Suranga Chandratilake, General Partner at Balderton Capital, compares European and US tech ecosystems regarding whether technical founders remain as CEOs as their companies scale.
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“I think that idea has well and truly been replaced in the U S where it's okay to do that if you want to do that, but it's also okay to stay in charge. So you have, you know, very, very prominent cases like someone like Mark Zuckerberg, for example, or Jack Dorsey, for example, who, you know, product and technology people who've stayed in charge of their companies and being the CEO. And I think that, that belief and that sort of, you know that, that model of bringing in a professional CEO, someone who has an MBA you know, it doesn't really exist in the US, but it's, it still exists to a certain extent here in Europe.”
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