Table of contents
Over the past few years, as large tech companies begin to mature, we have seen that there has been a slow shift in leadership, with founders stepping down from the CEO role and making way for a new group of executives to take on the most senior position at their company. Learn more about non-founder CEOs and how they lead their respective companies.
Big tech companies have drastically changed the way we live our daily lives, and the founders of these businesses have amassed significant wealth.
Over the past few years, as large tech companies begin to mature, we have seen that there has been a slow shift in leadership, with founders stepping down from the CEO role and making way for a new group of executives to take on the most senior position at their company.
The decision for founders to remove themselves from a company that they built from scratch is often a difficult one and can significantly impact the trajectory of a business.
“As a company transitions from product to sales, and scales its operations, the skills required change. And if you’re bringing that talent in from the outside, having the CEO title will not only attract better talent… but empower an outsider within the company,” Martin Casado, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a blog post. “Each founder has to weigh their own situation, and their calculus could come out differently.”
Most recently to join the group of non-founder CEO companies is Twitter, which appointed 37-year-old Parag Agrawal to its most senior position.
Agrawal is one of the youngest CEOs to lead an S&P 500 company and has also become part of the growing number of Indian-American CEOs in Silicon Valley.
In fact, out of the 50 internet technology companies that The Org identified with non-founder CEOs almost half of them were run by people of color. This should not come as a surprise, as studies have shown that Asian Americans are often promoted to executive positions in a company during times of uncertainty.
Some of the most notable non-founder tech CEOs include:
Andy Jassy
Not many people had heard of Andy Jassy before Jeff Bezos handpicked him to be his successor in July last year. Friends, family and even college roommates know Jassy as extremely down-to-earth and unpretentious, a compliment his predecessor rarely received.
The Harvard Business School graduate has been with Amazon since 1997, and previously ran the company’s cloud services business.
Tim Cook
Tim Cook became CEO of Apple in August 2011 after serving at the company as its COO. Cook has an MBA from Duke University where he graduated as a Fuqua Scholar. Before joining Apple he was the COO of Compaq. Cook is known to be a private and quiet person.
Sundar Pichai
On August 10, 2015, it was announced that Sundar Pichai would become the CEO of Google, a few months later, he was named the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Pichai joined Google as head of product management and development in 2004 after spending some time at management consulting firm, McKinsey.
He has a degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, an MS from Stanford University and an MBA from Wharton where he was both a Siebel Scholar and a Palmer Scholar.
Daniel Zhang
One of the founding members of the Alibaba Partnership, Daniel Zhang has been with Alibaba since August 2007, when he joined as CFO of Taobao Marketplace. Zhang was named CEO of Alibaba in May 2015 and became the company’s chairman in September 2019.
Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft in February 2014, after being with the company for 22 years. He most recently served as EVP of the Cloud and Enterprise group at Microsoft.
Nadella has earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, a Master’s in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and a MBA from the University of Chicago.
It is important to note that all of the CEOs named above are men, as women CEOs are still underrepresented in tech companies. Out of the 50 tech companies that we identified as non-founder operated, only 5 of them were led by women. The detailed list of companies with non-founder CEOs can be found below:
| Logo | Org Chart | Founder/s | Previous CEO | Current CEO | Date Appointed | Estimated # CEO Since Founding |
| ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- |
| 
Create your own free org chart today!
Show off your great team with a public org chart. Build a culture of recognition, get more exposure, attract new customers, and highlight existing talent to attract more great talent. Click here to get started for free today.
In this article
The ORG helps
you hire great
candidates
Free to use – try today