"Coming from one of the leaders who oversaw the rise and fall of Blackberry, that story could reinforce the trope that the co-CEO structure doesn't work. But that's not technically true. As CEO advisor Marc Feigen points out, the average co-CEO lasts as long in the job as their solo counterpart on average and often tends to perform better-generating an average return of 9.5% in one study he did vs. 6.9% for solo CEOs."
"Feigen pointed to three prerequisites for these arrangements to work. Separate areas of expertise- Magouyrk is an infrastructure leader while Sicilia leads applications. "Those are the two critical elements for next-generation, cloud-supported AI, which means they can go deep and across," says Feigen. The title almost doesn't matter: In many Silicon Valley companies, a CTO founder is often the product lead and equal to the CEO."
Oracle appointed co-CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia, with Safra Catz becoming Executive Vice Chair. The co-CEO arrangement generated debate but coincided with a 6.3% rise in Oracle stock. Historical anecdotes about co-CEO dynamics can suggest dysfunction, yet empirical evidence shows co-CEOs often match or exceed solo CEO performance. One study cited average returns of 9.5% for co-CEOs versus 6.9% for solo CEOs. Successful co-CEO setups require separate domains of expertise—in this case infrastructure and applications—and alignment of core values and responsibilities to avoid conflict.
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