7 - Founder CEO or Professional CEO? - Sanjeev and Hari on their book: From Pony to Unicorn

Sanjeev and Hari speak about their respective journeys and talk about how they transitioned from one orbit to another. Sanjeev speaks about his journey from the corporate world to entrepreneurship at Daksh to investing in Helion and Fundamentum. Hari speaks about his journey from engineering in Tata Steel to how he serendipitously ended up at Daksh and how that has taken him to head HR at Bigbasket and on a wider note, engage with the start-up ecosystem.

Sanjeev speaks about the three rhythms with which organizations often need to operate – growth, efficiency and foundation. He mentions that the first comes naturally to entrepreneurs and what differentiates the great founders from the average ones is their ability to walk that three-dimensional tightrope. He also goes on to speak about the power of complementarity in the leadership team that can enable these three rhythms.

Sanjeev and Hari speak about how entrepreneurs can get intentional about building a certain culture in an organization. They speak about the role of the founder initially but also the criticality of having processes, systems and role-models as the organization scales.

Hari and Sanjeev speak about how start-ups can be thoughtful about getting senior leadership transitions right. They speak about what organizations can do at the stage of hiring and what they can do at the time of the leaders transitioning in.

We often get confused with the notion of intellect and thinking clearly. Hari shares his perspectives here. He also speaks about how laziness might be a preferred attribute with founders as being busy could lead founders spending time and getting caught up with the wrong things.

Hari and Sanjeev share their perspectives around how founders can think about improving their self-awareness. They also speak about the effectiveness of Coaching in gathering nuanced feedback and helping founders and the leadership teams scale up.

Sanjeev speaks about how he thinks about Professional CEOs and Founder CEOs and speaks about why it is so hard to get the transition right. He also shares his take on what is the one thing he looks for while betting behind founders.