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Mike Adams

Co-Founder And Chief Executive Officer at Grain

Highlights

Dec 8 · linkedin

Last week I publicly introduced a new CEO for Grain.

The most common question I got afterwards was: "what happened?"

The simple truth is, I no longer felt I was the best CEO for the company.

Over the past five years the needs of the CEO role of a growing start-up diverged from my strengths, interests, and the needs of my growing family.

I loved every minute of being the CEO until I didn't. And after the love didn't come back, I knew it was time to make a change.

There were no power struggles. No dramatic board meetings. And certainly no need for me to scream "I'm the eldest boy!" at anyone.

By all accounts, our CEO transition has been regarded by those involved as the most seamless they've been a part of. I'm still operating full-time in the business and finding new areas in the business to love. Our new CEO has brought fresh energy, vision, and direction into the company. I'm proud that we did it together.

After reflection, these are my top three "lessons learned":

Lesson 1️⃣: What makes a great founder rarely makes for a great CEO Great founders are relentless bulldozers. The can find new markets because they're not afraid to create chaos or conflict. But organization, processes, and operational efficiency are important as a company scales. The reasons for the success of the zero to one founder CEO often becomes the downfall of the one to IPO founder CEO.

I brought in a COO shortly after our Series A and over time my confidence in him grew until I asked him to take over as CEO. It worked out well.

Lesson 2️⃣: Not every founder/CEO can, or should, scale with their company By far the hardest part of my CEO transition was parsing through the tangled web of my identity and ego with the evolving demands and realities of the CEO role, the rest of the transition happened pretty organically.

Just because a founder can remain the CEO doesn't mean that they should.

Lesson 3️⃣: What's best for the company is also what's best for the founder As companies scale, founders are no longer one with their companies and their companies are no longer one with the founders. Interest diverge as the company can now live on with or without them.

“I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.” - Jack Dorsey

Founders who can break this once essential emotional connection are more likely to see reality objectively and make better decisions to the benefit of all shareholders.


Statistically, most CEO transitions fail.

But I’m convinced it doesn't have to be this way. Co-founders, board members, and investors should encourage founder CEOs to create a healthy separation between themselves and their companies.

And founder CEOs should regularly ask themselves: am I still the best person to lead this company today?

If you're not anymore (and you wait too long to make a change), odds are that your CEO succession plan won't be authored by you.

Nov 28 · linkedin

I’m excited to publicly announce Jeff Whitlock as the new CEO of Grain.

It’s been ~2 years since Grain acquired PingPong and Jeff (along with the his team) joined us full-time. Over that time, Jeff has helped Grain grow well past 7 figures in ARR. He's worn every executive hat at the company, culminating in his promotion to Board Member and President earlier this year.

There is simply no better person for the job than Jeff. He's been operating in the role for the past 2 months and has already done a lot to set us up for an exciting 2024 (follow Grain for the latest updates).

As for me, I'll remain Executive Chairman and be working full-time on Growth to help Grain connect with our next 1M users, 10k customers, and 1k partners.

While the OpenAI CEO ouster/rehire drama has been exciting to follow, there's not much the other 99% of start-ups can really learn from it. On the other hand, I've been surprised to learn that many people found the details our CEO transition relatable and helpful (spoiler alert: no, I wasn't fired).

So while taking a little time off last month, I wrote about the whole backstory, reasoning, and logistics of how we handled our transition. I will be sharing that here on LinkedIn next week.

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Mike Adams
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Experience

Co-Founder And Chief Executive Officer at Grain
Guest Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School Of Business

Education

Computer Science, Hack Reactor
Brigham Young University
Bachelor Of Science In Economics, Brigham Young University

Location

Burlingame, California, United States