Monzo head Tom Blomfield’s departure is a rebuke to the cult of the founder
3 min readTom Blomfield announced on Wednesday night that he is exiting Monzo for good. The challenger bank, which he co-founded in 2015, may not have been the first UK fintech to challenge the financial establishment, but for many it became the byword for this new approach to finance. It was the first challenger I ever heard about, as friends who were more clued-in than me started acquiring those eye-catching coral debit cards, back in the days when you had to join a waiting list to get one. It was exciting.
But you can’t be a startup forever. And it seems that Monzo’s evolution from scrappy newcomer to established company is why Mr Blomfield stepped back from the CEO role last year, and has now decided to leave altogether. In a candid interview with TechCrunch, he revealed that he had been unhappy in his role for about two years.
It felt significant for two reasons. First, because he spoke about his own mental health. It seems obvious that running a company is a stressful experience, but some leaders prefer to cultivate an image of superhuman fortitude. This is fine to an extent, but also comes with the danger of creating a toxic work environment where employees feel pressure to match their boss’s indefatigability, and shame when they cannot.
Employee wellbeing
Hopefully this topic will become more openly discussed thanks to the likes of Mr Blomfield and outgoing Lloyds chief Antonio Horta-Osorio, who shared his own experience of poor mental health last year when underscoring the importance of employee wellbeing.
The second important element was the way Mr Blomfield’s decision pushed back on the notion that, because he started the company, he has a divine right to continue leading it. “The things I enjoy in life is working with small groups of passionate people to start and grow stuff from scratch,” he told TechCrunch, admitting that the challenges of achieving profitability and going public were not ones he relished. These will instead be tasks for current CEO T.S. Anil and his team.
The story of 21st-century tech culture is one of fetishising founder-led companies. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos – these are the names we associate with setting the agenda, and they have done so by leading their companies all the way from inception to staggering stock market valuations. In fact, being founder-led seems to fan the flames of these valuations. Investors are not just buying into the company, but into the personality and vision of the founder.
Something to add
But founders are not always the best people to see a company through every stage of its journey. Let’s not forget that Howard Schultz is not the founder of Starbucks, he’s just the guy who took it to where it is today. Ditto Ray Kroc and McDonald’s. Tim Cook not being the founder of Apple didn’t stop it from reaching a $2trn valuation.
That’s not to disparage the contribution founders make, but rather to suggest that sometimes other people have something equally valuable to add. You don’t have to have been present for the lightbulb moment in the garage or the dorm room to understand a company; sometimes it’s even better if you weren’t.
The obsession with founders also suggests a short-term view of these businesses. While I’ve no doubt that the Silicon Valley set are making progress with eternal life technology as we speak, the current reality is that nobody lives forever. Part of being a good founder should be developing or hiring great people, ready to take the baton.
So well done to Mr Blomfield for being honest about his own strengths and weaknesses. Because if there’s anything the tech world doesn’t need any more of, it’s ego.
