CRAIG NEWBORN: A founder’s job is to be fired

When business founders tell their success stories they often have an unconventional start. Like flying to India to buy a domain name from some guy you meet on a street corner. Or buying nearly all the shoes in a store to get a face-to-face meeting with the owner and land your first customer. Or firing yourself from the CEO position when you find someone who can do the job better than you.

In the journey of setting up several successful businesses over my career I’ve done all of the above — and more. In fact, I have fired myself from the CEO position three times. I think this is a critical step founders must take as their businesses start to reach critical mass. And it’s all about mindset. The difference between a founder’s mindset and a CEO’s mindset lies in their approach, focus and responsibilities.

As a founder you will do whatever you have to do to launch your business — from answering the phone to making sure you have a running system and marketing the business. The founder typically embodies the entrepreneurial spirit and vision that drives the inception of a business, with a mindset characterised by innovation, and a deep personal connection to the company’s vision and mission. A founder’s job, ultimately, is to be fired.

In contrast, a CEO’s job is to run a business, with a mindset that is more focused on strategy, execution and organisational leadership. While a founder may excel at generating ideas and launching companies, a CEO is responsible for scale, growth, and operational efficiency. As a founder I’ve learnt that the only way you can fire yourself is to put an insular focus on finding people who can do the job better than you. 

I distinctly remember the moment I realised I needed to fire myself from the business development role at PayJustNow. I had just bought R30,000 worth of shoes to get a meeting with the CEO of my very first big retail client. It worked, but I knew it wasn’t a sustainable strategy. I needed to bring on a retailer who knew how to “speak retail” in terms of footfall and getting customers through my merchant’s doors. I also realised very early on that for this product to work at scale, and to actually get customers through my client’s doors, I needed to gain the SA consumer’s trust. That’s when I asked our cofounders, Greg van der Riet and Mark McChlery, to come on board.

As a founder I needed to know two things:

• That Van der Riet and McChlery were better than me at the job. Van der Riet was a successful retailer at the time, while McChlery had an unrelenting passion for understanding and building systems to serve consumer needs; and
• That I could trust them.

As a retailer, Van der Riet’s strategic vision and relentless drive were key to building the base of more than 2,400 retailers in over 8,700 locations that we have today. Van der Riet’s ability to connect with retailers, understand their needs and deliver value has been instrumental in PayJustNow’s growth.

McChlery, a self-taught data analyst and open-source concepts enthusiast, focused on connecting the dots between actionable data points and the consumer’s aspirations, demands and behaviour. McChlery really understands and leverages data and uses it to address consumer’s needs. This was crucial in gaining the trust of our 1.8-million customer base.

If you’re familiar with “trust drivers” — an Enneagram approach to navigating varying trust styles, while determining your own — you’ll know that a founder and a CEO are likely to bring different characteristics to the table. One of the primary trust drivers is competence, and the one that resonates with a founder’s approach like mine. It refers to a perceived ability to deliver on promises and meet expectations. When we believe someone is skilled, knowledgeable and capable of achieving desired outcomes, we are more likely to trust them.

Successful founders understand that their job is to find and empower the right people with the right trust drivers and skills to drive their business forward, with the goal being that eventually the business won’t need them any more. I firmly believe a founder’s mindset coupled with the ability to trust my team has helped us foster the trust that brands so often lack in their approach to winning customers.

We continue to attract more SA customers, adding more than 100,000 new users each month. While our progress is reaffirming the founder-first approach, we’re not done yet. Building a more financially sustainable society is a big goal that requires the adaptability and long-term sustainability of a CEO’s mindset.

So, while I may be both a founder and CEO (for now), I’ll continue to strive towards firing myself, with the confidence that someone better will come along. Someone I can trust. 

• Newborn is founder (and CEO, for now) of zero interest payment solution PayJustNow.