Turnover and start-ups a good mix

A start-up’s recipe for success: ditch the founder, and hire senior managers who won’t stick around too long. Well, sort of. A new study by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management says that venture-funded businesses with higher turnover in senior management — including the exit of the company founder — were more likely to achieve an IPO. It also found that start-ups whose founders and senior managers had a variety of prior company affiliations and “broad functional diversity” were more successful, more quickly. The study defined success as the ability to attract venture money or complete an IPO.