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Should Founders or CEOs be the Public Face of a Company After a Certain Size?
Many thanks to Ali for sharing this news and analysis on this thread and to Lucio for sparking a further discussion from his analysis:
Jeff Bezos thanks Amazon employees and customers for paying for his jaunt to space: "You guys paid for all of this"
I think it's very thought-provoking, and something came to mind which deviates from the main topic of the thread.
Should Founders or CEOs be the public face of a company?
My personal opinion is that it differs whether it's a big business or small business
For Big Businesses
Lucio: In this climate, some "power intelligence" would be extremely helpful to billionaires to avoid that type of backlash.
I think CEOs should avoid being the public face of their own company beyond a certain size of the company.
Internally, I think it makes sense but not externally.
It's better if people think
company, brand => company vision, product, culture
rather than
company, brand => ceo, founder
Now Jeff Bezos has the burden of decoupling this image from Amazon.
And people should be seeing Andy Jassy, the current CEO (Jeff's successor), as the leader of Amazon.
But it seems the culture of tech companies to have a famous, high-profile CEO representing the brand of the company.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc.
I think Jack Dorsey is smarter in this regard.
He's not really the face of Twitter or Square.
At least in my impression.
Only recently has CEOs become celebrity-like.
CEOs and founders from traditional industries usually are not publicly famous.
Does anyone know James Quincey? Coca cola's current CEO.
Or its founders, John Stith Pemberton (as Coca-Cola), Asa Griggs Candler.
Did anyone care that John Elkann became temporary CEO after the departure of Louis Camilleri in Dec 2020?
Probably some people did but I'm guessing not the public.
The general people probably cared more about the latest Ferrari cars.
A restaurant owner I spoke to told me this.
He doesn't introduce himself to customers as the owner.
So people focus more on the ambience, food, service rather than who owns the restaurant.
For Small Businesses - Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Solopreneurs, Freelancers
For small companies, solopreneurs & freelancers, I think it's an advantage that the founder is more in the spotlight.
You can give more of the personal touch which big companies are not able to.
This is why people like to work with a good freelance developer rather than a development agency.
Or a good designer rather than a design agency.
People also feel it's less corporate-like and more genuine.
The founder does the communication, the work, and everything in-between.
(To an extent for SMEs)
When I first started reading the article I didn't think it would be possible to generalize a rule.
But you did change my opinion on this, Matthew.
Of course one should look at the individual circumstances as well, but maybe it makes sense to apply a general rule where bigger companies are generally better off with their own brand, rather than the founder's personality.
I think Steve Jobs managed to do both well.
Build Apple's brand while having a good public perception for himself as the founder/CEO.
Of course one should look at the individual circumstances as well, but maybe it makes sense to apply a general rule where bigger companies are generally better off with their own brand, rather than the founder's personality.
You gave me an idea to write both options in terms of pros and cons. (Maybe later)
Then, the general trend is still towards the CEO not being the public face for large companies.
But the pros & cons act as a guideline towards choosing what's best based on individual circumstances.
Maybe one can apply this to other social tactics.
Instead of thinking in terms of rules, it's about pros & cons.
I think you already did this for the passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive and assertive styles.
Talking to Cofounders about this Topic
Suddenly, the book Founder's Dilemmas comes to mind for this thread.
I should read that book again.
If one intends to make the company bigger, it's important to talk to cofounders about motivations as the company gets bigger.
Things like
- Does someone enjoy being the face of the company?
- Is control over the company or financial gains more important?
Because financial gains mean one may step down for more experienced people to run the company in the future. - Culture-wise: building a culture based on the founder's style or building a culture around an envisioned culture.
And one more question:
- Are you planning to sell that company?
Because if you plan to sell, then you better not associate your brand with yourself.
The moment you step aside, the brand loses value without you.
In some extreme cases, you might barely be able to sell anything without you in it.
- Are you after power, mission, lifestyle business, proving something to the world... ?
For many founders the main motivation is fame, and showing the world they made it.
