CEO is a Loaded Title

Founders, Operators, and Straight up Leaders

Being a founder has always come easy to me. Over the past 28 years I’ve “founded” 5 companies.

• A french tutoring business in middle school.
• A harpist for hire service in high school
• Custom Resource — A custom furniture and refinishing company in college
• Design Glut — A design and manufacturing startup in my early 20's
• SOLS

When I graduated from Pratt I was recruited to work at WET design. I was 22 years old. The company had exploded to 500 people over the course of a few years. I was surrounded by brilliant people, traveled internationally, and managed not one, but two multi-million dollar projects for billionaires in Dubai.

I was a little pompous, a lot insecure, and generally thought I knew more then all my colleagues combined. I stayed for seven months. My part-time company was beginning to experience moderate success back in NY, and I had to see it to fruition. Flash forward eight years and here we go again.

Being a founder is a deep and unavoidable itch in the back of your throat that renders you powerless to anything other then bringing your vision to life. It is like having blinders on and driving a million miles an hour down the freeway at dark to a foggy point on the horizon.

It starts as a question. What if we could do this? What if footwear could be custom? What if custom could be affordable? Why are shoes designed and manufactured like they are today? Founders have an innate need to engineer their worlds. To fix the problems they encounter every day.

Over the past 8 months with SOLS I’ve taken an idea from nagging itch to 12 person company. In the next month we will grow to 20. We’ve gone from bedroom office, to incubator, to shared space, to soon to be 10K SF office in SOHO. From no product to receiving customer feedback that our SOLS felt better then orthotics from the leading US lab. To the customer, this was just an off hand remark. To me, it was validation of one year of my life.

As companies grow, roles change. You are founder, then you are a founder and CEO, and then just a CEO. This vision, the drive necessary to force the company into existence is not the same as the leadership, focus and rigor needed to build something great.

We call ourselves CEO’s, but that title is borrowed until we learn to step out of our skins, and into something new. When I’m asked what I do, I respond “I started a 3D printing company”. At some point this will change to “I’m CEO of SOLS”. I think this is an important moment for an founder, and something that both excites and scares me. I also think it’s a necessary moment and one that occurs as company’s grow, and you are forced to make challenging decisions from new points of view.

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a CEO, but I know today, that I’m excited to step into that role.