I have a confession: I’ve become bored with the term “First-Time CEO.”

When I started this project, the title felt like a badge of honor. It represented the grind, the steep learning curve, and the unique hurdles of building something from nothing. But the world has shifted beneath our feet. Today, with the barrier to entry for building a business effectively at zero, anyone can be a “First-Time CEO” by tomorrow morning. AI is building businesses daily.

Because of that, simply being “new” at it isn’t the interesting part anymore. It’s not what I want to write about, and I suspect (seeing the readership) it’s not what you want to read about either.

We are moving from the era of “learning to lead” to the era of “orchestrating intent.”

That’s why I am officially rebranding the newsletter, the podcast, and my upcoming book to The AI-Native CEO.

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Why the Pivot?

I don’t want to just talk about leadership. I want to explore—and show you—what it looks like to be a CEO who is shipping, building, and automating with AI. The future is here, and if you are a CEO who is not using AI daily for your business, my friend, I’ll be brutally honest with you—you are done. In this project, I want to dive deep into the tools, the agentic architectures, and the workflows that allow one person to do the work of ten.

This shift is especially vital for the book. I recently realized that by the time I hit 50 podcast episodes, the world will be fundamentally transformed. I want this project to be a living document of that transformation—capturing the exact moments where AI development changed the way we create value forever.

Enter: NERDIE

As part of this new chapter, I’m launching something I am incredibly proud of: NERDIE.

NERDIE is an online vibe coding community for AI-native women. After the incredible energy at our SheBuilds x Lovable event for International Women’s Day, the message was clear: women want more. They want a space to build, not just talk.

So, I am launching Sunday Build—a monthly offline residency here in sunny Ericeira for women building with AI, as an addition to the online community.

A first session will happen on April 5th:

What: A hands-on “vibe coding” session to ship your ideas + a mini-lecture on prompt-engineering by me, and a delicious brunch with discussions about business and AI.

When: April 5th, from 10 am to 2 pm.

Where: Ericeira, Portugal, and supported by our friends at Lovable.

If you’re in the area or want to join the digital movement, you can find us here.

Get NERDIE!

#GoldenFindings

This week’s must-read: Something big is happening by Shumer. It perfectly captures the “vibe” of the current shift in software development, and well, any industry. If you feel like the ground is moving, this explains why.

#CEOCheck

What is one manual process in your business today that you are “protecting” because you’re afraid to let AI touch it—and what would happen if you let go?

I can’t wait to reshape the podcast and share the first episodes with AI-native leaders with you!

See you in the IDE :)

Yours,
Victoria

Did you know? I’m writing a book, and just launched its pre-sale! The First-Time CEO: 50 Conversations on Leading While Becoming will include 50 podcast conversations with modern leaders, hosted by me, reflections on building an AI startup as a first-time CEO, and some of my most-read newsletters. Pre-order your copy and follow my progress as I write it in public!

P.S. Wanna get some evergreen publicity? Choose a Founding Membership Pack instead of just the book!

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How Much of Your Business is You?

The barrier to entry for entrepreneurship has never been lower. Between no-code tools, AI-driven operations, and a global freelance marketplace, the “how” of starting a business is now a commodity.

But this accessibility has created a strange side effect: The Industrialization of Ambition.

Today, it is fashionable to be a CEO. We aren’t just building companies; we are performing “entrepreneurship” as a lifestyle choice. But when you look under the hood of many first-time ventures, a question arises: if we removed the trends, the hype-cycles, and the “best practices” from your favorite gurus, would there be anything left?

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The “Copy-Paste” Founder Syndrome

We are currently seeing a massive trend in Algorithm-Driven Strategy. Founders are increasingly building businesses based on what the market validates rather than what they actually know.

• The Validation Trap: Recent surveys suggest that nearly 60% of Gen Z and Millennials want to be entrepreneurs, driven largely by the visibility of “Lifestyle CEOs” on social media.

• The Hype Cycle: We see founders pivoting to AI, then Web3, then back to SaaS, not because the problem changed, but because the “funding fashion” changed.

When you run a business based on outside noise, you aren’t a CEO—you’re a curator of other people’s ideas.

The Technical Debt of the Soul

In software, technical debt happens when you choose an easy solution now instead of a better approach that takes longer. In leadership, Authenticity Debt happens when you adopt a “Growth Hacker” or “Grindset” persona that doesn’t actually fit your cognitive style.

Eventually, the interest on that debt comes due in the form of Ambition Exhaustion. When your business is 90% “market trends” and only 10% “you,” the friction of daily operations becomes unbearable. You aren’t fighting the market; you’re fighting your own lack of connection to the work.

The Litmus Test a.k.a #CEOCheck

To figure out how much of your business is actually you, ask yourself these three questions:

1. The Silent Test: If you were forbidden from posting about your business on social media for a year, would you still want to solve this specific problem?

2. The Contrarian Test: Which part of your business model goes directly against “standard” advice? If the answer is “none,” you might be building a template, not a company.

