Product leaders have emerged as prime candidates for top executive roles, particularly CEO and COO positions, in major tech companies over the past decade. Daversa's CEO Paul Daversa, renowned for assembling transformational executive leadership teams, highlights why CPOs are increasingly sought after for these top roles.
10 years ago, Daversa Partners doubled down on our efforts to build what is now the strongest network of Product Leaders in technology around the world. I was vocal about why I believed this cohort would become the next CEOs and Presidents in breakaway companies. It was around the 2013 pre-cloud era, and the skepticism and cynicism were byproducts of a “revenue is king” market where the product played a backseat. It’s fascinating to look back at many of the individuals we advocated for. Below is a small sample set of a much-growing cohort of companies with leaders steering their respective companies in either the top post or the #2 post as President or COO, all with deep product DNA. #MongoDB, #Atlassian, #ServiceNow, #Nutanix, #Datadog, #Adobe, #Snowflake, #Guidewire, #Plaid, #Glean, #Databricks, #Instacart, #CruiseAutomation, #Brex, #Ancestry, and #Bumble. **Why are they being chosen?** Chief Product Officers (CPOs) are increasingly sought after as CEO candidates for several reasons: 1. **Strategic vision:** They are unmatched at formulating and executing product vision. 2. **Customer-centric approach:** CPOs excel at understanding customer needs, which is the only link to business strategy that actually matters. 3. **Cross-functional leadership:** CPOs work across all teams and are adept at uniting teams. 4. **Data-driven decision making:** Their experience in analyzing product data translates well to making informed decisions as a CEO. 5. **Growth mindset:** The CPOs I have gotten to know have a strong drive for continuous learning and personal development. 6. **Balanced perspective:** CPOs balance product development with cost and scalability more rigorously, and these skills translate well to CEO or COO roles. One last market observation: #Microsoft and #Google have been on a product talent acquisition spree to bolster the front lines of their respective AI wars. This will be a short-lived band-aid that will last for 24 months before those executives relaunch to run companies. These new companies will be brought about by the foundational players creating more railways to new platforms. Why am I so confident of this? We talk to them all! #ProductLeadership #TechLeaders #CPO #FutureCEOs #TechInnovation #LeadershipDevelopment