Is It Time to Quit? The Risks of a Failing CEO

Name: Is It Time to Quit? The Risks of a Failing CEO
Uploaded: 2024-11-18T13:03:26+00:00
Duration: 52 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: Jason M. Lemkin argues that when a CEO is failing, employees and investors should quit rather than push for a board replacement. CEO swaps are roughly…

18 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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Jason M. Lemkin argues that when a CEO is failing, employees and investors should quit rather than push for a board replacement. CEO swaps are roughly ten times harder than replacing other senior roles, and successful changes are exceedingly rare. Snowflake is one of the few exceptions.

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My CEO is running the company to the ground. Should I go talk to the board? No, you should quit. You should quit. Uh, this is not— the CEO is the bet, 50% of the bet when investors make it's 50% of the bet. It's not 100%. Yeah. I mean, for some folks, inception-level betting really early, it's 100%. Even though it, even when it's inception, there's still a seat, there's still more than one founder usually, right? So it's usually multiple people, but. Um, you're betting on the CEO and, and as difficult as it is to change out CROs, it's 10 times harder to swap out CEOs. It's so risky. Yeah. In my, in my personal career, I've never seen it work. I've never seen swapping the CEO work. So most VCs are just going to zero it out. They've kind of given— now listen, there are companies that are highly orchestrated, Snowflake going through multiple CEOs because that was incubated at a VC firm.