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CNET News: Should company founders also be CEOs?

2012-04-05
I'd be interested to hear what you guys think is the CEOs role in maintaining that kind of power broker status and you know Adam you can take a cheap shop at someone on the list if you'd like you can go for it well just shouldn't say that but tell us about Tim Cook and what you think about him is the Apple expert sure he's obviously the only non founder on the list it's a it's a profound deficiency a weakness at Apple that their founder isn't on this list right now so I've said that I think Tim Cook will be a caretaker CEO until they until Apple find somebody who is more like Steve Jobs not another Steve Jobs with someone with more of his characteristics because Cook has very few of his characteristics having said that I think cook could be the caretaker for as long as a decade which is the length of his his options package currently do you think that's a good good one do you think it one of his most important goals must be to keep the management team that he has right yeah so I think that among he has many many fine qualities among them as he's a culture keeper if Steve Jobs defined the culture of Apple tim cook believes in the culture of Apple and people believe in him they believe that he loves apple that he will do what's right for Apple he's an unemotional person compared with jobs he's highly intelligent highly competent undoubtedly knows exactly what he's not good at which is a it's a it's a humble characteristic that a lot of people in general don't have I think and will he be able to keep the management team together that's his that's one of his top goals that management team has been at Apple for every person on the team with the exception of the new retail chief will be joining shortly has been at Apple at least since 2000 so the really key question and they work as hard as they can to keep us from finding out the answer to this is who's the next level down and how are they you've known marked for probably five years at Facebook what do you admire about him I think he is probably so he he's very admired for all kinds of things i think he is under rated as a CEO he is I forget how old he is now but he's extremely 727 I did some statistics here as disco elephants a car or average age is 41 that's a very big deal he can rent his own car but on think about what there was a time when he when he couldn't you saying when he was at facebook after God for something to rent a car at the good road so you can rent a car yay but know what he's really done is if you look back in the last eight years he has assembled probably one of the most magical teams in Silicon Valley and you know to do that when you were in your early 20s never had a job right like never understood like never talk to CFO never met anyone like Cheryl and and he's upgraded right over the years and i think that the ability as a young gentleman who has no business experience to find these people attract them upgrade them if you need them to be upgraded and like do that in an orderly and organized and and and powerful fashion is something that people just under appreciate about him and he's at that age i mean like having cheryl and the CFO whose outstanding all lined up is pretty impressive so you knew Larry before he was CEO we hung out and I think it's interesting to when you look at this market to your point about the importance of having a founders of CEO because this chart is a little bit misleading in that of course it was our smit that was you know the CEO that brought the company and really helped the company grow over a ten-year period and then Larry came up with the adult supervision things I never learned you don't like that I kind of like that cuz I was in a few meetings it was pretty yeah you decided that actively well what tone how does Larry help set a culture he was obviously there at the beginning when Sir Ian Larry started the business Eric wasn't around what about the culture of google it you know is reflected in Larry's personality I think there's a couple of things just of course the engineering driven culture is is really important and I also think that I'm just being able to prioritize there was there was one incident every Friday we had tgif so everyone in the company was invited and the founders were there and they would ask questions you could ask anything he wanted there was a big decision made and that was to eliminate the gummy bears from the cafeteria so someone did ask about you know to the founders what happened to the gummy bears and I thought Larry's answer was great he's like you know if that's our biggest problem then we're in good shape so i think that's on the part of the culture it's just like you know having the right tone being able to prioritize where the gummy bears belong in the overall strategy
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