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Founder to CEO Transition

The shift from doing everything to leading a company: a map of the jobs you still hold, a CEO role written down, decision rights, a leadership team hired and run well, and the board work of the seat.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Then open the Marketplace in the app, search for Founder to CEO Transition, and click Install. It goes into your own files, and works offline from then on.

What it installs.

1

Pillar

1

Area

50

Projects

202

Starter tasks

🚀 Founding & Startups

Founder to CEO Transition

Growing from hands-on founder into chief executive as the company scales, letting go of tasks and building a leadership team.

  1. Inventory of every job the founder still holds
  2. Founder energy map of strengths and drains
  3. Company stage diagnosis for the next 18 months
  4. Written CEO role for the next stage
  5. Agreeing the role change with co-founders and the board
  6. Decision rights register for the leadership team
  7. Ranked hand-off plan for the founder's jobs
  8. Baseline 360 feedback on the founder as leader
  9. Personal leadership development plan for the year
  10. Weekly leadership team meeting
  11. Executive one-to-ones that coach rather than check
  12. Delegation log and Friday hand-off review
  13. Monthly business review with the leadership team
  14. Quarterly company goals cycle
  15. Quarterly board meeting preparation
  16. Board member calls between meetings
  17. Monthly strategy memo to the whole company
  18. Skip-level conversations with the wider team
  19. Monthly CEO reflection on time and judgement
  20. Learning to delegate outcomes, not tasks
  21. Writing memos and narratives as the CEO
  22. Coaching instead of answering
  23. Hard feedback to senior leaders
  24. Financial fluency for the CEO seat
  25. Representing the company in public
  26. Studying how other founders made the CEO shift
  27. Leadership team gap analysis
  28. Org design for the next headcount doubling
  29. Spending authority and approval thresholds
  30. Hiring the first VP-level leader
  31. Deciding whether to hire a COO or president
  32. Handing product decisions to a head of product
  33. Handing the sales pipeline to the first sales leader
  34. First managers promoted from the founding team
  35. Onboarding the first executive hire
  36. First leadership team offsite
  37. Announcing the new leadership structure
  38. Annual operating plan and budget
  39. First formal CEO review with the board
  40. Technical founder stepping into the CEO seat
  41. Early employee taking over the founder's old role
  42. Managing up to a founder who is learning to let go
  43. Choosing which co-founder becomes CEO
  44. CEO transition after a large funding round
  45. Leading a distributed company as the new CEO
  46. Parting with an executive who is not working out
  47. Executive pay and leadership equity framework
  48. Recruiting the first independent board director
  49. CEO succession and emergency cover plan
  50. Deciding whether to bring in an outside CEO

Where it starts.

Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.

Inventory of every job the founder still holds

Founders at twenty or thirty people are usually still the head of product, the top salesperson, the recruiter and the final approver of every expense, without ever having decided to be. Listing each job you hold, with the hours it takes and who could own it instead, turns a vague sense of overload into a list you can actually hand over.

First tasks

  • List every responsibility you held in the last month in one document
  • Add rough weekly hours beside each responsibility
  • Ask two close colleagues what people still wait on you for
  • Highlight the five costliest items that need little CEO judgement

Founder energy map of strengths and drains

Some of the work you still do gives you energy and makes the company better, and some of it you do only because you always have. Sorting your jobs by both skill and energy shows which ones to keep deliberately as CEO and which to hand away first, rather than giving away the parts you love and keeping the parts that wear you down.

First tasks

  • Draw a four-box grid of skill against energy on one page
  • Place every item from your job inventory on the grid
  • Name the two or three areas you will keep as CEO
  • Talk the grid through with your co-founder or chair

Company stage diagnosis for the next 18 months

The CEO a twelve-person company needs is not the CEO a sixty-person company needs, and the change usually arrives a year before the founder notices. Writing down where headcount, revenue, customers and funding are likely to be in eighteen months tells you which new demands the seat will carry and what has to change in how you work.

First tasks

  • Pull headcount and revenue forecasts from your current plan
  • Write the three biggest new demands the CEO will face
  • List the habits and processes that will break at that size
  • Book a call with an experienced founder to test the diagnosis

Make it yours.

Install Founder to CEO Transition, then tell Aurum the date you're aiming for. It checks whether the plan fits the weeks you actually have.

Free · Mac (Apple silicon) and Windows · v1.0.0 · Other platforms

Blueprints are general information to help you organise your own work. They are not medical, financial, legal or other professional advice. See the Terms.