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There’s something special about founder-led companies.
Bain’s research found that over the past decade, founder-led companies outperformed their nonfounder-led counterparts by 2.1 times in terms of total shareholder returns (TSR). Among technology companies, the difference is much starker: founder-led tech companies beat their industry peers by 2.8 times in TSR.
Even if we remove the tech sector companies that powered such significant growth in the S&P 500 over the past 10 years, founder-led companies still surpassed their nonfounder-led counterparts by 1.4 times in TSR.
We define a company as founder-led if the founder was the CEO or serving on the board (including as chairman emeritus) during any period of that year.
But there’s good news for other companies—they, too, can capture or rediscover the benefits of the Founder’s Mentality® if they commit themselves to their insurgent mission to serve their customers’ needs better than anyone else, focus obsessively on the frontline that serves those customers, and maintain an owner’s relentless dedication to speed and simplicity.
Curiosity. Empathy. Humility.
A new podcast exploring lessons of scale, simplicity and soul from global CEOs and surprising guest voices. We speak with multi-faceted leaders about their never-ending pursuit of scale and growth—in business, and in life.
First published in Dezember 2025