In this candid, unscripted YouTube monologue, Matthew Kelly explains why, after four years of building his venture‑backed D2C brand Spacegoods as a solo founder, he decided to relinquish the CEO title and hand operational control to his long‑time Managing Director. He reflects on the challenges of wearing every hat—from product and branding to finance, HR, and supply‑chain—especially as the company grew and the work became more like a conventional job rather than the creative, high‑impact work he enjoys. Kelly describes his self‑assessment as a competent generalist with a bias toward product, brand, and growth, and how delegating those tasks to others eroded his engagement and, he believes, the business’s performance. By promoting the MD to CEO, Kelly aims to re‑focus his time on product development, brand strategy, and growth initiatives while the new CEO handles day‑to‑day operations, P&L responsibility, and retail/supply‑chain execution. He outlines the governance framework that delineates decision‑making authority (e.g., he retains final say on product, brand, and key hires; the CEO controls operational matters). Kelly references high‑profile founder‑CEO transitions such as Huel and Gymshark to contextualize his move, acknowledges the polarizing nature of such a shift, and promises to report back on outcomes in the coming months. The video serves both as a personal update and a broader commentary on founder‑CEO dynamics, delegation, and scaling a venture‑backed startup.
Chapters
Right, so I'm back on the YouTube. You might have noticed a slightly different, well, a very fucking different background actually. I'm in a fancy studio for once. Concerned, my nice camera guy over here says my hair looks good, but I'm concerned the hair's too long. I get super self-conscious when I'm behind loads of lights. Normally I was meant to come in here with someone else, but we cancelled, so I'm just literally ripping a bunch of YouTube videos. I guess one thing I've actually not spoken about that happened, well, I say happened like it was some dramatic event, but like a change I made internally, About 6 weeks ago now, I guess some people have seen it on LinkedIn, some people have messaged me about it in the business. Business is 4 years old now. I've obviously been a solo founder always, and certainly from day one in this business. I think that comes with a shitload of challenges that, if I'm honest, I probably wouldn't do again. I think I was doing the next thing. I'd want to co-found it, although that in itself comes with challenges, I'm sure. Obviously on the YouTube here, I've documented very openly the ups and downs, the challenges, the whatever. Probably mainly the challenges, to be honest, in some ways, of building this over the last 4 years. Obviously, I've gone down a route as well where I raised money from investors, and that comes with certain expectations and challenges and everything else as well. But I guess over the past year in particular, so like my style is always, I think I would describe myself as a very competent generalist, but with like a brand product, like growth preference, right? But what I mean by that is I'm definitely not incompetent at reading like a P&L, a balance sheet, and operational stuff that I think you have to pick up, especially when you're a solo founder like I've always been. I'm talking like way back in previous businesses as well, over like the last 8 years, crazy now. But I guess a lot of those things I've never enjoyed that much, but I've come across founders before where either they're like, well, they definitely have a co-founder, and often as a result, they, are just fucking shit at half the stuff, whereas— or they've got a background in, say, I don't know, finance, and they're like the operational guy, and they go straight to hiring the other people to do that. Whereas in my case, certainly zero to one, I think I'm very good at zero to one. And I guess that means like zero to concept and the initial scale, right? And you could basically do that yourself, even more so now with AI. But anyway, yeah, um, I've always been a good generalist, but then as the team grew I found myself probably weirdly doing more and more of the stuff I didn't like, that I was competent enough at, but probably becoming less competent as it got bigger, like the management side, I guess, which is also just a thing that doesn't exist when there's no team and when there's less complexity. I don't think complexity is to be avoided at all costs, and maybe that's a whole fucking other video, but naturally as the business grows, the team grows, expectations grow, whatever, channels, revenue scale, It does get more complicated. And I found a particular, the last year, I just started to enjoy it less because it started to feel like a job. And that's also primarily because I wasn't doing the stuff that I initially did, really, when I launched the brand, which was obviously everything, but it was like creating the brand, creating the product, you know, being very quick on everything. And then yeah, for whatever reason, I guess I kind of probably in a way, like hired myself out of some of the stuff I was good at. Which I think was a mistake. And again, maybe that's like another video, and there's a lot of nuance and context to that. And I'm not saying that was all bad either, but probably naively kind of delegated too much of the things I enjoyed, including the creative side and a large part of the product side, which has to happen at some stage as well. But again, separate video on