What Are The Best And Worst Decisions You’ve Ever Made As A Start-Up CEO?

Rey’s Best & Worst Decisions

Trying to be the CEO and acting like someone I’m not.

I was young and naive in my previous startups, which were more than ten years ago. I used to think you needed a unique quality to run a business. Reading many books about successful CEOs helped me develop the mindset for the company I have today. I would meet people and project this super successful CEO type. This fell in line with the stereotype of what a successful businessman should be.

After two failures, I could swallow my pride, return to school at 30, and learn the traditional way of running a successful business. I realized everything I did was just wrong.

The most important thing I learned was the reason why many CEOs are successful is how they build a company around their personality and values. They project themselves onto their employees, and their employees follow. This completely changed my outlook on what a successful CEO looks like.

My best decision was to find a partner to allow me to be who I am and can naturally be, the person I’m not.

Furthermore, Rey’s original response can be found here on Quora

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Rey Ortega
Rey Ortega

I'm a passionate creator of technologies for businesses. After years of leading software teams & delivering products to market, I founded Grata Software, a software consultancy, that helps businesses innovate and build disruptive products on cloud platforms. At Grata, I am the CEO & Head Solutions Architect.