connection to the business, but I also want to build something that can grow beyond me. If the company became large enough that I needed someone with different experience to manage the day-to-day operations, I would want to be able to recognize that rather than holding onto a role just because I started the company.
I also think this connects back to hiring. If I know that the company could eventually grow beyond what I can personally manage, then I should be thinking about that when I build the team from the beginning. I would want to hire people who can eventually take on responsibilities that I currently handle. That could mean developing someone into an operations leader, bringing in an experienced manager, or creating a leadership structure where important decisions do not all have to go through me.
Another part of succession that stood out to me was how important the transition itself can be. Even if changing leaders is the right decision for the company, it could still create uncertainty for employees, investors, and customers. People may be used to the founder being the face of the company and may not immediately understand what the change means. That is why I think having a plan for succession is important even if the founder has no intention of leaving anytime soon.
I think this connects back to many of the other founder dilemmas we have talked about. Hiring, investors, control, and growth are not really separate decisions. They all affect what happens as the company becomes bigger and more complicated. The choices a founder makes early on can determine how much control they have later and what kind of leadership structure the company eventually needs.
My biggest takeaway from this chapter is that founders need to think about the future version of their company, not just the company they are building today. Growth can change what the business needs from its leader, and being willing to recognize that may be an important part of building something that lasts. For me, being a founder would not just mean getting to make every decision forever. It would mean building something strong enough to continue growing, even when the company eventually needs something different from what it needed when I first started it.
Reference
Wasserman, N. (2012). The founder’s dilemmas: Anticipating and avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup. Princeton University Press.