Founder-led companies have historically outperformed the rest of the market by some distance.
While there are a number of factors that are potentially behind this phenomenon, one of the key factors is the way founders approach the running of their companies.
Founders tend to take a long term approach with their company, whereas professional CEOs are often more focused on short term goals. And as it takes time to innovate, taking a long term focus appears to generate better results.
With that in mind, I have picked out two founder-led ASX shares that could be good long term options. Here's what you need to know about them:
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Airtasker Ltd (ASX: ART)
The first founder-led company to look at is Airtasker. It is the online marketplace for local services run by founder Tim Fung. The popularity of its platform has been increasing significantly over the last few years, leading to stellar sales growth. For example, in FY 2021, Airtasker reported gross marketplace value (GMV) of $153.1 million. This was up 35% year on year, exceeding its GMV prospectus forecast of $143.7 million. This was driven by a 13% increase in paying customers to 415,000 and a jump in its average price per job/task metric to $198.
The team at Morgans appear confident this strong growth will continue over the long term. As a result, the broker has an add rating and $1.30 price target on its shares.
Kogan.com Ltd (ASX: KGN)
Kogan is the growing ecommerce company led by founder Ruslan Kogan. Over the last 15 years, Mr Kogan has transformed the company from a small online website run out of his parents' garage into one of Australia's leading ecommerce sites with over 3.2 million active customers. In addition, Kogan has made acquisitions along the way, such as last year's purchase of Mighty Ape. This business now has over 700,000 active customers as well. Pleasingly, this leaves Kogan well-positioned for growth over the next decade as the structural shift to online retailing continues.
Credit Suisse is positive on the company. It currently has an outperform rating and $14.06 price target on its shares.
