The Job Of ConTech CEO

March 28, 2025

Learn how successful CEOs navigate growth by identifying exceptional talent, creating direct information channels, and making strategic bets with conviction. Discover practical insights for scaling your company without losing touch with operational r

Patric Hellermann

Shub Bhattacharya

In our latest Practical Nerds episode, Shub and Patric explore a thermodynamics principle that captures the challenge of scaling companies.

It takes 5x more energy to transform water at 100°C into steam than to heat it from 0°C to 100°C.

We believe the metaphor extends to ConTechs as they scale - transitioning to your next growth phase demands something more and something different.

This Week On Practical Nerds - tl;dr

The 3 timeless tasks we have observed in successful ConTech's:

1/ Hire exceptional people and organize them exceptionally well

2/ Acquire primary information directly to make prime decisions

3/ Make bold bets and execute them boldly

🎧 Listen To This Practical Nerds Episode

Hire exceptional people and organize them exceptionally

How do you know what exceptional really looks like?

Successful CEOs understand something that few others grasp: true excellence is often unknown until you've witnessed it. We recently observed a company founder who believed everyone on their team was exceptional, but they were visibly overwhelmed, trying to manage too many responsibilities and becoming the bottleneck across multiple departments.

The truth was uncomfortable but necessary: this founder didn't yet know what exceptional talent truly looked like. It's a self-reinforcing cycle — until you've experienced exceptionalism, you don't know how to hire for it. This isn't about collecting impressive resumes or people from prestigious companies. It's about recognizing that intangible quality that elevates an entire organization.

Many founders instinctively agree they need exceptional people, but don't realize they can't identify excellence because they've never been exposed to it. This is where ecosystem advantages become real — founders in robust startup environments like Silicon Valley eventually develop a spectrum of quality to compare against. Without this benchmark, companies struggle to push beyond mediocrity.

But hiring exceptional people is only half the equation.

The truly remarkable companies understand they must organize these people exceptionally as well. The organizational design must allow the company to run its core business profitably while simultaneously setting itself up for transformation, constant morphing, and making bold bets.

Consider Revolut's ability to outpace other neobanks through insane shipping velocity — a direct result of how their CEO structured the organization. Or look at InfraMarket's decision to structure itself like a conglomerate with division CEOs who had been executives at large public companies. These aren't random decisions but carefully crafted organizational approaches that unlock great outcomes.

Some startups never graduate to this level of organizational thinking. Even at Series A, the exceptional companies are already considering how to reorganize themselves for the next phase of growth, while other startups remain stuck in their initial structure.

The greatest determinant of a company's ultimate ceiling is its ability to attract true excellence and organize it in ways that magnify impact rather than constrain it.

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Acquire primary information to make prime decisions

How do you avoid filtered information compromising your decisions?

As companies grow, a dangerous pattern emerges:

CEOs become increasingly distanced from primary information about their customers and operations. This filtered information problem results in compromised decision-making at exactly the time when decisions have the greatest impact.

We've all seen this scenario play out. A company scales, middle management forms (regardless of what you call them), and information starts getting filtered before it reaches the CEO. Sometimes this happens with good intentions — managers want to be efficient with the CEO's time. Often, it happens with less noble motivations — people filter information to protect themselves or advance their agendas.

The result?

The CEO is no longer the prime decision-maker. The decision has already been framed in a way that dictates the outcome. This creates a dangerous disconnect, particularly in industries like construction where edge cases remain common for a long time before patterns emerge that allow for standardization.

One manufacturing CEO we know made it a practice to visit 80 different countries and manufacturing sites 250 days a year. When asked why he didn't just review management reports from headquarters, his response was illuminating:

"If I sit in headquarters, I'll get heavily filtered reports because people tell me what they think I want to hear."

But he went further. He understood that even site visits could become ceremonial affairs where regional managers would prepare elaborate presentations. So he bypassed the hierarchy entirely, walking directly onto the factory floor to speak with workers about what was actually happening. That's acquiring primary information.

This practice doesn't mean the CEO should be doing everyone's job. It means systematically sampling primary information from customers and operations to ensure decision quality remains high. As Jeff Bezos reportedly said, a CEO's job is to make three great decisions each day — nothing else. With that mindset, information acquisition and processing become everything.

The most effective leaders develop the ability to "ride the elevator" — moving seamlessly between granular, ground-level information and high-level strategic thinking. This requires not just intelligence but different information processing routines and thinking practices. Few CEOs master this balance, but those who do gain an extraordinary advantage.

The best CEOs maintain direct access to unfiltered reality while simultaneously processing that information at a level of abstraction that enables strategic insight.

Make bold bets and execute them boldly

How do you create future options without getting paralyzed?

The third critical role of a CEO is making bold bets and executing them decisively. This isn't about recklessness but about recognizing that generational companies cannot be planned on a 10-year blueprint — they must create options that reveal what could be possible.

We saw this with Infra.Market during the first COVID lockdown. When construction activity in India completely shut down, their business dropped to zero overnight. Rather than waiting for markets to recover, they made a bold two-axis change: they started exporting (rather than focusing only domestically) and expanded into construction chemicals - beyond their core categories of cement, aggregates, and concrete.

This wasn't just a bold decision but also bold execution. In moments of market uncertainty, they didn't wait for perfect information or prolonged analysis — they acted. That business line has since evolved into a substantial part of their operation and provided hedges they wouldn't otherwise have had.

Similarly, a French construction fintech in our portfolio surprised us recently by revealing they had already launched and sold a new product that was originally planned for a future quarter. They saw an opportunity window opening earlier than expected and didn't hesitate to test it immediately. That's a bold bet and boldly executed.

Bold execution also means killing initiatives decisively when they don't work. Seven out of ten options might fail, but the two or three that succeed can transform the business in ways you couldn't have predicted. This is why building a company isn't a PowerPoint exercise — it's an optionality exercise that requires both courage and decisive action.

The opposite approach is equally revealing. We received an email from a founder whose company had raised $100 million before failing. Rather than owning the decisions, this founder blamed their lead investor for five different mistakes while simultaneously soliciting new investment. This abdication of responsibility is the antithesis of bold execution.

Successful CEOs continuously create options for their business, kill the ones that don't work quickly, and double down on the ones that reveal new possibilities.

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Conclusion: The CEO Elevation Framework

Excellence isn't what most people think it is — seek exposure to true excellence to recognize and cultivate it
Structure your organization for the highest shipping velocity and taking bold bets constantly
Acquire primary information directly from customers and operations
Develop the ability to process both granular and abstract information effectively
Create options through bold bets rather than trying to plan the unplannable
Execute decisively without waiting for perfect information
Own your decisions completely, whether they succeed or fail