team and all that. But I also then just found more and more I was doing the stuff I didn't like, I don't know, fucking HR stuff, operational stuff. I guess just more of the admin that comes with a bigger business. But if I'm completely honest as well, like a venture-backed business, which again, I've always been very open about that. I think that has pros and cons. I'm not saying it's bad at all. I think it's been net positive for me, but there have been more administrative nuance and challenges that come with that. Anyway, you get the idea. I just found I wasn't actually enjoying stuff, but also more critically off the back of that, I then wasn't doing the stuff I'm good at. I think that was actually to the detriment of the business. Then I was like, okay, well, I've never associated myself as a CEO because I'm just a founder. But technically, I was a CEO in the sense of I'm still fully responsible for everything. Everyone was ultimately reporting to me, not everyone, but beyond anyone that they're reporting to, beyond anyone that was reporting to someone else, they were ultimately coming to me, right? I was like, the buck stopped with me on everything operationally. So yeah, basically, we've had an MD in the business who I guess primarily has been in the business like 16 months. Doesn't come on the YouTube and stuff, you know, it's much more normal than me, doesn't want to share all his life story on the internet. But he was doing a lot of retail operational stuff anyway. You could kind of say that role was probably like more like a COO or whatever, but, you know, I'm not obsessed with titles. You get the idea. He was basically running the entire backend of the business, if I'm honest, with a particular focus on retail and supply chain, as well as Amazon finance, whatever. Yeah. And I just basically said one day, oh, do you just want to do more of this stuff? Basically, that's where this started. And what I mean by that is like, take more objective responsibility rather than like doing a lot of stuff and ultimately still reporting to me on more of the operational stuff. Well, I could then go and, you know, focus more on product, branding, growth. And I guess that is where the conversation came from. Well, why don't I just make him the CEO? Yeah. So that's what I've done basically. Again, I don't think it's that dramatic of a change if I'm honest, but a lot of people see it as that. And then on LinkedIn, you get people saying, "Oh, you're still in the business, all this." And then they point to like, I don't know, really textbook examples of like the Huel founder, right? You hired a CEO who I believe is still the CEO, even post their acquisition to Danone, like 2 years in, at smaller scale than we are apparently. I don't know the nuance of that business, but high level, that's the story, right? And it's all over LinkedIn. It's one of those famous cases. Same with the Gymshark guy, much better founder than me, for sure, much greater brand, bigger business. Well, I shouldn't say greater brand, but you know, it's a fucking huge business. I'm not saying we're anywhere near that level, but I believe he made that change at similar scale. And then has since come back to being the CEO. Anyway, yeah. So that was about 7 weeks ago. I just fired myself as the CEO. I guess people say, well, does that really matter? Why not just give more responsibility? And I guess that was also my own question, right? Initially I thought, it started with I'm doing too much of the stuff I don't want to do. Because technically and objectively, the buck did stop with me on those things. So therefore, I didn't feel I could not look at them. And as a result, I couldn't spend time on the product and brand high level, and like growth, but primarily products and brand that I wanted to spend more time on. And actually the business needed as well, and I enjoyed more. Because even though I could spend that time, obviously like, not like when you're the CEO, I keep inverting commas, 'cause I'm just like a founder, but I was still the CEO, technically. Yeah. It's not that you don't have the time at all to do that other stuff, but it's more just they always by default took a back seat because I didn't feel— I was like, oh, I need to take care of like, you know, the boring stuff because no one else is going to do it kind of thing. Even though obviously we had a team and RMD at the time was doing a lot of that anyway, but not all of it because ultimately I was still in that role and he was still reporting into me. So yeah, that was where the change came from. And by default, if someone is managing those things, There are different ways to do this. I'm not saying this is the only way to do it. You know, some people do it as they would just— it would still just be an MD, and maybe the founder's a bit more creative and so on. But I don't think that worked in our structure due to the nature of like the cap table and so on. You could do it as, I don't know, a COO steps up and I or another founder would be, you know, in their case would be the CEO still. That's another way I've seen that done as well. Um, but I guess for me Yeah, we just decided that ultimately the nature of that role felt like a CEO role, and that was the correct title. You know, it probably could have been a COO, if I'm honest, as well. But with CEO, there's more responsibility on fully owning the operational side of the business and ultimately the P&L of the business. Obviously, I'm still heavily involved. That does not mean, oh, Matt's now fucking consulting part-time