Ukrainian entrepreneur Alyona Mysko founded Fuelfinance in 2019. It is a fintech company that develops software for financial management and planning in startups. Since its inception, Fuelfinance has raised over $2 million, with a $1 million round closed in January 2023 from two unicorn CEOs: Bolt’s Markus Villig and SendBird’s John S. Kim, among the investors. Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, the startup has experienced rapid growth in both business metrics and team expansion.
Serving as the CEO of Fuelfinance, Alyona Mysko shared on LinkedIn her insights on how the role of a startup's founder evolves throughout the process of project growth and imparted the lessons she has learned. Vestbee publishes her post.
Last year, I stopped being the Chief of Everything Officer... and finally started to be a CEO.
And that's a very hard job. No one teaches you how to switch from one role to another.
I remember the time I stopped wearing the hat of the sole marketer at Fuel.
It was the final role after similar one-man-band roles in sales, finance, recruitment, etc.
Suddenly, I found myself asking, "So, what's my job now?"
I even remember struggling to prepare biweekly reports for our executive calls.What was I supposed to report? That I checked a ton of emails and had a bunch of 1-on-1 meetings? Is that it?
Fundraising and defining the company’s strategy are still important tasks, but that’s not enough. I started by focusing on my main KPI — our company's valuation. But now, that's an output of the team I manage.
So, can I manage my team better to boost our results?
That’s why last year was all about figuring out what high output management means. And I picked up a few lessons:
- Lead with questions, not answers. As a CEO, my job is to ask challenging questions that managers usually avoid, rather than offering solutions.
- Listen more, talk less. Not gonna lie, this is tough. But I try to be all ears, note important points, and save my two cents for the end of all discussions.
- The devil is in the details. It's not about micromanagement. My role is to maintain high standards within the team. Especially when the pace is fast and everyone is under pressure, that's the time when many mistakes can occur.
- Staying focused is a top priority. Our best results come when each manager focuses on their top 1-2 goals. We also set 3-5 company-wide goals annually. My job as CEO is to help our team stay focused on these goals.
- Start with "why" in candidate interviews. Why did you choose this university, company, etc.? There is much more insight into a person's character in their past decisions than in their future promises.
- "Times change, teams change. My advice is not to sweat it too much if you need to rotate leaders on your team as you grow. The company and the leader are likely both better off." That one I found from HubSpot CEO and his inspiring lessons.
- The reporter, not the CEO, should prepare the 1-on-1 agenda. It helps to understand the key focus of a reporter and compare this list with my own.
- The power writing course was one of the best investments. It helped us increase email open rates to 70%+ and secure prominent coverage in the US media.
- You are what you measure. That's why I love our all-in-one dashboard with all company-wide plan/actual metrics. I truly believe that plan/actual analysis works like magic, or at least like a good self-management and self-motivation instrument for all managers.
