To stay or walk away

In the wake of Jack Dorsey’s resignation from Twitter, some have begun asking whether the move could herald a new era, in which founders voluntarily step aside rather than sticking around for decades or waiting to be ousted.

To explore the value added by a founder-CEO, an analyze of stock price and financial performance data from more than 2,000 publicly traded companies found that founder-led firms outperform those with non-founder-CEOs — but that the difference dwindles to zero just three years post-IPO, after which founder-CEOs actually start detracting from firm value.