Situation: A founder CEO established her company with a significant personal loan, which is being repaid. To compensate herself for the original investment, she is considering several options including an employee stock option plan (ESOP) through which employees would be able to establish ownership of a certain percent of the company. What is appropriate compensation for a founder CEO?
Advice from the CEOs:
- The critical question is: what is the CEO’s goal? The next question is – what options best serve to achieve goal?
- If the goal is long-term goal is maintaining or increasing current income combined with long-term security – like a Trust Fund – seek the counsel of a financial advisor who can help model how the options under consideration will satisfy the goal.
- This individual can also evaluate the tax advantages associated with various options.
- Is there a clear exit strategy in place?
- Every company needs a written exit strategy, as well as a plan to put this strategy into action.
- The simple existence of a strategy and a plan does not preclude adjusting either the strategy or the plan as conditions or opportunities change.
- There are two important corollary points:
- Having a strategy and plan is the only way to build a structure of accountability within the company; and
- Recalling a lesson from Jim Collins’s book, Good to Great, the successful companies selected a solid strategy and stuck with it; the less successful comparators continually changed strategy and never allowed momentum to build.
- To assist establishing an exit strategy, seek the advice of one or two consultants. There are several highly qualified exit advisors that can be researched through current professional contacts or via the Internet.
