Lessons CEOs can learn from being employees at their own startups

By Stakh Vozniak , Co-founder & CEO at Cargofy

As a founder of a startup in logistics, I launched two different products. In both of them, I spent time working as an employee, and I was surprised by how useful it turned out to be.

In my first product, an AI-driven logistic service called Cargofy, I worked as a dispatcher. I made 60 calls a day, juggling load arrangements and logistics coordination. In my second product, fr8lines, I worked as a salesman, selling logistics services to big brands.

Working as an employee in your own startup brings insights that a CEO might not otherwise have. Was it challenging for me? Incredibly. Was it worth it? More than I expected. 

If you’ve done the job, it’s easier to hire, onboard people

For the first few months after founding Cargofy in the U.S., I was the only dispatcher at the company, and I didn't know a thing about the job.

It turned out that warm contacts with carriers made all the difference. I struggled with small talk constantly, but that's how I realized that my ideal dispatcher should have strong soft skills and be social. Sometimes, you need to chat with clients to establish a more personal approach.

Once we earned more money, we started hiring a team, growing to over 50 employees. I knew who to look for. Onboarding was extremely hard, and new people made mistakes, but I knew how to teach them: how to talk to clients and what questions to ask.

By doing the tasks, you see how to improve processes

Working as a dispatcher gave me a deeper understanding of the industry than any market research ever could.

I saw firsthand how much time was wasted on phone calls and manual data entry. It became clear that automation could help dispatchers handle more requests and bring in more revenue. I started by automating data entry, a small change that saved us a lot of time.

I also recognized the need for greater transparency for carriers. My startup enabled the attachment of rate confirmations, so drivers knew they could trust us, which boosted our chances of landing big deals.

We kept implementing features to help dispatchers, such as a tracking service and automated load matching. These innovations are among the main factors that help my company work faster and sell more. I wouldn’t have known about them if I hadn't worked as a dispatcher myself.

Founder-led sales help create customer-oriented product

When I was a salesman at fr8lines, I sold an MVP — a half-cooked product. I would show potential clients my demo, and bugs would pop up everywhere. I’d improvise and save the situation, but inside, I was crying.

However, by talking to customers myself, I gathered a lot of valuable feedback, which I brought to the team. We improved our service right away to fit our clients’ needs.

This would not have been possible to the same extent if I hadn’t been the one selling and talking to clients. When a founder is closer to their customers, improvements come faster and the assignments for the team are more detailed.

CEO should delegate as much as possible

Being a startup founder and its CEO is tough. Add to that also being an employee, and your life becomes a mash of slow days and fast weeks — and you can’t do anything properly.

Being too busy with my CEO duties, I would forget about carriers for half a day and then face a ton of justified hate from them. In their place, I’d be pissed too.

But it taught me the importance of delegating. Being a startup founder is your first and main job. As soon as you can hire a team and train them, delegate immediately. In time, my dispatchers started performing much better than I did, and I could finally be a proper CEO.

This article originally appeared on Vestbee.

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