CEO Secrets Unpopular Choices for Success

What this short covers

Deniz Kent, co-founder and CEO of Prolific Machines, discusses his journey from academia to entrepreneurship, emphasizing the resilience instilled by his immigrant background and his strategy of raising capital proactively to gain leverage.

Transcript

I am someone who likes being liked and I am a people pleaser and so I've really spent a lot of time trying to work through that with executive coaching and coming to terms with the fact that you know the best CEOs aren't always the most liked and sometimes you have to do stuff that people don't like and that could be like investors don't like or that could be your employees don't like or um partners don't like and that doesn't mean that they're not the right thing to do. And that's part of why it's a shitty job is because you frequently have to do stuff that people don't like that makes you not liked, but it's still the right thing to do from a fiduciary perspective.

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