Timestamps:
1:20 - From 2 to 220 employees
3:50 - A founder’s motivation
7:45 - A leader’s biggest lesson
10:20 - Your support network as a founder
14:25 - A CEO’s evolving role
About Cristian Grossmann:
Cristian Grossmann is the co-founder and Head Bee at beekeeper, the well-known Swiss frontline operating system. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from ETH and worked for companies like ChromaCon and Accenture before starting beekeeper in 2011.
During his 12 years at beekeeper, Cris has learned many valuable lessons, the most important of which being to stay true to your company values not only when hiring people but also when taking on investors. In his chat with Ansuya he mentions one instance when beekeeper had only 3 weeks worth of runway left and was presented with a very big term sheet from an investor whose values were clearly not aligned with theirs. They almost gave in, which Cris thinks might have destroyed the company, but thankfully persistence and loyalty to the beekeeper values won out and the founders decided to pitch in some personal funds to keep things afloat.
Cris’ motivation to remain at beekeeper after so many years continues to be his engineer’s affinity for solving complex problems and the mission of solving the tech issues of frontline workers, a demographic which has long been neglected despite making up 2B people worldwide. In the next stage of their company, the team plans to focus on achieving a steady, reliable profitability and attaining maximum efficiency.
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