The CEO Parent
Being dispensable is a virtue.
How great founders, like great parents, grow what they build by learning to let go.
By Sjoerd Maas · Foreword by Steve Jones
Coming Q3 2026 · Published by Brasam Publishing
A six-year-old sits on the floor, fighting with his shoelaces. His father stays close. Doesn’t help. Doesn’t reach in. Waits. And the boy ties them himself.
Every parent knows that moment, and how hard it is. Most founders never learned it.
You built the company. You made the calls. And somewhere along the way the decisions started queuing at your desk, the team began to wait, and the harder you worked the more trapped you felt. The business that was meant to give you freedom now depends on you for everything.
Sjoerd Maas spends his days beside founders and his evenings raising two young sons, and he kept noticing the same thing in both worlds. The instinct to step in because it’s faster is exactly what stops the people around you from growing. A child who’s never allowed to struggle never learns. A team whose founder always has the answer stops looking for its own.
The CEO Parent shows that leading a company and raising a child come down to the same quiet discipline: staying close without taking over. Not a shortcut, and not a system. A way of leading that builds teams who think, decide, and act without waiting for permission, and in doing so gives founders back the freedom, and the presence, they started the company for.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
The Value Acceleration Method™
The book is built around five pillars: a practical framework for growing a company that doesn’t need you for everything.
Founder Clarity
What are you actually building towards, and what does success look like beyond the numbers?
Team Architecture
Clear accountabilities and decision rights, so people lead confidently within their own area.
Offer Simplicity
The discipline to scale the right thing, instead of scaling everything.
Client Fit
Not every client makes your company stronger. The right ones invest in you.
Execution System
The daily-to-yearly rhythm that keeps strategy connected to the work, even when you step back.
Plus: how decisions multiply, how ownership gets built by design, why culture is the advantage no competitor can copy, and why financial clarity is what makes the rest of the leadership work sustainable.
“If your team is not thinking independently, it is not a people problem. It is a system problem. And the system starts with you.”Steve Jones
“This is a book every scale-up CEO should read before growth turns into chaos.”Bart Taveirne
“Sjoerd shows a better way: build a business that thinks and acts independently, rooted in clear frameworks, trust, and ownership.”Twan Voss
“This book is essential reading for every founder or CEO who wants to scale their business without it all running through them.”Patrick Schilperoord
“As a fellow founder, I've seen firsthand how Sjoerd thinks about building companies, always a step ahead, with a clarity of vision that's rare. This book captures exactly that.”Stephan van Gelder
“Sjoerd has a gift for making complexity simple, with vivid examples that stick. In this book you'll find powerful, practical tools that are easy to remember and even easier to apply.”Melvin Jellesma
Sjoerd Maas has spent more than fifteen years as the right hand of founders, helping fast-growing companies become less dependent on the people who started them. He’s the founder of The Value Architects and the creator of the Value Acceleration Method. He lives in Rotterdam with his wife and two sons.
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