Episode 152: Founder to CEO – What’s different and why?

With this podcast, we launched CLI’s Women Legal Business Founders and Leaders Series offered through our Legalpreneurs Lab, Women Legalpreneurs Special Interest Group.

In this, the first of eight sessions in the series, we chatted with three outstanding women founders and leaders from Australia, Singapore and the USA who have taken the journey from Founder to CEO and candidly shared that experience:

• Sonja Ebron, Co-Founder, & CEO, Courtroom5
• Sacha Kirk (Facilitator), Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer, Lawcadia
• Cherilyn Tan, CEO & Founder, AsiaLawNetwork.com & Tessaract Technologies

Topics covered in this session included:

• What changes when you move from the role of founder to CEO
• The benefits of having a founder vs co-founder; how this evolves; and how/why roles and responsibilities are distributed
• How to build an effective team: in-sourcing vs outsourcing; what you continue to do vs what the team does; the challenges of scaling, hiring the right people, contractors, retaining mindset and culture
• The pros and cons of international expansion
• The relationship between investors and founders – who wants what and how to ensure interests are aligned

If you would prefer to watch rather than listen to this episode, you’ll find the video in our CLI-Collaborate (CLIC) free Resource Hub here.