| Sunday, 13 August 2023 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
If you were to imagine organisations as planetary systems, there are two kinds of objects that exert an incredible amount of gravitational force.
The first are the founders. This is by virtue of their having brought the entire system to existence and having attracted (and often repelled) most of the other planets, stars, asteroids, etc., that comprise it.
The second is the CEO. As the object charged with the system’s survival and future, they play the biggest part in its functioning.
In the world of startups, these two objects are often found combined into one—the founder-CEO.
If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, it’s to introduce Amrish Rau, the CEO but not founder of Pine Labs, a leading payment solutions company last valued at over US$5 billion.
Amrish joined Pine Labs as a CEO in 2020, after a two-decade career in which he started, ran, and sold businesses (in 2016, he sold Citrus Pay, a startup he had built, to rival PayU for US$130 million in cash). Most CEOs I interview also happen to be founders. So, I was fascinated by Amrish’s “CEO-only” vantage point.
It is hard to overemphasise the importance of a founder-CEO in organisational cultures and systems. But their importance and power often comes at a cost that is invisible to them. Think of it like an invisible dark space formed at the overlapping spaces between two objects: the founder’s, and the CEO’s.
Forged from the past, founders are emotionally attached to what they’ve built, like teams, products, business models, and organisational structures. Many consider their organisations akin to their children.
CEOs, in comparison, are responsible for the future. They are constantly thinking about how they will change or alter that which already exists. Which includes teams, products, business models, and organisational structures. Many view their organisations as evolving organisms.
Yes, I am simplifying. But this conflict is the reason many founder-CEOs give way to professional CEOs either once their companies reach a certain scale, or they realise some of their own limitations.
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