Founding a company<\/span> is a big deal, and taking on the CEO role to drive that company forward is an important choice. Some founders are able to lead their startups all the way through the process of company building. If you look at the list of most valuable companies in the world<\/a>, however, you notice that the people at the top of tech companies aren\u2019t always the original founders.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve spent any time doing board work \u2014 or if you\u2019re talking to experienced VCs \u2014 you realize that it\u2019s not uncommon for startups to switch CEOs, although it\u2019s rarely discussed out in the open. Private companies usually have no obligation to announce leadership changes beyond the closed doors of the boardroom.<\/p>\n Still, choosing to give up the reins to a startup you\u2019ve been bleeding, sweating and tearing for is a hell of a decision. I spoke with one CEO who went through that transition a few months ago to see how he reached the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been in healthcare pretty much my whole adult life,\u201d said Troy Bannister, founder of Particle Health<\/a>. \u201cI was an EMT when I was 18.\u201d When he was in college, he switched majors, from business to pre-med, later working at a VC accelerator called StartUp Health. \u201cI met hundreds, if not thousands of entrepreneurs, all building healthcare startups. I saw Plaid and Stripe and Twilio, and I wondered: Why isn\u2019t there an API model for clinical data? And so I started Particle.\u201d<\/p>\n Troy Bannister, as per recently no longer CEO at Particle Health, the company he founded.\u00a0Image Credits:\u00a0<\/strong>Particle Health<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company was either prescient or got a little lucky; the anti-information blocking rule<\/a> that was part of the 21st Century Cures Act<\/a> meant that patients were given access to their information. That also meant that startups working in this space needed a way to safely request and securely store the information. That\u2019s where Particle found its niche: making connections to 320 million people\u2019s health records available to, well, whoever needs it.<\/p>\n Five years down the line, however, Bannister discovered something was amiss. He had built from the ground up, having raised a Series B and grown the company to 65 people, with 50 or so customers on the books, and a clear track to a Series C in the next couple of years. But now there was a hard choice looming: Would he be the right person to sit in the CEO chair for the company\u2019s next stretch?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/DSC04839BAM_MMD_SF-Large.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n