Often, I share with him my biggest fear at my start-up: making it too top-heavy, or CEO-centric.
I am something of a socialist at heart(which, BTW, gives me some very unique perspectives on social media!), and as part of my god-less socialist agenda, I believe in the co-founders’ society.

The co-founders’ society is the empirical group of leaders who bring the start up to life.
As parents, it is their responsibility to nurture the start-up through infancy, but also instill the seeds of self-sustenance early on, coupled with a deep-rooted injection of DNA.

This DNA embodies what the start-up is about. The vision, the idea, the ideal, the technology, the space, the plan Bs, the critical mass, the drivers, the barriers, and everything that goes through the founders’ minds before, during and after starting up.

The sustenance is the business model. A few twists and turns aside, the business model of a company shouldn’t radically change with time. If it does, it’s not the same company(which is fine…but it’s NOT the same company any more). So, the basics of the model should be ingrained early on. And it’s simple: this is HOW we plan on making money, and this is HOW MUCH it will cost us to generate that kind of income.

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For the most part, this guy I speak with…he agrees with me. Infusing sustenance and DNA into the corporation at an early stage is critical, healthy and necessary.
He adds, however, that the biggest reason this should happen is to facilitate leadership changes that are NOT modeled after successions or smooth transitions, but after natural selection.

Ballmer came after Gates. I think that was forced succession, all due respect. Natural selection ought to have picked out someone like Ray Ozzie.
Who’s coming after Jobs? Who has that same sense of aesthetic?
What happens to Oracle after Larry Ellison?

Now contrast that with Intel. Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, Craig Barrett, and Paul Otellini. It almost seems like intelligent design. But therein lies the truth. It was intelligently designed, and it was done so that each time, the company became the soul of the CEO. Not the other way around.

Anyway, Intel’s just one example. Maybe you guys can think of others. Google after Schmidt? Shouldn’t be a problem either.

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So, to build a convincing case for the stability of the “direction of the movement”, my friend keeps telling me to worry about corporate culture RIGHT NOW, while we’re still starting out.
He says: Share….every damn thing you hear, think, feel, assume, learn, and break.
He adds: Learn fast, document the learnings faster, and email them to your fellow co-founders YESTERDAY. Encourage and demand that others do the same.

And the rationale is simple, he says: “say you are burned out of your mind and need to take a month off to go to the Himalayas clad in orange. That’s a month for you, but a lifetime for your start-up.
Would you rather come back to a “we’ve had a 5% increase in sign-ups this month, just like all other months”, or a “while you were gone, we added XYZ features and we had a 15% increase in sign-ups this month. Get your ass back to the Himalayas.”

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The answer was simple, and obvious. BTW- This guy is my dad.
And more important is the fact that I pay as a lot of attention to making Marcellus an efficient, de-centralized corporation, and not a CEO-centric, stagnation-prone start-up.

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Not sure if Jobs is really “mine, mine, mine!” – at least not in the immature tone your comment might suggest. I think he has supreme confidence in his ability to figure out what consumers want better than anyone else in the company. In that sense, he wants to own the product and company direction because he wants to serve the consumer rather than himself. I just think Jobs feels he has a closer connection with the consumer than any other member of Apple.

It will be interesting to see who will take over when Jobs leaves. I’ve heard from some Apple employees that chief operating officer Tim Cook would make a great replacement. I don’t know him and I’m guessing there isn’t enough on him for the public to make an opinion.

However, unlike LadyVoIP above, I don’t “blame that damned Bill Gates” each time my IE6 crashes (which is does at least thrice daily). Bill is out, Ballmer’s in, and it really didn’t have a negative effect on investor confidence in MSFT.

And Gates had a succession plan. He stepped down as CEO but stayed on in 2000. Then in 2006 he announced his “further retirement” plans 2 years in advance. He did it gradually, and responsibly, and without the ego that’s evident in many.

The only sense I get from Steve Jobs is “mine, mine, mine!” He’s like the kid who owns the ball, puck, or net… and when he’s tired of playing the game’s over for everyone.

They have both essentially become the “center” of the corporation. All eyes are on them… they are the company, the company is them.

I like Stetoscope’s last sentence. It rings familiar to what Jim Collin’s says in “Good to Great”… A company must have an executive that can share the vision and sell the vision, but not necessarily BE the vision.

(I could be remembering the book wrong…)

However, to use a pop culture analogy… It’s the difference between the X-Files or E.R. If you establish a series based on the main characters, you’re going to get screwed when David Duchovny decides to leave on you… but if you rotate the cast consistently… you get fourteen solid seasons of great drama.

The task always seems more difficult ex-ante because we are used to the current CEOs presence. There has been quite a few examples of charismatic CEOs succession working well. I didn’t follow it closely but recently it sounds as if Microsoft and GE managed it?