đĄ The Honest Truth about Entrepreneurship with a Global CEO
A recap of August 28th's Calgary Tech Thursday's session, 'From Founder to CEO: Evolving Leadership as Your Company Grows', featuring CEO of Digital Commerce Bank, Jeff Smith
August 28thâs Tech Thursday session, âFrom Founder to CEO: Evolving Leadership as Your Company Grows,â featured a fireside chat with Jeff Smith, CEO of Digital Commerce Bank, who delved into the realities of entrepreneurship, and shared insight from his experiences building a variety of large scale international financial services businesses.
This is our recap of the top ideas that were shared at the 'From Founder to CEO: Evolving Leadership as Your Company Grows' Tech Thursday, featuring Jeff Smith.
âIf you're concerned about work-life balance, don't become an entrepreneurâ
- Jeff Smith, CEO at Digital Commerce BanK
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3 Lessons about Success in Start-Ups with Jeff Smith, CEO at Digital Commerce Bank:
TL;DR
Outwork EVERYONE: Grit and determination are a self-realized quality that when present in builders, can positively impact businesses, often even more than capital or connection.
Sell Before You Build: If nobody is willing to pay for your product, your product is useless. Reduce risk by finding paying customers first, and then rapidly build from there.
Put Your Ego Aside: founders cannot be everywhere. Find people you trust with expertise in their niche, and allow the company to get better everywhere, organically.
3 Lessons about Success in Start-Ups with Jeff Smith, CEO at Digital Commerce Bank:
1. Outwork EVERYONE
Jeffâs great equalizer was the ability to work relentlessly. His experience of watching people succeed often boiled down to the drive to outwork someone else. He had experiences seeing some of the smartest people fail, while the ability to have a second gear of grit and resilience, especially in tech, was of the utmost importance.
Why this is important:
The notion that intelligence, connections, or even capital arenât necessarily the end all, be all, evidences the ability for ambition to come from anyone. With a focus on stamina, grit, and the desire to outwork people can positively compound, and ultimately, it is far more difficult to have success without drive than without money or âinsâ
Key Takeaway: There is nothing exclusive about hard work. This idea lowers the barrier of entry to innovators, favours ambition, and creates a more competitive, and therefore healthier ecosystem in the process.
2. Sell Before You Build
Proving demand before building is a key component to building anything. From a coffee with a national tax return company that created his prepaid card business, to selling more from a Powerpoint than a product, Jeffâs career experience boils down to one sentence: if you have a product that customers wonât pay for, itâs useless.
Why this is important:
While tempting to build a product first and sell later, the reality is, as Jeff explained, you cannot have a value if people are not willing to buy. By reversing the steps, you can acquire the âyesâ first and then build quickly, ensuring that customers are real and willing to pay for the product, reducing the risk of building the product, and not wasting capital or time creating something that doesnât solve any problems.
Key Takeaway: The âyesâ and confirmation of a consumer problem not only reduces risk of building, but ensures that there is a pain point to be solved. Without a solution to an existing problem, there is no use in building a product.
3. Put Your Ego Aside
Being able to effectively replicate yourself as a founder is a key to scaling any business. Itâs vital to accept that even though you are building something, you are not the expert in every field; Jeff alludes to the fact that at one time, he was the accountant, salesperson, and operator, and now, the company has accountants, salespeople, and operators who are much more qualified, and as a result, scaling the business.
Why this is important:
Jeff mentioned that one of the most difficult things for a founder to do is to âfire yourselfâ and understand that scaling comes with more qualified people in positions that were rolled into one early on. Being able to replicate yourself in the positions without having to do the work itself allows for more macro-level thinking from the builderâs standpoint, thus scaling the business at a more rapid pace. While the amount of trust that goes into this can be daunting, itâs crucial to growth.
Key Takeaway: Ego when scaling can be harmful towards a companyâs ability to grow, and being able to extend trust and hire purposefully and thoughtfully will is key to scaling any business.
Hot Take:
Equity is a Tax; Utilize Debt and Cash Flow Before Selling Stakes
As Jeff mentioned, by the time he had sold his ATM company, 80% of every dollar was going to other people as a result of selling equity. He believes that utilizing debt and cash flow to fund businesses, wherever possible, reduces the equity âtaxâ, and will be beneficial in the long run.
Why does that matter?
Private equity is such a massive part of the innovation ecosystem today that itâs easy to forget there are alternative methods to funding. Jeffâs real-life experience is a word of reality about just how much money could be going elsewhere if businesses are overly reliant on private equity partners.
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Leah Sarich, Head of Story at Thin Air Labs
Remi Schmaltz, CEO & Founder at Brilliant Harvest Inc.
Sabina Bruehlmann, CEO at Nimble Science
Benjamin Kemp, CEO at Ambyint
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Jeff, this article is a sharp reminder that entrepreneurship isnât about balance but endurance. Your three lessonsâoutwork everyone, sell before you build, and put ego asideâhit the core of what it takes to scale. It echoes what I wrote in The Invisible Asset: How PR Shapes Startup Acquisition Successâgrowth happens when founders stop trying to do everything themselves and instead create the space for their companies to thrive.