Presumably a C-level is expected not to be satisfied with stepping down to a 'lesser' position, especially if those in charge of hiring at bigcos are the types who aspire to C-level status and thus see a rejection of C-level status as a rejection of their whole philosophy.

There might be at least the perception that the CEO will spend most of their tenure plotting their next startup (and quite possibly poaching employees and intellectual property on the way out). Think Anthony Levandowski.

Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

Andy Rubin was a President/CEO/Founder of Android and then was at Google for a decade. Maybe he wasn't C-level though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Rubin

Difference is, Google acquired his startup - he din't apply to Google solo after an Android "exit".

Yes, I agree that this is a very successful case.

>Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

Wildly might be a high bar, but otherwise it's pretty much majority of acquisitions.

My impression is that the CEOs often (typically?) leave as soon as whatever vesting periods are defined in the acquisition have passed.

But now you mention acquisitions, it could be argued that NeXT CEO Steve Jobs did OK as an Apple employee…

I'm not arguing with the rule, but one notable exception is Kevin Systrom who stayed with Instagram for years (growing it from 30 million users when the acquisition was announced to over 800 million). He discusses the choice to stay, and the reactions from others in the company, in this interview: https://tim.blog/2019/04/25/kevin-systrom/

Direct mp3 link, since Tim Ferriss puts a wall of text before his actual content: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/6c7b3008-cf08-4aae-93f8-d3fde...

I can only speak for places where I've worked and hired folks, but the consensus seemed to be that people who seek out the CEO role are highly correlated with a need to control everything and less well correlated with "team players" (or people who can work with peers in a give and take sort of situation). In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person.

That and the cited "common knowledge[1]" that the population of CEOs contains a higher percentage of sociopaths than the general population. I have yet to work at a company that considered sociopathic characteristics as a "positive" for the company.

[1] I really have heard this from multiple sources but have yet to find any well executed study that shows it to be actually true so I treat such pronouncements with a bit of skepticism. I have heard more than a few people who are disgruntled at losing their job will blame it on their boss being a sociopath. Such externalization of causes feels good psychologically but it is also self serving.

> In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get things done") person than the CEO ("I'm the boss") person.

I think it's less "The Boss" than the fact that the CEO is generally more marketing/finance focused (far less relevant after a buyout as the purchasing company already has that established) than the CTO or VP of Engineering.

There are, of course, exceptions where a company gets bought specifically to install their CEO in the CEO role of the purchasing company.

There is such a series of studies - but they were all done by the same PI, who has built his career on redefining "sociopathy" over-broadly, more or less to enable him to have headlines like "20% of CEOs are sociopaths!"

edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Is it because I'm lampooning a "common knowledge" that people like? For pete's sake, the research paper that spawned this meme even got retracted by the authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.12...

Big corps usually want people who do what they are told to do. An employee with startup experience has shown that, a lot of founders are probably not good followers.