This is a very interesting topic because you've reached a very high level with your company now, right? But there are other phases of the company where perhaps there would be someone even better than you.
Completely. Like now, actually.
Right? But the perception among entrepreneurs, among founders, of being able to reach that moment and say: 'Look, in fact, the best thing for the company from now on is for me not to lead it, but for someone with different characteristics.' That's not easy.
No, no. Why? Because it's the baby? No, no. Ah, that baby thing, the baby has no excuse. A very grown-up baby. You have no excuse for that. That's the first thing about transitions.
We did something at OutSystems that, since I had experience in the past, I implemented something: I removed the word 'founder' from all business cards. I don't want to hear about founders, founders, that doesn't exist in here. So I separated it into three hats. Either you're a shareholder, or you're the CEO, or you're a person helping in some area, and you can only wear one hat at a time. So as a shareholder, you have your shares, you don't need to work at the company. If you work at the company, you have to be the best at doing that function. If you're not, you have to be replaced because, first of all, you're a shareholder. And that created a model where I was able to, basically, have no problem with my other co-founders. We were five, but I set that up and said: 'First of all, we all have shares and have responsibility at OutSystems. So what we're going to do is each one will do what's best for the company. When it's not suitable for that place, all of us can be replaced.' And that happened right from the start. I remember these initial conversations perfectly, and that's what happened. And in reality, today the founders have already received millions from some things and will receive more, right? But many of them, currently only one of the five still works at OutSystems. The other four have already left. So we continue as shareholders, but they left over time. This disconnecting from the founder is very important. The founder thing is cute and all that, but it's cute before creating the company and after leaving. Then you can use the name wherever you are. I don't like that name.
Hmm. Then when you leave to tell stories from the past, when you did...
Now, now I have my name as Co-founder. I don't have another one, right? Chairman and whatnot. So before I was just CEO, I didn't put Co-founder, just CEO. And that was my job.
What does a chairman do? A chairman takes care of the chair.
No, it depends. It depends. In my case...
Chairman, he's the man of the chair, right?
The man of the chair. I, by the way, asked that question.
He's the man behind the chair.
Ah, behind the CEO's chair. No, I don't have... it's not a fundamental model of these transitions, these transitions from founder CEO to...
Ah, to a hired CEO. Uh-huh. To a professional CEO, let's say, has a high probability of failure and it's usually because of the founder.
So I studied this well, I did a mental reset here to ensure this... to control the temptations, right? After thinking a lot about this, you come to the conclusion that the only way is to cut it off completely. You can't talk to anyone.
But, but you're the chairman?
I'm the chairman and as such, I can talk to the CEO, I talk to the board, and then I have authorization, all very well agreed upon, to talk to some people. But on purpose, I stopped going to the office, I stopped doing a series of things so as not to have the temptation to go there and talk to the product team and say: 'No, that's all wrong, do it this way.' And, man, I have... and notice, it's not just the product team, right? You know what it costs me sometimes not to get involved? But it's really hard, right? You're getting involved in... sales. Look, I would get involved in everything, right? I was involved in sales, marketing, engineering, product, back office.
Did you feel a big hangover?
No, what I felt was a bit of relief.
Relief? No, you said: 'But you don't know what it costs'.
Well, that's what I said about the hangover. It costs. No, but you know what costs? It's the packaging. It's thinking. Because you see, this is many leaders. When you see a leader giving a speech or a CEO post-retirement trying to be important and all that, he has a problem of relevance. The great loss for people who get here is that before, everyone wanted your time, was calling you. You were relevant. And when you finish this, you lose relevance. Now you're just another one, you see? So you have to make a mental transformation of humility, in a way, to come to the conclusion that was already obvious before: that you don't matter much. But that also has to become part of your habits.
It was your position that mattered, right? Is that what you're saying?
Yes. Yes. And it is what it is because you were the one who made the final analysis, you made important decisions. In a way, you have to do what the top leader has to do, right? Like every leader.
You said something there that made me curious. You said you communicate with the CEO, with the board, and with some people who are very well defined. I assume they are the most important people in the company, or are they people who are there and whose motivation is important, is that it?
No, some things where I can... some characteristics that are still minimally important. I talk to two or three more people, but do you want an example without naming the people? No, I have a characteristic of being able to isolate problems with a clarity that is sometimes not so obvious, especially in things with a lot of noise. And I usually see things very clearly when there's a lot of confusion. And so, I've had some conversations with some people there who are thinking about the new generation of how the platform changes with AI. And it doesn't mean that I'm an expert, which I'm not. I understand relatively little about it. But when you have a facility for thinking in basic principles, in first principles, it's much easier. From the moment you start seeing what changes, you improve the probability that what you've been thinking about for 3 years will happen. And at OutSystems, we've always managed to do this more or less. Not just me, many of my colleagues at OutSystems, because it's part of the culture, could predict where things would be in 3 years. And you have to, because it takes time to get there. So you have to make a leap regarding what's happening now, the noise that's happening now. AI is a bigger challenge because I've never seen such fast evolution cycles in my entire professional life as the ones I'm seeing now. So things are evolving at a much higher speed. But by the way, 70% of the predictions we made two years ago are validating now. It's just that we used to make these predictions and it took 10 years and we were 5, 10 years ahead of the market. Now we're 6 months, two years ahead, so things are so compressed. So most of the conversations I have, I spend more time listening to then go think at home than anything else.
It's all very well on track now, right? It's on track, it's like everyone else, we're good, but it's a monumental machine. This industry is being shaken. When you say it's so good, the company is stable, the teams are stable, the product has clients...
