So as I've mentioned before, Semacode is raising money and I've been told by my advisors to expect the possibility that the new investors might ask me to step aside as CEO. So I've been reading around and thinking about "Founder-CEO succession" and what it means, what are the pros and cons, and what are the examples to look up to?

And let me be straight up and say that I like to be the CEO. I like the freedom, I like making my own decisions, I like being able to be doing all kinds of different things. I also love creating things. Not just physical things (or software) but also groups, projects, organizations. I created a few organizations in school, and also last summer I started my own ultimate team. Each time there were ups and downs but I like to see my own philosophies get into the group and see what happens (and learn from other people).

Some people have said that I like the title and I probably do that too. In previous jobs — especially at Apple — I had a lot of "soft power" and very little "hard power". For example at Apple when I was in charge of the Marklar project I was not the boss of any of the people who were working on the project. Put it this way: I couldn't hire or fire anyone. While I had a big pull, it was all informal. For me, that was a recipe for stress.

So I'm looking towards the future with the idea that my title — and my formal role & duties — should match up with what I'm actually doing. All I'm trying to say there is that I think it's strange for a CTO to be actually running the company — in that case they should be promoted.

On the other hand. I recognize that there is at least one particular area that I recognize as being fairly important for CEOs that I feel I'm not very good at and probably will never be great at. I'm not sure if that is a critical failing as a CEO (like a showstopper) or not. Could that part of the CEO be done by someone else? I don't know. Also, I can totally understand that from an investors standpoint, they will look at me and see someone whose track-record as a CEO is just getting started. Do they want to risk their money on that person, when they could bring in someone with experience and a track-record and one or many other companies, maybe even startups.

(By the way, I read about this back when I formed the company, which is why my business card says "Founder" on it, and not "CEO". I will ALWAYS be the Founder.)

So that's the me side of things. Then there's the whole aspect of the new investors and who they are and what they want. For example, one or more of them might want to be the CEO, or have a specific person in mind that they want to be the CEO. Or maybe they had previous experience or other good reasons for wanting a new CEO. My advisor Charles for example invested in a company and became its CEO recently. I have no idea whatsoever the attitude of the founders was, they could have even asked him to be the CEO, as I suspect many technologist founders would be happy not to be "bothered" with CEO duties.

So, what do other people have to say? Noam Wasserman has a whole blog on the subject , lots of good reading there. Suzanne Dingwall Williams talk about "the talk" which is what some of my advisors are prepping me for. Alexander Muse comes out definitely in favour of the founder staying on , actually a lot of the writers seem to be of this opinion. Maybe that's because usually replacing the founder is a given. I don't know. Feld is smart and well-written and as usual has some smart things to say, but this one is from the position of the investor/board .

Some founders go for the long haul. One who blogs is Jim Estill, and so check out this comments thread and this post by Jim and the comment here .

Finally, some examples from companies that I think have done very well. Apple, of course, being a company that was and is important to me. Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley from Pepsi, who replaced him and got him fired within a year or so. I admit that Steve by all accounts was a total ass back then, but still, Sculley almost killed the company and it took Steve (aided IMO by Gil Amelio) to bring it back. At RIM, Mike Lazaridis brought in Jim Balsillie and they became co-CEOs. Mike is definitely still very much in charge along with Jim. Larry Page and Sergei Brin, co-founders of Google, brought in Eric Schmidt to be CEO, but they not only remain very active at the top but now are both "Presidents". These people have all obviously worked out a role that makes them happy.