Who Should Lead the Kauffman Foundation?

Carl Schramm has left the Kauffman Foundation after serving as its chief since 2002.

Image: Kauffman Foundation

Tuesday’s announcement that Carl Schramm has stepped down as president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation got us thinking about some replacements who could bring further entrepreneurial street cred to the organization.

So, knowing full well that the candidates we’re proposing have their own gigs going, here are three thought leaders we’d love to see steering the nonprofit that came up with Global Entrepreneurship Week and helps fund numerous entrepreneurial educational efforts and research:

• Eric Ries. The thoughtful young author of The Lean Startup has studied entrepreneurship deeply, been in the trenches of starting companies himself, and authored a book that has spawned a movement toward scientifically testing startup ideas. Ries, of course, has the launch of his book internationally coming up this year and is sure to be busy with promotions, but he’s one of the rising stars in thought leadership around entrepreneurship.
• Paul Graham. We doubt if the founder of the Y Combinator accelerator would be willing to give up his gig funding and mentoring fledgling companies. But when you talk with Y Combinator alumni, they inevitably point to Graham as a guy who knows what he’s talking about when he talks about founding and growing a company. He could bring a bit of Bay Area glamor and know-how to the organization.
• Eric Schmidt. The chairman of Google may bring with him some baggage in the form of suspicion that he’ll tilt the field toward the company he helped build. But there’s no question that he knows a thing or two about growing an entrepreneurial company, and that knowledge could be a practical boon to Kauffman.

As it is, Kauffman has appointed a pretty solid interim successor to Schramm: Benno Schmidt, chairman of the board of trustees at the City University of New York and former president of Yale University. Schmidt took over January 1.

Schramm, 65, told the Kansas City Star he had informed the organization’s board of trustees shortly before the Christmas break that he had decided to step down from the job he had held since 2002. He intends to write and perhaps become a professor.

Kauffman, which distributes $60 million to $70 million a year in philanthropy for education and research into entrepreneurship has begun its search for Schramm’s replacement.