From a Dark Room to a Corner Office: How Being a Developer Made Me a Better CEO (And Why Most CEOs Are Full of Shit)

Let's cut the BS for a minute. Most CEOs come from sales or finance backgrounds, occasionally (very rarely maybe with a shit ton of luck) marketing (bless their hearts). They spend their days in "strategic planning" sessions while the real work happens somewhere else. But here's where being a developer changes the game – I actually know how our shit works because I built it. Crazy concept, right?

Building Shit That Actually Works: The Foundation

Here's the thing about coming up as a developer: you learn real quick that there's no magic "make it work" button. Every piece matters, and if your foundation sucks, the whole thing eventually implodes. That's exactly how I run my companies. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely throw money at problems and pray to the payments gods for a blessing - but we do it strategically. We build everything – our processes, tech stack, merchant relationships – like we're building Facebook with Jesse Eisenberg and that one guy that sang SexyBack: fast af, break whatever needs breaking, but make sure the core shit stays solid. Because let's be real, if you're not breaking things, you're not moving fast enough.

Want to scale fast? Cool story, bro. But if your foundation was built by your buddy who hammered out the base code in some long-dead framework that hasn't seen an update since 2007, you're basically sitting on a ticking time bomb. I've watched plenty of companies die because they were too busy chasing the lifestyle instead of making sure their tech wasn't literally excel spreadsheets held together with duct tape and prayers.

Problem Solving: Skip the Buzzwords, Fix the Damn Thing

Coming from tech means I actually solve problems instead of talking about them in meetings until we all die of old age. You won't catch me saying dumb shit like "let's not boil the ocean" or "we're drinking from a fire hose." (Pro CEO tip: If you can't explain the problem without using a metaphor about water, you probably don't understand the problem.)

When something's broken in our workflow, I don't send out a memo asking for "strategic solutions." I dig in, find it, and fix it. Revolutionary approach, I know.

Efficiency: Because Life's Too Short for Bullshit Meetings

Writing code teaches you that efficiency isn't about looking busy – it's about getting shit done right so you're not fixing the same problems over and over. That's how I run my companies. Unnecessary meetings? Bloated processes? That's a hard pass. Double it and give it to one of my competitors – they love that stuff.

My dev background taught me one thing: time wasted is opportunity wasted, and I've got no patience for either. The team knows if something can be automated or streamlined, we're doing it yesterday. Those two-hour meetings that could've been handled in a Slack message? Not in this house. And yeah, I tell people to leave meetings the second their part is done. Watch how fast productivity goes up when people get their time back.

Data Over Gut Feelings (Because Your "CEO" Instincts Are Probably Wrong)

In development, you learn quick that "I think it works" means absolutely nothing. You need data – tests, metrics, logs, and yes, those TypeScript errors that make you question your career choices. I brought that same mindset to business because here's the truth: your instincts are worth exactly jack unless you've got numbers backing them up.

Product development, marketing, sales – everything runs on actual data, not feelings or whatever business book is trending on X this week. Numbers don't lie, and they don't care about your MBA you told us about eleventy-seven times.

Leading from the Trenches (Without Being a Pain in the Ass)

Having the CEO title doesn't mean I've forgotten what it's like to have someone breathing down your neck while you're trying to code. I know exactly when to dive in and when to back off. Sure, I'll jump into a technical review or debug session, but I'm not here to micromanage every commit. The team knows I'm not some clueless exec who thinks CPU stands for "Colorful Picture Unit" – I'm involved enough to be useful but trust them enough to let them cook.

The Real Talk on Tech Leadership

A tech background teaches you to cut through the bullshit, adapt fast, and actually ship. When I became CEO, I didn't suddenly forget all that. I run things the same way I code: efficiently, realistically, and with zero tolerance for fluff.

In fintech, where everyone's trying to be the next unicorn, this approach isn't just different – it's necessary. We're not here to play whose got the better water metaphor or win buzzword bingo. We're here to build stuff that works and solve actual problems.

Bottom Line

Bring a builder's mindset to leadership. I'm not here to play golf while the team does the work. I'm in it, I'm real, and I'm running things with the same no-BS approach that made me a half-decent semi-mediocre disgruntled developer in the first place. Whether it's PayKings or Pulse, we're building solutions that actually work, I wouldn't have it any other way. Let's get shit done.