Founder-Led Companies Are Better at Big Bets, He Says
Tech executive Kyle Jenke says Tim Cook grew Apple's value 11-fold without a clear breakthrough, while Facebook's founder could risk $100 billion on an unproven bet.
Give It Up Podcast · How to Choose the Best Church Giving Platform | Kyle JenkeKyle Jenke, the chief operating officer of the tech company Optimism who previously worked at WhatsApp, was comparing a big company to serving at a megachurch and a startup to planting a new church, where you have to find a building and a team from scratch. Asked whether startups have to exist because big companies struggle to invent, he offered a personal belief, not a rule.
He said "it's really hard for companies that are not run by founders" to innovate.
Jenke holds this as a belief about leadership more than size. For him, whether a company can take a big swing depends less on how large it is than on whether a founder is in charge. He pointed to Intuit, where he said founder Scott Cook drove incredible innovation for years and innovation slowed as Cook stepped away, a decline he said is reflected in the stock price.
By contrast, he said Facebook, another large company still run by a founder, keeps trying to innovate even when it is painful. His example was the metaverse bet by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder who runs Facebook. Jenke said Zuckerberg "put almost $100 billion into innovating" through that journey, and he gave him credit for it.
That kind of swing is what excites him about innovation. Separately, Jenke said he will not work at companies that are not led by a founder, and his own track record includes Womply, TSheets, WhatsApp, Adyen, and Optimism, all of which he described as founder led.
Asked how he explains Apple under Tim Cook, who is not a founder, Jenke drew a line between innovating and creating value. He said Cook did an incredible job and increased Apple's enterprise value about 11 times, but when asked whether Apple had released any truly innovative products in that period, he was unsure and offered only the AirPod, saying, "Maybe the AirPod, maybe."
To put Jenke's distinction in plain terms, value creation squeezes more from what exists, while innovation risks a fortune on what might be next. As he put it, "If you're not a founder, you can't put $100 billion into something that only founders can do."
Questions people ask
Why can a founder make a huge bet that a hired CEO cannot?
A founder usually controls enough voting power and personal credibility with the board to survive a costly failure. A hired chief executive is judged quarter by quarter, so a $100 billion gamble that looks bad for years can cost that person the job.
Do founder-led bets always work?
No. Jenke himself calls innovation painful and says it may not go as expected, citing the metaverse journey. Founder control makes big swings possible, but it does not guarantee that customers will want the result.
What does founder mode mean?
It is a management style associated with founders staying deeply involved in product details, even at large companies, rather than delegating everything to layers of managers. Supporters say it preserves speed and customer focus, while critics say it can create bottlenecks and burnout.