Episode Details

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.

I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other's stories - of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing.

In the interview, Theo shares how he has been exposed to a very multi-cultural environment ever since he was a child. We talk about the importance of building a great organisation instead of just building a great product, and the difference between urgent and important things. We talk about transparency, courage, and loneliness as a leader; and how perfectionism is not a scalable strategy, and the value of thinking long-term.

You can find Theo at the below links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/theorozen/
• https://www.d2x.com/

In the interview, Theo shares

• So moving around is not something I decided myself. It was mainly driven by my parents back in the day. But I think I'm quite grateful for all of these experiences because I got to see quite a lot of different environments. So I was always exposed to a very multicultural environment.
• I would say more than particular events, it was more the people that I met. So I've been surrounded, I think by entrepreneurs which came in all sorts of well different kinds. Some had this entrepreneurial mindset but we're effectively building new businesses as part of a larger organization. Some were really starting their own businesses and that was really an, in very different industries. I have three siblings. Two of them are also entrepreneurs. So I think maybe there's something and then the upbringing as well. 
• I think it always gave me lots of adrenaline in a good way in the sense that was always super excited to wake up in the morning and catch up with everything that was going on
• It's one thing to build a great exchange or a great product in general, but it's something completely different to build a great organization around it.
• As an early stage company CEO there's a lot of urgent things, but it's important to still find the time to work on the important things.
• We spend a lot of time thinking about how we want to structure the organization, how we want to structure the dynamic between people. 
• I consider myself very lucky and I'm very grateful to be working with people who I also really look up to in terms of their expertise, skillset and in a way we're also very much like-minded.
• We like to foster an environment where basically it doesn't matter whether you're a founder or an intern, but we need the best arguments should win in a debate and that's how decisions are made. 
• I've never learned as much in such a short amount of time because as a founder, as a CEO you basically have to do everything. So I find myself doing things that I never thought I would ever have to even think about. But that's actually the part that I enjoyed the most coming from a mathematical slash finance background. I never thought I would have to deal with HR matters, which I now found extremely interesting, for example, again, that comes back to concept of building an organization.
• I try to surround myself with people who can and are willing to give me advice. So that can come in the form of advisors to the company. It's also our investors. So we raised two funding rounds and I have these bi-weekly calls with them that are that take the form of a sort of feedback session, but we're basically, I'm mostly able to express my challenges and hear their take on it b