Regular readers know that we are partial toward Technology Founder CEOs vs. hired CEOs as a general rule. Our experience is that founder CEOs are generally better than hired CEOs at anticipating customer market needs, in many cases before customers know they have a need. Founder CEOs care deeply about details of the business that a hired CEO may not give more than a casual glance. Founders in many cases work to leverage their smart senior business leaders whereas hired CEOs may feel threatened by a direct report’s potential. We could go on.
Our CEORater Technology Founder CEO Index has performed well year-to-date through December 6th enjoying a Total Unweighted Return of 14.2% and a Total Weighted Return of 17.1%. The comparable benchmarks returned 5.1% and 4.4% on an Unweighted and Weighted basis respectively. You may access the detail HERE.
Speaking of Technology Founder CEOs, we recently hosted a podcast with SS&C Technologies (ticker: SSNC) founder & CEO Bill Stone where we discussed M&A strategy, SS&C’s decentralized management approach (another core principal of ours) as well as SS&C’s “Singularity” artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning (“ML”) initiative. In the case of SS&C, we believe that AI and ML will drive efficiencies across back office and middle office-related products and services – enabling customers to drive incremental throughput with less effort. Further, AI & ML has the potential to create revenue and EBITDA opportunities for front-office customers (facilitating deal sourcing as an example). You may access the episode below: