Solo.io boss: I was wrong, I made mistakes – and that made me a better CEO "I feel that a founder always needs to be a little bit stupidly optimistic." Solo.io CEO Idit Levine has been on an interesting journey in cloud computing since starting the networking and API management company in 2017. If you're looking at a project that is successful today, it was after a big company leans into it and is …
@Pascal Monett: “Whatever you think about Solo.io, you have to admit it takes guts to be a female CEO and it takes even more guts to freely admit that you made mistakes. I'd like to see more male CEOs admit that, eh Léo Apotheker ?”
Seriously, the average techie don't care what's between yer legs |
You must work in a very enlightened environment. There are men where I work who refuse to watch Match of the Day because they have female presenters and football, apparently, is a man's game that women aren't competent to comment on even if they've played for England.
Same in the US, especially with (American) football, which truly is a man's game with hardly any women participating at any level. Some tolerate them only if they're attractive, some don't believe they have any place in the broadcast other than as cheerleaders. You even see men "gatekeeping" female football fans, wanting to quiz them hoping to trip them up and claim they aren't knowledgeable enough to be "real" football fans.
There's even a controversy with the NFL this season due to some of the teams having male cheerleaders. It is difficult to understand that one since male cheerleaders have been a part of college football even since before there were female cheerleaders, but somehow it is an affront to American values for some people when NFL teams have them. Probably just a made up thing from some on the right wanting to distract from Trump being all over the Epstein files and refusing to release them.
There are fewer female CEOs, especially of startups. The kind of people who end up VCs are mostly men, and mostly the kind of men who would never admit a mistake and would feel it is a mistake to admit a mistake.
MAGA has industrialized that trait in the US, republican politicians will no longer ever admit to a mistake, whether personal or political, because they know their orange lord and master will look down upon them if they do. And you see MAGA supporters outside the political sphere adopting the same "deny everything, loudly proclaim everything is awesome" mindset.
Very refreshing to see a CEO with a healthy attitude. These days, especially in tech/software/AI startups there's too many lead figures defined by their ego.
Good to see her admit her mistakes, acknowledge different contributions, and staying true to the path she's set out on, without letting the countless people tugging her arm win.
I've done a few technical due diligence gigs prior to PE buy-outs of smallish tech companies. In my experience the ideas people who started them are not always the best people to turn them from a start-up to a functioning, growing company. In one case the founder was up there with the brightest people in the world but his butterfly brain wasn't capable of dealing with the day-to-day neccessities of running a business with a few dozen people who needed paying every month. The company was on the bones of its arse and lucky to be bought by a PE before it collapsed. He wanted to stay on as CEO after the buy-out but the PE were very firm and, on top of the hefty pay off he got from selling his company, they gave him a part-time role as director of innovation on the understanding that he'd stay out of the day-to-day operations.
