It is fair to say that the recent news of Canva raising at US$200m at US$40bn valuation might give you an impression of an overnight success story. However, even Canva's meteoric rise to the top of Australia’s tech scene has been c.10 years in the making.
In public markets, there are also a lot of successful businesses which have been founder-led for a long time.
According to PwC, only 19% of CEOs remain in the top post for 10 years or more and the average tenure is 5 years (skewed by some long-standing outliers). Of course, if you founded the business and own most of the shares/voting rights, you have a better than average chance.
The well known, long-reigning Aussie founders
As published frequently in the BRW Rich list, some of the better-known founders who have been running their businesses for many decades include. Some of these include
Seek (Andrew Bassat), Goodman Group (Gregory Goodman), Flight Centre (Graham Turner), Mineral Resources/Fortescue (Chris Ellison/Andrew Forrest), Soul Pattinson (Millner's), Reece (Wilson's), Harvery Norman (Gerry Harvey), Aristocrat Leisure (Len Ainsworth) and Magellan/Platinum (Hamish Douglass/Kerr Neilson) or Computershare (Chris Morris)
The unsung heroes
Below is a list of some of the bigger unsung heroes who have quietly been running their businesses for +15 years. I would definitely recommend clicking through the links to hear more about them if interested.
Dicker Data (David Dicker) and WiseTech (Richard White) both came under fire for selling down a small portion of their stock. They have been leading the charge for 43 and 27 years respectively
Objective Corporation (Tony Walls) - 34 years
Adore Beauty (Kate Morris) – 22 years
Resmed (Peter Farrell) – 31 years
Macquarie Telecom (David Tudehope) – 27 years
EnergyOne (Ian Ferrier) – 25 years; the guy that founded Ferrier Hodgson
Pinnacle Investments (Ian Maccoun) – 15 years
Over the Wire (Michael Omeros) – 15 years;
Mader Corporation (Luke Mader) – 15 years
Beyond the founders, there are also a few standouts long term Directors who have been on boards for a very long time. This is less common these days, however, some notable examples can be found here
In short, these overnight success stories generally take a lot longer to happen than it at first seems.
Comments