Every CEO succession in a startup is different. Still, the transition from Alicia to Seb at Skimlinks strikes me as a model example of a scale-up CEO succeeding a founder CEO.
Alicia Navarro founded and led the business for over a decade before a big realisation. First, leading a startup for so long was taking its toll on her physically and emotionally. Second, the growing business needed a different set of skills.
The trigger was the sense of, “Gosh, this is not just something that's impacting the business. It's starting to impact me physically.”
I know that I'm a brilliant early-stage founder. And I think that the skills that you need to be a 0-to-1 are just very different from what it takes to get 1-to-N, and EBITDA maximisation is very much about operations, and processes, and structure, and finances, and they were not my skills.
Alicia identified an internal candidate for CEO succession and, after some discussion, persuaded the board to agree to her plan. Two years later, after Seb optimised the business to perform, it was sold.
He was really great at, “How do you optimize code? How do you streamline operations? How do you make things faster, lighter, better?” And that really played to his strengths. So that was one of the key projects he did. And then he also just really optimized the sales machine and brought in a lot of structure and rigor and process.
And as a result of that, he did a great job. He really, massively increased the profitability of the company.
Would Alicia do anything differently? Not really.
The measure of success is, “Do I have to worry about money anymore now? Not really. And did I create something that is indisputably a success? And the answer is yes.”
This is an excellent case of a 0-1 CEO and a 1-N CEO who did a great job together. They had complementary skills: Alicia built a business, a foundation for future success, and Seb optimised it and took it to a good exit.
Seb and I used to talk about this concept of sequential founders rather than parallel. So this idea of, “Wouldn't it be great that rather than two founders that start at the same time, you have founders that operate one after the other, so a zero-to-one, and then a 1-to-N and it's more like a relay.”
Enjoy the conversation!
Timestamps
(Clickable on YouTube)
00:00 Introduction
01:38 Founding Skimlinks
05:53 Deciding to Step Down as CEO
10:22 The Transition Process and Board Dynamics
15:02 Physical and Emotional Toll of Leadership
17:12 0-to-1 Founders and 1-to-N Founders
22:08 Post-CEO Work as President
23:45 Power Handover
29:02 Team Reactions and Culture Shift
30:48 Post-Transition Success
33:20 Reflecting on Leadership and Lessons Learned
37:35 Board's Role in the Transition
39:05 Life After the Exit
41:22 Advice for Founders and Future CEOs
49:46 The Importance of Succession Planning
51:32 Final Reflections
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