An interesting quote at 37Signals leads to a blog post over at an investment firm answering Why We Prefer Founding CEOs. The names of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Ev Williams (Twitter), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) are bandied about.
If you do any kind of work in the eCommerce sector, you prick up your ears whenever you hear the names of the most successful web entrepreneurs. They’re the examples to follow. Hitch your wagon to their star and they’ll lead you to riches. But the trouble is spotting them early enough. Wouldn’t it have been great, for instance, to get in on the ground floor on Twitter? The first person on the scene can scoop up treasure with both hands that the rest of us have to hustle just to get a scrap of.
The reasons given for favoring founding CEOs boil down to the fact that they were the people with the original vision and passion, and know their company and their business in the most comprehensive way. But the fact is that all the good ideas are not at all taken – you probably have ten or so sitting around waiting their turn. It’s just that the time has to be right for each idea to reach its maximum potential. And knowing that time, and being there right when it happens, is the stuff that ecommerce legends are made of.