Petersen: Resource allocation drives public CEO success, not private
Ryan Petersen · Ryan Petersen: Why Velocity not Speed is Most Important in Company Building | E1081 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Nov 13, 2023 · at 10:16
Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen distinguishes between the skillset required for public versus private company leaders when asked if the best CEOs are defined by resource allocation.
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“Over the long run, 50 year period or something, the CEOs who have the best returns in the stock market have been really good at resource allocation, meaning, meaning they really understand when their stock is overvalued or undervalued. And if it's undervalued, they buy their own stock. If it's overvalued, they issue stock and buy other companies. And they have, they're very in tune with how to buy and sell in the public markets, other companies doing M and A or being very smart. And that's a, Pure form of resource allocation within a public company and a private company is way less important. I think in private company, it's much more, yeah, I guess you can say resource allocation across teams and okay. Do I want to put headcount into this or that? I don't think that's the most important thing in private companies though. It's usually like, do you have a great vision? Can you attract the best talent? And can you just like execute, can you actually deliver results against your vision?”
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