The Founder’s Edge: 19 Founder-Led Stocks That Outperformed the S&P 500 Over the Last 10 Years

Over the last decade, publicly traded companies still run by their founders returned an average of 25% per year, nearly double the S&P 500’s 14%. Companies from which a founder recently stepped down averaged 19%.

Those figures are based on the stock performance of 19 founder-led companies in the S&P 500 over 5- and 10-year periods. An important caveat: These companies were identified today and measured retrospectively. They’re large, successful companies. A random sample of all founder-led companies over the same period, beyond those in the S&P 500, would include failures and show lower average returns.

Still, the pattern is consistent with a Bain & Company study that found founder-led companies generated returns 3.1 times higher than other S&P 500 companies from 1990 to 2014.

A separate paper from Ohio State University found that founder-CEOs spend more on research and development (R&D), invest more in the business, and make more disciplined acquisitions. As a result, they outperformed a benchmark by 4.4% after controlling for industry, company size, and CEO characteristics.

So what does more recent data actually look like across 26 founder-led, publicly traded companies and two time periods?

How Founder-Led Stocks Performed vs. the S&P 500 Over the Last 5 and 10 Years

Eight of 13 founder-led stocks with a full decade of data – from Feb. 1, 2016, to Feb. 1, 2026 – beat the S&P 500. The outperformers are a diverse group:

• Apollo Global Management (APO +1.92%), Blackstone (BX +2.96%), and KKR (KKR +3.50%) are alternative asset managers.
• MercadoLibre (MELI +3.18%) is an e-commerce and fintech company.
• Nvidia (NVDA +1.46%) is in semiconductors and at the heart of AI.
• Tesla (TSLA +3.09%) manufactures electric vehicles.
• Fortinet (FTNT +1.82%) is a cybersecurity company.
• Meta Platforms (META +2.51%) is a social media company with AI aspirations.

The stocks that didn’t beat the index didn’t lag significantly either. BlackRock (BLK +0.40%) (13.6%), Capital One (COF +1.28%) (13.2%), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE -0.27%) (12.5%), and Salesforce (CRM -0.23%) (12.1%) all came within 2% of the S&P 500’s 13.6% annual return. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN +1.89%) (6.1%) was the only meaningful laggard, driven by sector-specific headwinds in biotech. No founder-led stock in the set experienced a catastrophic loss.

The five-year window – from Feb. 1, 2021, to Feb. 1, 2026 – is harder for everyone. It includes the 2022 bear market, rate hikes, inflation, trade wars, and the AI rotation. Only 47% of the founder-led stocks examined beat the S&P over this stretch.

But comparing founder-led companies to those in which the founder departed within those years tells a different story: Founder-led companies averaged 15.4% per year. Companies in which founder-CEOs left the helm averaged 6.9%. Only 1 of 7 stocks in the latter category beat the S&P over the five-year window.

Founder-led companies were 3.5 times more likely to outperform the market than companies from which the founder had departed.

Tough markets are hard on everyone. They’re hardest on companies that have lost their founder.

What Happens to a Stock When the Founder Steps Down

A founder’s departure isn’t the only factor influencing a stock price. Sector headwinds, macroeconomic conditions, and company-specific challenges all play a role.

But among companies that were founder led at some point during the past 10 years, a consistent pattern emerges: The companies that lost their founders underperformed both the broader market and their founder-led peers. Only one of seven companies in that group beat the S&P over five years: Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB +1.22%).

FedEx (FDX +0.31%)

• 10-year CAGR: 9.7% vs. S&P 500’s 13.6%
• 5-year CAGR: 9.1% vs. S&P 500’s 13.1%
• Founder Fred Smith ran the company for 51 years before stepping down as CEO in 2022.

FedEx has faced margin pressure and a shift in logistics demand tied to e-commerce, structural changes that would challenge any CEO. Under Smith, however, the company consistently adapted to industry shifts for decades. Since his departure, FedEx has struggled to find its footing, and the stock has trailed the S&P 500 across recent time horizons.

Amazon (AMZN +3.42%)

• 10-year CAGR: 23.8% vs. S&P 500’s 13.6%
• 5-year CAGR: 7.8% vs. S&P 500’s 13.1%
• Founder Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO in July 2021. Andy Jassy took over.

Amazon’s 10-year return is exceptional, but Bezos was CEO for most of that period. The five-year return, which captures the leadership transition, tells a different story. Amazon’s slowdown in that period also reflects the broader growth-stock sell-off in 2022 and the difficulty of maintaining hypergrowth at Amazon’s scale. Still, the gap between Amazon’s pre- and postfounder trajectory is hard to ignore.

PDD Holdings (PDD +0.39%)

• 5-year CAGR: -9.9% vs. S&P 500’s 13.1%
• Stock lost 40.5% of its value over five years
• Founder Colin Huang stepped down as CEO in 2020 and left the board in 2021.

PDD’s relatively poor performance over the last five years is driven by factors beyond a founder departure. Chinese regulatory crackdowns, U.S.-China trade tensions, and increased competition from Alibaba (BABA -1.64%) and JD.com (JD -1.70%) weighed on results. But Huang’s exit also arguably removed the strategic force behind Pinduoduo and the launch of Temu, and it occurred during a period of heightened geopolitical volatility. Among the 26 companies in the analysis, PDD posted the worst return of any stock in any time period.

Berkshire Hathaway: A Real-Time Test Case

• 10-year CAGR: 14.2% vs. S&P 500’s 13.6%
• 2025 return: +10.9% vs. S&P 500’s +17.9%
• Warren Buffett announced his retirement in May 2025 and stepped down as CEO on Jan. 1, 2026.

Unlike the other companies in this group, Berkshire Hathaway has little postdeparture performance data. Warren Buffett wasn’t technically the founder, but his 60-year tenure made him functionally indistinguishable from one. How Berkshire performs under new CEO Greg Abel will be closely watched as a real-time test of the founder-led thesis.

Founder departures do not automatically cause underperformance, and founder presence alone does not explain returns. But the data show a clear pattern: Public companies that had a founder-CEO depart within the past decade underperformed both the S&P 500 and their founder-led peers over 5- and 10-year periods, with the performance gap widening during the more challenging 5-year window.

Loading paragraph…

Do founder-led stocks outperform the market?

Which founder-led stocks are in the S&P 500?

About the Author

Jack Caporal is the Research Director for The Motley Fool and Motley Fool Money. Jack leads efforts to identify and analyze trends shaping investing and personal financial decisions across the United States. His research has appeared in thousands of media outlets including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and CNBC, and has been cited in congressional testimony. He previously covered business and economic trends as a reporter and policy analyst in Washington, D.C. He serves as Chair of the Trade Policy Committee at the World Trade Center in Denver, Colorado. He holds a B.A. degree in International Relations with a concentration in International Economics from Michigan State University.

TMFJackCap

Jack Caporal has positions in Airbnb. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Airbnb, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Blackstone, CrowdStrike, DoorDash, Fortinet, KKR, MercadoLibre, Meta Platforms, Netflix, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, Prologis, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Salesforce, Spotify Technology, Synopsys, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group, BlackRock, Capital One Financial, FedEx, Intercontinental Exchange, and JD.com. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.