There’s One Attribute That Makes an Entrepreneur a Great Long-Term Leader
From Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates to Elon Musk, we are in the age of founders as long-term leaders. Why?
It is conventional wisdom that what it takes to get a business off the ground is very different than the skills necessary to manage a company as it matures. In the natural evolution of a startup, the young, brash founder will inevitably need to be replaced by a more experienced, steady executive — at least according to the thinking of traditional investors.
Yet some of today’s most successful business leaders, from Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates and Elon Musk, prove this assumption wrong. Their trajectories demonstrate that entrepreneurs may actually be more effective leaders of large companies than traditional CEOs. Entrepreneurs develop a long-term vision and assemble a team to see their plan through. Sometimes their vision is decades ahead of everyone else. They eschew short-term gains for a much grander prize. In the end, they build extraordinary, innovative companies that embrace a unique culture offering strong employee growth and a cohesive community. Entrepreneurial wealth creation drives our global economy and affects billions of workers and consumers.
