What role does a founder play after they a hire a CEO to lead the ship?

What kind of roles does a founder fit into after they are replaced by a more experienced CEO?

While a lot of companies we read about still have the original founder as the CEO, in most cases the founder eventually gets voted off the CEO position by the board. It's not necessarily a bad thing, since startup founders aren't always the best people to scale a business as it grows.

I think there is a bigger question behind the one you're asking.

That question is: Would I not be responsible for my startup if I'm replaced by a new CEO?

No matter how good the new CEO is, that person won't have as much knowledge about the company's domain expertise as you do. The replacement CEOs are almost always for operational efficiency first, and strategic second.

If you leave or check out after the CEO is hired, you'll be doing a tremendous disservice to the startup and implicitly lowering the value of your equity.

If you're tired or stressed from running the company and don't enjoy doing it anymore, then that's a different question you need to answer.

Tl;dr Don't hire a replacement CEO so that you can check out / not deal with important things anymore. Hire one to help you grow your company.