My CEO’s $30M Productivity Toolkit — Before & After Selling His Company
Different tools for different times
2 months ago, I was in the middle of working on an article when my phone screen lit up with an incoming call: my ex-CEO. He created his company 10 years ago and sold it for $30 million in the middle of the pandemic (I worked for him for 5 years) and he’s now investing in startups. He’s also working on a few new ideas himself, and that was the subject of the call.
“I’m working on this new presentation to pitch investors, and I really don’t like the way it looks. I quickly cooked it up in Google Slides but it definitely needs some love. Do you think you could help?”
I couldn’t believe it. I’m a big fan of my CEO and we share a lot of the same values and principles, and I was 100% open to working with him on this, but the timing could not have been worse. I was going on paternity leave in 1 day, and our little family was flying across Europe in 3 days. He needed his presentation ready within a week. In the end, we made it happen, and we had a Zoom call to catch up on things. As always, I got so many valuable insights and advice from my conversation with him.
We talked about how he’s back on the “entrepreneurship bandwagon”, looking to start a new company, and I thought I’d ask him about his…
