I really like the analysis of finding versus maximizing product cycles. There are a few aspects of "Moral authority" that I think have been left out.<p>1. The rank and file know (or at least think) that a professional CEO is less likely than a founding CEO to be around in 5 years. So when a new professional CEO says "Jump" it's much harder to get people to change their way of doing things, particularly if they suspect the next CEO will undo all the changes. When a founding CEO says "Jump," you might as well get with the program because the change is likely to be permanent. (For the economists in the audience, this is a version of the Lucas critique applied to organizations.)<p>2. The "knowledge pyramid" isn't just about the CEO's epistemological state and decision-making apparatus; it's also about communicating the values and identity of the company back to the company. Founding CEOs are in a superior rhetorical position because they can say "I hired you all because each of you ________", and give everyone the warm fuzzies. The professional CEO on the other hand has to speculate or impute motivations to the previous CEOs, which is less motivational. As a recent example, I think Satya Nadella has done a relatively poor job of communicating what makes Microsoft employees different from other employees; instead of saying, "You guys understand the full stack better than anyone" (or something), he can't help but to talk about market opportunities and cloud-first productivity blah blah blah. (Which is to say -- not only was he in an inevitably weakened rhetorical position with respect to BillG, he squandered it when it came to articulating the company's identity.)<p>3. Founding CEOs are in a better rhetorical position when it comes to navigating value conflicts between quarterly earnings and something else ("changing the world"). When communicating with immediate subordinates they can do a kind of good-cop bad-cop routine with the board of directors ("The board really wanted X, but I thought that'd be bad for customers, so we're doing Y."), whereas a board-picked CEO will be assumed to act only in the interest of the stock price. For many companies (e.g. organizations that profess to be on some kind of higher mission) this sort of CEO will be rather uninspiring, and therefore the professional CEO will be less capable of effecting change throughout the organization.<p>4. Professional CEOs have to navigate a more precarious political situation because there's a good chance that one or more subordinates want the CEO's job. (I would hazard to guess that insiders usually replace outsiders and outsiders usually replace insiders.)<p>One thing this article leaves out is a deeper analysis of why the conventional wisdom is to replace a founder with a professional when there are so many famous counterexamples. It could be that at a certain stage in a company's growth investors prefer to be more risk-averse and will give up a potential grand slam in order to get a two-run double, or something. (And by extension the OP is willing to take larger risks than the average VC.) Or that there are hidden social dynamics at play.