“Be Able to Motivate People and Lead By Example” The 5 Lessons I Learned Being a 20-Something Founder

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Szaky CEO of TerraCycle

Jean: Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory” of how you become a founder?

I was born in Hungary while it was still a communist country, and following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, my family and I emigrated to Germany, then Holland and then Canada as refugees. I grew up in Canada and went to university in the United States. It was there I got the idea for TerraCycle — a business whose purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste.

I always loved entrepreneurship, as business is perhaps the most powerful force to change the world. I started my life as a Hungarian refugee and today am the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company operating in 21 countries and known as the world leader in recycling “the unrecyclable.”

Jean: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

There is no other company like us out there in the world — this is partly because we have a unique philosophy to a relatively innovative industry: waste.

TerraCycle started as an organic fertilizer company, but over the years we evolved to what we are today. Our mission is still…