The Woman Behind the Man Who Runs Airbnb

Many of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies trace their explosive growth to this type of strong founder-operator relationship. Everyone knows the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the founder and chief operating officer who together are responsible for Facebook’s success. That relationship is unique in that both have big public profiles. More often, in the most successful founder-operator relationships, the business person works quietly behind the scenes. Steve Ballmer was a relative unknown until Bill Gates handed him the CEO throne. No one knew much about Tim Cook until Steve Jobs died.