and I'm doing YouTube full-time instead. That's not the case. I'm still very much full-time in the business. However, it does give me full-time option to— it gives me the opportunity to go full-time into stuff that I've never spent full-time focus on since almost day one. And even then, I had all the other stuff to think about, which is quite weird. Oh shit, am I actually going to add value in this role? Because there's probably a bit of me, of every founder tendency, but certainly me that's like, and I've even said this recently, to our own team, including the CEO now, like, I'm struggling with this a bit because don't know if I feel very useful now because I'm not— not that I was literally micromanaging everything, but, you know, I was very much involved in everything, including the things I didn't want to be involved in because they had to be done. Um, and now I'm doing that less, and it's like, oh fuck, there's more time to do the other stuff. Although of course it then opens up a whole world of stuff. I'm like, oh yeah, shit, I really should have been spending half my time on products, and I was spending 10% of my time on products. So that was the intention, right? Ultimately wasn't, I can't do the job, I am incompetent or whatever. It was just, I don't enjoy it, but primarily— or I don't enjoy parts of it that came with it, just with the territory. But primarily, I need to spend more time on products and brand, which doesn't get enough attention, ironically, and is also what I enjoy more. So yeah, that's the change I've made, basically. Um, it's only 6, maybe 7 weeks in now. In fact, I think it's 6. And yeah, it's a bit of a weird one. Like I said, I think it comes with natural challenges because I have chosen to give someone else more responsibility and authority in my business that I'm still very much in. I'm still the largest shareholder of, I still desperately want to succeed to the next level. And there was a bit of like, oh shit, this is like the ultimate delegation. 'Cause like someone has, someone can make choices on a lot of things without me. I mean, the way we've structured it, to be clear, is I still have very much the final say on all the things I want to have the final say on and that makes sense, like product and brand, certain hires, et cetera. But it does mean, you know, in theory, I could probably disappear for 3 months and things would be fine. I don't think they'd be as fine, 'cause there's a lot of stuff I'm still doing. It's not like I'm, you know, not in the business day to day, but the executional core doesn't need me as much as it used to. I feel like this one is actually controversial because you get two schools of thought on it, generally, and probably most people in the middle. One is like, you know, the Huell example, and you're like, oh great, you know, hire great people, get out of the way, I do the vision. And kind of the way they described it, I think, and I am paraphrasing from like LinkedIn articles, which are also probably making up to some degree, but it was like the founder decides the what and the CEO runs the how. So basically, what's the vision? What are we creating? What's the product brand? The product and brand really. I create that thing, then the CEO, as was in their case, and I've taken that as a good example, like in our case, the CEO executes the how, or the majority of the how. Obviously I'm still involved in day-to-day execution, but that's the general principle. I think it's quite a good way of thinking about it. I think another way that it was described in another example, it might have been that one actually, was— Yeah. The founder creates the brand, the CEO runs the business. And so that's the one extreme, and that obviously can work really fucking well. You know, Huel went on to sell for €1 billion, I think it was 3 months ago, and the founder owned like half of it. It was a mega news story. And you know, the founder still made way more money than the CEO because he owned more equity, right? And that's just how it works. But you'd probably say, and I'm sure the founder would probably say in that scenario, had he not stepped back, may have never got to that scale. So I think there's a lot of like, you just have to put your ego aside and so on in that. And then you get the other side of founders, and I've spoke to these, probably more of my friends are like this, and I see both sides. I think they're valid with nuance of like, how could you ever let anyone lead the important parts that isn't you? It just won't work because they won't care, and so on and so on. I can understand that as well, and that's definitely actually ironically my natural tendency, and that was for a long time. But I do think that limits you sometimes, especially as a solo founder, because you're basically always going to be in your own way and always be the limiter. And that can be fine if you want to be in the trenches 24/7 for the next 20 years with the business, with some nuance, of course, I'm paraphrasing. But yeah, I guess for me, that didn't feel like, given the broader context of my business specifically at this time, at this scale, about where I want to go next, what I want to do this year, next year, whatever, where I see as an opportunity for like a future outcome. That didn't make sense to me. So yeah, and then I guess you get people in the middle. Maybe a lot of people would say, our business is too small for a founder not to be the CEO, you know, because it's not like a £100 million business. And people define that threshold differently, whereas