The afterlife: When founders leave
Thats partly because of how important founders are. As GigaOMs Katie Fehrenbacher has put it, the founder title is an especially weighty one here in the tech industry. I talk daily with startup executives who refer to their companies as my baby. Naturally, a lot of people see walking away from a startup as a bit of an abandonment especially before the company has seen an exit.
But Stones decision is not at all unique among his peers. Twitters other co-founders, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey, hav! e scaled back their involvement with the site to focus on their own respective projects. And the guys at Twitter are certainly not alone in taking a step back from the company theyve helped build.
A founders nature is essentially creative. He or she often enjoys the fast-paced life of a bootstrapped, pizza-and-beer, tiny startup. But when employee numbers start doubling, more money gets raised, and things like HR and 401Ks become necessities, founders often times yearn to jump ship for the more creative early-stage life again. At the same time, there is the rare founder that can make the transition to lead the bigger company as the CEO.
Heres a look at where founders from some of the tech industrys biggest players have ended up:
- Apple
Apple was co-founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. Wayne reportedly gave up his Apple shares fewer than two weeks after the company was founded for $2,300. Wozniak ended his full-time work with Apple in 1987. Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985 amid corporate power struggles, and rejoined the company 11 years later.
- Google
Google was co-founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Both continue to hold full-time executive and board roles at the company.
- Groupon
Groupon was launched in 2008 as a spin-out of ThePoint, a website co-founded in 2007 by Andrew Mason and Eric Lefkofsky. Mason continues to serve as Groupons CEO; Lefk ofsky, who has several other ventures, serves as the companys chairman. Both founders have been criticized for using funding rounds to cash out portions of their stakes in the company.
- Facebook
Facebook was co-founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg has remained at the company as CEO; Saverin stopped working day-to-day with the company in 2004; Moskovitz left Facebook in October 2008 to co-found Asana, and Hughes left Facebook in 2007 to lead Barack Obamas online campaign efforts.
- LinkedIn
LinkedIn was co-founded in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Allen Blue, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant. Hoffman stepped down from the CEO role in 2007, and he remains the companys executive chairman. Guericke and Ly both left their full-time roles at LinkedIn in 2006. Blue works full-time role as LinkedIns VP of product management, and Vaillant has retained his role as the companys CTO.
- Microsoft
Microsoft was co-founded in 1975 by Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Allen stepped away from day-to-day operations at the company in 1982 after being diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma, which he treated with radiation therapy. Allen stepped down from Microsofts board of directors in 2000. Gates stopped being CEO in 2000, and announced plans to step down from day-to-day operations in 2006; he remains Microsofts chairman.
- Yahoo
Yahoo was co-founded in 1995 by Jerry Yang and David Filo. Yang announced he would step down from a short stint as CEO in 2008, but remains on the executive roster as a Chief Yahoo and has a spot on the companys board. Filo also continues to work with the company as a Chief Yahoo.
Do you have any thoughts on whether a founders presence is crucial to a companys success? If so, let us hear them in the comments.
Image courtesy of Flickr user clicksense.
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