LinkedIn headline examples for CEOs and founders: 31 real headlines, and how to write yours

What is a LinkedIn headline, and where do people see it?

Your LinkedIn headline is the line of text under your name. LinkedIn says it shows in search results and can be different from your current job title. It also sits next to your name on your posts, on your comments and wherever LinkedIn recommends your profile. For a CEO who posts and comments, it's the caption on everything you publish.

You get 220 characters. Anything else you want to say about yourself has to fit there, because the name field is only for your name. The algorithm reads it too: LinkedIn's feed model gets your headline along with every post.

What do real CEOs and founders write in their LinkedIn headline?

In November 2026 I checked the public headlines of 31 CEOs and founders: big public companies, younger startups, Americans, Europeans and Israelis. Here they are, word for word.

Large, well-known companies

Younger startups

Israeli founders

What stands out:

• They are short. The median is 26 characters. For comparison, in AuthoredUp's analysis of 34,065 personal profiles the median is 99.
• 27 of the 31 are 40 characters or less, and 30 are 50 or less. Only Maor Shlomo of Base44 goes longer, at 88, because he adds a cause he invests in.
• Nobody lists keywords. Four use a divider, and none has an emoji.
• Almost all are a role and a company name, sometimes with one small extra.
• All 8 Israeli founders write in English.

One warning. I picked these people by hand, and most of their companies are famous, so the company name does the explaining for them. This is a snapshot of what they write, not proof that a short headline gets better results. AuthoredUp's data even leans the other way: the top 5% of profiles by its measure have a median of 123 characters. Most people have to explain what they do. Microsoft doesn't.

What should a CEO or founder put in their LinkedIn headline?

Who you are, what your company does and what your role is. That is the whole job, and this is the order I use when I write one for a CEO:

1. Your role and company: "Founder of [Company]" or "CEO of [Company]".
2. One line on what the company does or fixes. One line, in plain words.
3. One piece of proof, only if it helps: "ex-Google", "2 exits". Most people can skip this.

One question decides how much to write: does the reader recognize your company name? If yes, stop after step 1. That is why Guillermo Rauch can write "CEO at Vercel" in 13 characters. If no, the one-liner does the work, and sometimes it has to come first.

Who is a CEO's LinkedIn headline written for?

Customers and investors, depending on your stage and what you need right now. Employees less so. This is where most guides miss: the first page of Google for "linkedin headline examples" is written almost entirely for job seekers and recruiters. A CEO isn't waiting for a recruiter to search for them. The people reading your headline are the buyers and investors who see your name under a post or a comment, and the people who get your connection request and open your profile.

Your stage changes the wording. A founder raising money in stealth wants to stay a little behind the scenes. "Founder of", or simply "Building", tells investors something is happening without saying what, and that creates some FOMO. Once you have raised and left stealth, say exactly what you do. Anton Osika of Lovable shows the wording works without hiding too: his headline is only "building the last piece of software", with no company name at all.

LinkedIn headline examples for CEOs and founders: before and after

The rewrite I do most is also the simplest: we replace dozens of keywords with "Founder of" or "CEO of", the company name and a one-liner. That's it. The examples here are illustrative: I wrote them to show each pattern, so they aren't real profiles or clients.

My own headline, and why its order is reversed

Building Personal Brands for Founders & CEOs | Founder of @Velut.AI | Turning your LinkedIn profile into an investor & customer magnet

That's 134 characters, about five times the median of the 31 CEOs, and it's on purpose. Velut isn't a name people recognize on sight, so "Founder of Velut" alone would tell them nothing. So what I do comes first. Whoever reads it knows right away who I help, then where I work, then what they get.

What are the most common LinkedIn headline mistakes?

• Dozens of keywords. It's the first thing I see on most profiles I open, and nobody reads it. It doesn't do what people hope, either: LinkedIn says more keywords don't automatically improve how you appear in search, and a profile that looks over-optimized can be hurt by spam detection.
• Every company you ever worked at. A headline isn't a résumé.
• "ex-" a company nobody knows. ex-Google or ex-Meta help. ex-a company your reader has never heard of adds nothing, and it can look a little pretentious. If you built and sold a company, "2 exits", "3x founder" or "investor" say it better.
• A slogan instead of a fact. "Transforming the future of fintech" doesn't say what the company does. A plain line does.
• Too long. The reader needs to get who you are fast. Everything after that is noise, and in some places it gets cut off too.

How long should a LinkedIn headline be?

As short as it can be while it's still clear who you are and what your company does. The limit is 220 characters, but how many people see is another question, and LinkedIn doesn't publish an answer. The numbers going around are estimates:

So write for the worst case: what matters goes in the first 40 characters, and then you open your profile on your phone and check. 27 of the 31 headlines above fit there entirely.

Should a founder write their headline in English or in their local language?

English. I don't see a need to write in Hebrew, even when the audience is in Israel: almost everyone I see writes their headline in English today, and so do all 8 Israeli founders above. If you do need another language, LinkedIn lets you add a profile in a second language with its own headline. You translate it yourself, you can only create it on desktop, and viewers see the version that matches the language they use LinkedIn in.

How do you know if your LinkedIn headline is working?

Watch your profile views, and who reaches out. LinkedIn itself says profile views are a better indicator than searching for yourself, because search results are personalized to each searcher.

I have to be honest about what I can prove. Upgrading the profile is the first step when I start with a CEO, and after it we see more profile views and more messages from relevant people. But the headline, the whole profile and the content all change together, in the same process, so I can't tell you how much of that comes from the headline. I don't have a number for the headline alone, and I won't make one up.

If you're testing on your own, change only the headline and give it some time. And remember it's only a part of the whole: CEO personal branding is a clear profile plus the content that comes after it.

Should you add emojis, humor or something personal to your headline?

You can, but you don't have to. In the end people read the title, and that's enough. None of the 31 has an emoji. I'd use one only if it describes the company exactly, like a fire emoji for a company with fire in its name. A personal touch like "dad of" goes at the end, and it's not necessary either.

The 31 have a few versions of that last slot:

• Humor: Parker Conrad, Rippling's founder, writes "Customer Support at Rippling".
• Hiring: Flo Crivello ends with "We're hiring!", and Alex Bouaziz writes "We’re growing!".
• Proof: Micha Kaufman adds "NYSE: FVRR", and Brendan Foody adds "Thiel Fellow".
• A mission: Yamini Rangan writes "Helping millions grow better", and Maor Shlomo writes about cancer research.
• A deal: Matan Bar writes "Melio & Xero US CEO", after Xero bought Melio in October 2025.