Meta’s co-founder says being a CEO for 13 years was exhausting

Meta’s co-founder Dustin Moskovitz opened up about the pains of leadership and admitted that 13 years of being a CEO was “exhausting.”

Moskovitz, one of the original founders of Meta, formerly Facebook, co-founded the social platform in 2004 alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Andrew McCollum.

After leaving Facebook in 2008, he retained a stake of just over 8%, making him a billionaire with a net worth of $12 billion, according to the most recent data from Forbes. He went on to become a co-founder and CEO of work management software platform Asana the same year.

Moskovitz announced his departure as Asana’s CEO earlier this year and has transitioned into the role of chairman, while retaining an ownership of 53% of the company’s outstanding shares between Class A and Class B holdings. 

The billionaire recently opened up about what it was like to be a CEO at Asana, while also having an introverted personality, on an episode of the Stratechery podcast by Ben Thompson, released on Monday.

“I don’t like to manage teams, and it wasn’t my intention when we started Asana,” Moskovitz said during the episode.

“I’d intended to be more of a independent or head of engineering or something again. Then one thing led to another and I was CEO for 13 years and I just found it quite exhausting.”

He added: “I’m an introvert, I had to just kind of put on this face day after day and then in the beginning I was like, ‘Oh, it’s going to get easier, the company will get more mature,’ and then the world just kept getting more chaotic — the first Trump presidency and the pandemic and all the race stuff, it made it just a lot less of the company building, being a CEO is a lot more reacting to problems and doing this sort of thing.”

Various notable business leaders have described themselves as being introverts, from Meta’s Zuckerberg, to Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates, and chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett.

Susan Cain, author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” said introverts are often passed over for leadership positions and thrive more in quieter and less stimulating environments.

She said introverts have some hidden traits that can make them well suited for leadership positions, including taking fewer risks, being more creative, and being better at problem solving.

Cain said that introverted leaders can be “slow” and “circumspect” when making decisions which helps them to avoid impulsive or reckless moves.

They also tend to seek out solitude more which is “a real catalyst to creativity,” according to Cain.

“This two-tier structure of how we view personality leads to a colossal waste of talent, and of energy and of happiness,” Cain said. “We need to be adopting much more of a yin and yang approach of balance between the two styles.”