others would say it should have been done a year ago, right, or 2 years ago to unlock maybe the next scale sooner. I think the critical thing is that you're aligned enough culturally, you share the same vision, you have clear goals, and quite frankly, that is practically the P&L, right? And a budget and plan and specific objective goals. And then also that you're just clear on who owns what and what does that actually mean day to day, right? And we have a document that's very clear on that. Generally, there's a mutual human understanding and there's always going to be a bit of a gray area in certain things, But on clear things like who hires the head of growth, for example, who hires all brand people, that would be me, for example. Who has the final say on product and brand? That'd be me. Whereas another example is operational cog stuff, that would be the CEO. On other stuff, you get the idea. It's very black and white. But there's obviously going to be some gray areas. And we've come up with a few of— we've come into a few of those already. And I think the reality is— Yeah. You'd hope by that point you'd know each other well enough and you work collaboratively and productively enough to figure that out, basically. So yeah, that's pretty much it. I fired myself as a CEO. I mean, honestly, the fact I find calling myself the CEO just cringe kind of speaks to the point that I'm just a founder and I should probably just do the founder things. But I don't mean that in like a, I can't do the CEO things, because I can. I actually think I'm very competent at that, probably more than a lot of more corporate CEOs, because I have the founder instinct. Mm-hmm. But I enjoy the other stuff more. And I think there's more incremental value that only I can add critically in the other areas. So therefore, giving all the other stuff to someone else and giving them more responsibility to execute and have full autonomy in those areas feels like a better move for this business at this time for me. Obviously everyone's different. And yeah, it's a big change I've made. So I don't know what else to say on it really. I was trying to think, how can I be useful in this video? But— Yeah. Yeah, maybe there's questions. I'll probably do a very long Q&A on a bunch of stuff. If you want to leave comments below on this, 'cause I'm sure, I feel like it is quite controversial thing. Maybe that's not the right word, but like it's a polarizing thing with different viewpoints, right? And I think it's hard to have a real opinion without understanding the dynamics of anyone's specific business. Like, you know, I think it would be unfair for anyone external to really have a huge opinion without knowing the exact details and nuance of my business, as it would be for me to say about someone else, but, I do think founders tend to lean towards founder energy needs to lead it all. And I actually agree, like I said, ironically. But I think that's better used on other stuff. And yeah, like I said, it's not like I've left the business. It's not like I'm suddenly part-time. I'm not working on anything else right now. So yeah, that's a big change. Don't know how to say it right now. I might report back in 6 months, a year. When hopefully it's gone incredibly fucking well. And yeah, I do feel more free to do other things, but then the work expands to fit the space and the time given to it, right? And I've now suddenly decided there's loads of time to do other stuff, and there is. So yeah, you definitely stay very busy. And there's certain areas that I'm finding it harder to, you know, not look at, but a lot of them I didn't want to fucking look at in the first place. Like— Yeah. I'm not as close to— I'd never— I haven't for the past year and a half, 2 years, been as close to the admin side of finance. Obviously the actual number is very close to, but like in terms of processing things and so on, operations, not that close to at all because there's better people doing it. Obviously still look at it. D2C I'm still close to, um, but in a slightly different way. And then products and brand, all in basically. So yeah, I'm still ultimately, you know, the final decision maker at the end of the day, but only like where my agreement that I've ultimately set, you know, gives me power to. And at the end of the day, you know, if it wasn't working, I could change it. But you do have to give that trust to someone else. And I've chosen to give in that and chosen to give that in, yeah. Early days, but yeah, it does feel like a new chapter in the business and in my entrepreneurial life. So I'm very much out of the trenches. I think I got too far from the details last year in many ways, which is maybe another video in itself. Now I feel closer to all of them, but more specifically in the areas that actually matter. So yeah, that's the plan. Hopefully it's best for the business and best for me and just makes it more enjoyable again. To think when it's more enjoyable, you do better work, and that's ultimately probably better for the business's growth overall as well. And the long-term structure of it, I think, is a consideration I have to make probably more than some founders that are just like solo Chad bootstrapping, which I often do miss. I think that's, that's pros and cons in itself. But yeah, for my environment, I think this was a great change. So we'll see. And yeah, subscribe to the pod. That's all I've got to say on this one. Any comments on this or anything else that you want to see, drop it below and catch the next one. Cheers. Cheers.
