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Good morning. Good morning. Phil Wahba writing this morning from New York. What\u2019s a company to do when the founder has left\u2014but hasn\u2019t moved on? That\u2019s the plight Lululemon, which reports earnings today after the bell today, finds itself in more than a decade after founder Chip Wilson departed its board. Though his methods have varied\u2014full page newspaper ads berating the board, LinkedIn posts criticizing strategy, open letters to shareholders\u2014Wilson has been adamant that leadership is doing just about everything wrong. I delve into the drama in my latest feature for Fortune. But the question I explore is one familiar to any company with a charismatic and dogged leader who sees the company they founded fumble\u2014and can\u2019t stay away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s even a name for it, \u201cpost-founder syndrome,\u201d in which executives who built highly successful companies criticize successors\u2019 perceived stumbles with an \u201conly I can do this properly\u201d attitude. (See: the founders of Starbucks, Papa John\u2019s Pizza, and Nike.) In his Wall Street Journal ad last autumn, Wilson delivered a rather self-aggrandizing disquisition on why Lululemon had drifted: \u201cA company bereft of a visionary loses its singular voice for product and long term strategy,\u201d he intoned.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s latest volley was to launch a proxy war, followed by open letters (many of them) to make his case and convince other shareholders to replace three directors at the next annual meeting. He hopes to reshape Lululemon\u2019s board which he blames for letting the company\u2019s culture of innovation disintegrate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Things between Wilson and the company went south after he left the board in 2015 (he stepped down as chairman in 2013 in the wake of comments about women\u2019s bodies construed as fat-shaming, creating one of the biggest crises in the company\u2019s history). However in the first nine years following his departure, Lululemon\u2019s revenue proceeded to triple. (It is expected to report $11 billion a year in revenue for 2025.)<\/p>\n
Today, though, he does have a lot of company in feeling Lululemon is adrift: shares have fallen 68% from their all-time high in 2023 as its U.S. sales have slid, raising fears that it hasn\u2019t introduced enough new merchandise or uphold the technical leadership in its activewear, and has lost brand cache to brands like Alo Yoga. And in my reporting I found that like many founders, Wilson still wields enormous influence inside the company, especially with long-time employees who saw first hand how he stoked a culture of excellence and pioneering.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last week, Wilson went as far to warn any prospective CEO to beware of a board \u201cthat it is not equipped to support a visionary leader and the necessary transformation of the Company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Needless to say the CEO who takes on this job won\u2019t just be dealing with a turnaround and a demanding board, they\u2019ll have to manage a post-founder too. You can read the full story here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/p>\n
Top leadership news<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s dealmaking strategy struggles in Iran<\/p>\n
In business, President Donald Trump built a reputation for emerging from bankruptcies and chaos on relatively stable ground. That playbook is proving far less effective amid the turmoil in the Strait of Hormuz, as Trump struggles to get oil moving through the strategic chokepoint again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI brings VC dollars to once-forgotten industries<\/p>\n
Venture capital investment in healthtech, cybersecurity, and biotech has climbed with the rise of AI, according to PitchBook\u2019s latest Emerging Tech Indicator. The key to winning funds is offering what PitchBook calls “service as software,” or demonstrating how AI systems are delivering real-world results, and not just being another tool that employees use.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Waymo\u2019s CEO says the company will create jobs, not take them away<\/p>\n
Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of robotaxi company Waymo, told the New York Times that the company won’t take jobs away, but will instead create new roles that make, maintain, and manage the vehicles themselves. The company is even sponsoring scholarships for technician students in the U.S.<\/p>\n
The markets<\/p>\n
S&P 500 futures are down 0.4%, following a 1.0% gain on Monday. Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 is down 0.1%, South Korea\u2019s KOSPI is up 1.6%, and Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng Index is up 0.1%. Vietnam\u2019s VN-Index is up 1.0%, Taiwan\u2019s TAIEX is up 1.5%. India\u2019s NIFTY 50 is up 0.6%; the STOXX Europe 600 is up 0.1% in early trading. Bitcoin is just above $74,000.<\/p>\n
Around the watercooler<\/p>\n
Elon Musk admits xAI \u2018wasn\u2019t built right\u2019 as only 2 co-founders remain and its biggest AI bet stalls out by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez<\/p>\n
The energy crisis isn\u2019t recessionary yet, but there\u2019s a scenario where oil prices could bring the US economy to a \u2018standstill,\u2019 Oxford Economics says by Tristan Bove<\/p>\n
U.S. debt is competing with a record supply of corporate bonds, pushing up the cost of federal borrowing just as war spending piles up by Jason Ma<\/p>\n
Peter Thiel is actively convincing billionaires to abandon The Giving Pledge \u2014 and it may be working by Jake Angelo<\/p>\n
Trump suggests postponing his key meeting with Xi Jinping by \u2018a month or so,\u2019 as Iran overtakes China on the U.S.\u2019s agenda by Angelica Ang<\/p>\n
Today’s edition of CEO Daily was compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Nicholas Gordon and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n
#Lululemons #Chip #Wilson #giving #company #severe #case #postfounder #syndrome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Good morning. Good morning. Phil Wahba writing this morning from New York. What\u2019s a company…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[3665,1277,3723,865,3542,3722,3726,3725,3727,3724],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}