Speaking on their ‘board you can’t afford’, Sir Tom and Lord Haughey advised a caller to the Go Radio Business Show whether it was important to appoint the founder of a new company as CEO to attract future investment.
Sir Tom referred to his personal experience with his own business empire, West Coast Capital.
“We are all about the founder. We are ‘sector agnostic’, so we don't worry about it,” he said. “We’re in biotech, we’re in property, we’re in financial services and it’s all because of the founder. So, perhaps we’re not typical in the investment community – certainly lots of people give me advice that I should be specialising and all the rest of it, but I really do believe it’s the person or the people who are going to make things happen.
“So there has to be a big vision, a big idea, but there must also be the execution phase. Can this team deliver what they’re saying? That’s why I always go to the people first and the idea second.”
Lord Haughey admitted he approached things slightly differently.
“I’ve met a lot of boffins with really good ideas but they don’t interact well with people. But to grow a business, no matter what you’re doing, it ends up as a people-to-people relationship in order to sell whatever you’re trying to sell.
“So, it’s great if the guy who founded the business is the finished article, if he has that passion and he’s also a people person who can drive the business. However, I’ve found on a couple occasions over the past 20 years people in companies who were the ideas and action guys but had different CEOs, who had the other skills that were needed to grow the businesses.”
Sir Tom concluded: “There really isn’t one answer to this. Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. The real question is does the entrepreneur have the wherewithal to go for it? Or do they say: ‘I’m not actually good at that part, so I’m going to get somebody better for that role.’?”
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