Co-CEO arrangements are more common than you think. Here are my few cents on the leadership arrangement at our German FemTech portfolio company, Clue, and how to make co-CEO arrangements work.
They are thoughtful. Intelligent. They talk in a clear, measured way, unhurried, but with weight behind their words. A weight that reflects more than 10 years of work experience from various blue-chip organisations. A weight that comes from the responsibility of taking FDA-approved products to market. A weight that reflects the seriousness of recently having taken the reins of an organisation with 80+ passionate souls in Berlin. Audrey Tsang and Carrie Walter are the newly minted co-CEOs of Clue, a portfolio company of ours, which is on a mission to “help people around the world with menstrual cycles live full lives, not in spite of their biology, but in tune with it.”
The incoming co-CEO arrangement is unusual. And Clue is an unusual company. From the outset, founders Ida Tin and Hans Raffauf instilled a very mission-driven culture and a more “intentional leadership” style, something that is typically added later in a company’s life as growth necessitates. Most founders start off sharing the company’s mission and values by “osmosis” rather than by intention. For good reason — when you are 5, 10, maybe 15 people sitting together, speed and…
