They deliver better shareholder returns

Source: https://hbr.org/2016/03/founder-led-companies-outperform-the-rest-heres-why

They are more
​innovative

“[…] the existence of a founder CEO is correlated with a 31 percent increase in the citation-weighted patent count […]”

​-  Lee, Joon Mahn and Kim, Jongsoo and Bae, Joonhyung

Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2733456

They take on
​less financial risk

“[...] founder-run companies exhibit 52% lower debt-to-equity ratios than the S&P 500 as a whole."

- Global X ETFs

Source: https://www.globalxetfs.com/introducing-the-founder-run-companies-etf/

The top 8 companies are founder-led, no wonder