Startup founders can use executive search consultants to locate ideal CEO candidates. However, there's no universal answer to how soon a chief executive needs to be brought in, and it's tough to know when exactly it is time to make this change in leadership.
In a post on his personal website from 2013, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, provides several pieces of advice for startup founders contemplating a new CEO. Generally, he says, founders should bring on their CEO pick as soon as they can and give them credit as another founder of the company. This is essential for businesses with a relatively small employee pool: Citing his own experience, Hoffman said he brought in CEO Jeff Weiner when the business had only 337 other workers.
At the same time, startups should make sure that the person they hire isn't just whomever can fill the position fastest, but someone who will bring value to the company's executive leadership. One of his "four principles" of a good founder/CEO relationship is to find a person with industry-specific experience.
"The whole point of hiring someone from the outside is to bring in skills and experience you don't have, which will help scale the company," he writes. "Here, Sheryl Sandberg represents the classic example—her management and people skills were brought in to complement Mark Zuckerberg's great product vision and strategy."
If the CEO has a natural relationship with the founders, is put on equal footing and has enough time to guide the company through its development, the result could be success and a fruitful relationship that leads to extended growth. An executive recruitment team will help founders get this partnership off to a great start by verifying that the CEO fits all of their criteria.
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