| The one kind of people who aren't named in this article: investors. Ben Horowitz of A16Z explained why A16Z prefers to invest in founder-led companies. (...) The macro reason: that’s the way most of the great technology companies have been built (...) Professional CEOs are effective at maximizing, but not finding, product cycles. Conversely, founding CEOs are excellent at finding, but not maximizing, product cycles. (...) Innovator’s requirements – what does it take to find the product cycle? So where did Jobs get this “founders courage” and what is it? In addition to general brilliance, we see three key ingredients to being a great innovator: 1. Comprehensive knowledge 2. Moral authority 3. Total commitment to the long-term Great founding CEOs tend to have all three and professional CEOs often lack them. Here’s why. (...) https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/ |
Just to clarify, you mean private company investors. Typically a company goes public as part of entering a different "life stage" and its operation and needs on either side of that transaction are different.
Which, BTW is why there are so few "crossover" funds (like TCV) that invest in both private and public companies: the things you look for are quite different (in operations, risk, and return).
(I count the private equity guys like Silverlake and Carlisle in the "public" side since they invest in companies that are already public and have similar op needs to public companies).