This article from the Harvard Business Review explores the trade offs entrepreneurs make.
Most entrepreneurs want to make a lot of money and to run the show. New research shows that it’s tough to do both.
If you don’t figure out which matters more to you, you could end up being neither rich nor king.
EVERY WOULD-BE ENTREPRENEUR wants to be a Bill Gates, a Phil Knight, or an Anita Roddick, each of whom founded a large company and led it for many years. However, successful CEO-cum-founders are a very rare breed. When I analyzed 212 American start-ups that sprang up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I discovered that most founders surrendered management control long before their companies went public. By the time the ventures were three years old, 50% of founders were no longer the CEO; in year four, only 40% were still in the corner office; and fewer than 25% led their companies’ initial public offerings. Other researchers have subsequently found similar trends in various industries and in other time periods. We remember the handful of founder-CEOs in corporate America, but they’re the exceptions to the rule.
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