These Leaders Prefer Being Co-CEOs and Sharing Responsibilities

When Connor Diemand-Yauman popped the question to Rebecca Taber Staehelin, he got down on a knee and handed her a rose.

His gesture drew the attention of others at the Italian food hotspot in San Francisco, where the colleagues were discussing how to structure their work partnership.

“Everyone in the restaurant started applauding because they thought we were getting married,” Diemand-Yauman told Business Insider.

What he was actually asking Taber Staehelin to formalize in 2019 was their decision to serve as co-CEOs of Merit America, a nonprofit they had founded the year before to help low-wage workers build skills and reach the middle class.

Diemand-Yauman and Taber Staehelin’s business arrangement is fairly unusual. There are fewer than 40 public companies in the US that operate with dual CEOs, according to the analytics firm Boardroom Alpha. Yet the setup is having a moment: In little more than a week, Spotify, Comcast, and Oracle have recently announced that they will have co-CEOs lead their organizations.

Instead of getting bogged down by the potential risks of partnerships — uneven power splits, fuzzy accountability, or strategic clashes — some companies are embracing the idea that, in a period when many CEOs’ remits are broader than ever, more can be more.

“It really has allowed us to specialize in the things that we’re respectively passionate about and great at,” Mike Sobel, co-CEO of fintech company Trumid, said of the division of labor he has with his counterpart, Ronnie Mateo.

Knowing who does what

Sobel joined Trumid in 2014, when the startup was about five months old. For years after, he and a growing number of colleagues — mostly bond traders and salespeople with experience from across Wall Street — worked alongside Mateo to build a fixed-income platform. In the early days, there were few job titles or defined responsibilities, Sobel told Business Insider.

“It was just like, ‘Everyone grab a shovel,'” he said.

As the company grew, especially during the boom years of the pandemic, so did the need to draw sharper contours around who did what. That clarity was necessary, Sobel said, both for new clients and for employees who joined the New York firm when lockdowns meant people weren’t coming to the office. When it had been a smaller group in one place, knowing where to go wasn’t as much of a challenge, he said.

Related stories

Trumid now has 200 employees and saw its average daily trading volume increase by 62% in 2024, reaching $1.4 trillion for the year.

“It’s very important that titles reflect the reality of responsibilities, and who is accountable for what,” Sobel said. So, in 2021, Trumid elevated him to co-CEO so that he could run the day-to-day, while Mateo, who founded the company, could be the indefatigable “locker-room leader,” chief sales guy, and face of the company, Sobel said.

“Ronnie is the visionary and the star player,” he said.

Sobel said that internally, in particular, staffers understand who runs what and know that they “can get a final answer from either one of us.”

Among the company’s half dozen top execs, there’s also a clear sense of who is the specialist in each area, he said.

When it comes to decision-making, Sobel said, he understands when it’s a call he can make on his own versus one that’s consequential enough to merit consulting with Mateo or others on the executive team. In some cases, Sobel might simply want a gut check.

“I should — and want to — talk to my partner about this, because it’s really important,” he said.

Another key factor, Sobel said, is the faith he and Mateo have in each other and the rest of their team.

“I trust in terms of motives, and also trust in terms of excellence,” he said.

When disagreements arise

Sobel said he and Mateo tend to be the opposite when it comes to their instincts, which can lead to “heated debates.”

Yet, because both of them are clear on the shared goal, “you could disagree vehemently, but it’s in the service of the right answer,” he said. “It is a productive exercise.”

Sobel said the firm subscribes to the “disagree and commit” mantra popularized by Jeff Bezos at Amazon, as well as by former Intel CEO Andy Grove. When leaders at Trumid make a decision, the team gets on board and, regardless of how it turns out, “there is no keeping score,” Sobel said.

Diemand-Yauman and Taber Staehelin see it similarly. Early on, Taber Staehelin said, before they became “a hive mind,” most disagreement emerged over annual budgeting. She said she tended to be more conservative, while Diemand-Yauman sought to be more ambitious in his approach to investing in growth.

To resolve disputes, Taber Staehelin said, the pair would step back to refocus on what they were trying to accomplish.

“It really tested the rigor of the thinking in a way that was exponentially beneficial,” she said.

That’s why Diemand-Yauman sees value in having a human copilot. “When you do it right, it is far better than a single CEO, and when you do it wrong, it’s far worse.”

He said he wouldn’t want to be a solo CEO again, as he was at a prior nonprofit he founded.

“I can’t imagine starting or leading something without a partner,” Diemand-Yauman said. In part, he said, that’s because being a sole CEO can be isolating and because it’s often hard to get a straight answer from other teammates.

Taber Staehelin still has the rose that Diemand-Yauman gave her, which she keeps in a shoe box. It’s a reminder of what each of them, both of whom are married, has invested in their work spouse.

“You are with someone who is in the trenches with you and can empathize with what you’re going through, who will always honor confidentiality and create a safe space for you to vent and problem-solve,” Diemand-Yauman said.

Taber Staehelin agreed: “He’s Taylor; I’m Travis.”