In our recent Burn Rate podcast episode, we talked about capital discipline and how companies change once they leave the survival phase and enter the scaling phase. What struck me was a listener question from Janine in Frauenfeld that initiates that discussion.

She noticed that more and more founders in the scale-up phase are changing roles often stepping down as CEO and moving into product, technology, or chairman positions and asked whether investors see this as a sign of weakness or strength.

It is a great observation, and it is happening everywhere right now.

In Switzerland alone we have seen multiple examples in recent months. A particularly visible one is Loft Dynamics, where the founder moved from CEO to CTO while an internationally experienced CEO was brought in to lead the next phase.

This is not a coincidence. It reflects a deeper truth that we touched on in the Burn Rate conversation: as companies scale, the nature of leadership changes as fundamentally as the nature of capital management.

The skills required to get from zero to one are not the same as those required to get from one to one hundred.

---

Founder-Market-Fit vs. Founder-Stage-Fit

In early-stage venture we often talk about founder-market-fit. But in growth investing, what matters just as much is founder-stage-fit.

The job of a pre-seed CEO is fundamentally different from the job of a Series C CEO.

Early on, leadership means:

• building the first product
• talking to customers
• moving fast with limited resources
• making intuitive decisions under uncertainty

In the scale-up phase, leadership shifts toward:

• organisational design
• multi-country execution
• forecasting and reporting
• governance and compliance
• capital markets and investor relations

That is not an evolution of the same job — it is a different job.

The best founders I have seen reach a point where they ask a very uncomfortable but powerful question: Where do I create the highest leverage for the company and not for my title?

If the honest answer is product, technology, or vision, then bringing in an experienced operator as CEO can be the most value-creating decision they ever make.

From an investor perspective, this is usually a strong positive signal. It shows self-awareness, a company-first mindset, and the ability to build a leadership team that is stronger than the individual founder.

The only time it becomes a red flag is when the transition is reactive after missed targets, loss of board confidence, or internal conflict. Then it is a symptom of a problem rather than a strategic choice.

---

Titles Don’t Scale — Leverage Does

One of the key themes in our Burn Rate discussion was discipline: allocating capital to the highest-return activities and avoiding emotional attachment to sunk costs. The same logic applies to leadership.

Holding on to a title for identity reasons can be as damaging as holding on to a failing product because you invested too much in it.

Being a founder is not a job description. It is a permanent role in the story of the company. Many of the most successful technology companies have exactly this setup:

The founder remains:

• the vision owner
• the product driver
• the cultural anchor

While a scale CEO focuses on:

• building the organisation
• international expansion
• managing capital markets
• operational execution

When done well, this is not a loss of power it is a growth multiplier.

It also increases the probability of large outcomes. Experienced scale CEOs reduce execution risk, improve scalability, and prepare companies for complex financing structures, including venture debt or public market readiness.

The biggest mistake is not stepping aside when the company outgrows the founder’s strongest skill set. That is when identity becomes a bottleneck.¨

To sum up: A proactive CEO transition in the scale-up phase is not a sign of weakness. It is a signal of maturity, scalability, and true company-first thinking.

And that is exactly what sophisticated investors want to see.