If Your Company Needs You, You’re Doing It Wrong
How to go from Founder to CEO: the steps by Ben Horowitz, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos
Most founders don’t fail because the product sucks.
They fail because they keep acting like the best employee when the company needs a CEO.
At scale, “being productive” stops meaning what you can do today. It means what the company can do without you. If you don’t make that switch, you become the bottleneck. hen the board, the market, or burnout makes the decision for you.
This isn’t motivational. It’s statistical. In a study of 1,156 VC-backed U.S. IPOs, 40.8% changed CEOs between the first VC round and the IPO. And HBR notes founder-CEO transitions are 2–3x more likely to fail or cause a performance drop than transitions between nonfounder CEOs.
So this guide is about one thing: killing the “founder mode” habits that stall growth, and replacing them with CEO systems.
It includes:
The 4 CEO fundamentals founders learn too late
The step-by-step process to remove yourself as the bottleneck
PMF is read by more than +1000 different VC firms & tens of thousands of the fastest growing startup founders including multiple YC founders.
Want to put your company in front of them?