3. The Origin Test: Is your current strategy born from a specific insight you earned through experience, or a “How-To” thread you read on X?

From Fashion to Function

Being a first-time CEO is hard enough without the added weight of wearing a costume. The goal isn’t to ignore the market—that’s suicide—but to ensure that the market is the environment you operate in, not the source of your identity.

The most sustainable competitive advantage is a business that only you could have built. Because while anyone can copy a business model, no one can scale your specific perspective.

The Founder’s Reset Guide

I felt the weight of these trends so much that I built a 4-module system to help you strip away the 'Founder Performance' and get back to building a business that actually fits your life. You can unlock the 'Founder's Reset' Guide with the Bonus Case Study: The "Hype-to-Hardcore" Pivot below.

Unlock the guide!

#GoldenFindings

1. The “Entrepreneurship Industry” and Innovation Theatre

A 2025 study from the Stockholm School of Economics reveals how an entire industry of accelerators, media, and “gurus” has emerged to sell a very narrow, high-status image of what a founder should look like. It warns of “Innovation Theatre”—where founders engage in activities that look like progress (networking, posting, pitching) but deliver zero real-world impact.

2. From Gen Z to “Gen E”: The Rise of the Creator CEO

This report from Cannes Lions (looking toward 2026) discusses the shift toward the “Creator CEO.” It highlights how the line between personal branding and business operations has blurred. It’s a great resource for your “how much of you is in the business” angle, as it discusses how leaders are now expected to “own their narrative” to build trust in an era of AI-generated noise.

3. The Psychology of Entrepreneurship & The Optimism Trap

While the research on “entrepreneurial optimism” is ongoing, recent psychological assessments show a fascinating “Optimism Trap.” It explores how founders who follow the trendy “visionary” archetype often ignore data in favor of their own hype, leading to a negative relationship between the founder’s ego and the actual performance of the venture.

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Season 2 coming soon!

Premise: Most modern businesses suffer from “Hype-Bloat”—a collection of processes, tools, and brand voices adopted because “that’s what founders do,” not because the business requires them. This guide provides the technical and psychological framework to strip your business back to its unique DNA.

Upgrade to paid to get the highly practical four-module guide and the 🔒 Bonus Case Study: The "Hype-to-Hardcore" Pivot below!

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Did you know? I’m writing a book, and just launched its pre-sale! The First-Time CEO: 50 Conversations on Leading While Becoming will include 50 podcast conversations with modern leaders, hosted by me, reflections on building an AI startup as a first-time CEO, and some of my most-read newsletters. Pre-order your copy and follow my progress as I write it in public!

P.S. Wanna get some evergreen publicity? Choose a Founding Membership Pack instead of just the book!

Pre-order my book & track the progress!

Last night I watched a documentary inspired by George Orwell’s “1984”. It’s called “Orwell: 2+2=5“. It follows his life and the ideas behind the novel, showing how his observations about power and control still echo in contemporary forms of authoritarianism.

The film moves through the rise of Nazism and other twentieth-century regimes. Reports were filed, institutions functioned, careers continued. The point was never to make citizens believe absurdities immediately. It was to make contradiction livable.

By the time 2 + 2 = 5 appears, it circulates calmly.

That is what makes it frightening.

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Power Doesn’t Begin With Force

We tend to imagine authoritarianism as dramatic — uniforms, propaganda, visible terror. But historically, it stabilizes through routine. People adapt their speech slightly before they adapt their beliefs.

A colleague omits a detail.
A report emphasizes direction over outcome.
A newspaper aligns tone with expectation.

No individual act is decisive. The system becomes durable because reality is no longer confronted directly. People do not wake up convinced. They wake up coordinated.

Totalitarian regimes perfected this: they not only punished dissent, but also made an accurate description socially disruptive.

The arithmetic changes last.

Companies Drift the Same Way

A first-time CEO eventually encounters a quieter version of the same mechanism. Not ideology — atmosphere.

Inside a growing company, the leader becomes the gravitational center of interpretation. The team does not lie to you; they learn what version of events allows work to continue smoothly. Information arrives already adapted to emotional sustainability.

You begin hearing:

• “The market needs education” instead of “users don’t stay.”

• “Early signal” instead of “weak demand.”

• “Strategic delay” instead of “missed deadline.”

Nothing here is false enough to protest. But taken together, the organization stops describing the present and starts protecting momentum.

The leader rarely orders this. The structure produces it. And this is where leadership becomes moral rather than strategic.

The First Leadership Test: Can Reality Reach You?

Your job is not optimism or pessimism. Your job is permeability.

When people unconsciously filter what reaches you, the company becomes a narrative engine rather than an adaptive system. You will still make decisions — just not about the real environment.

Early symptoms tend to look harmless:

1. Surprises arrive late.

2. Problems appear suddenly “out of nowhere.”

3. Meetings feel reassuring, but decisions age badly.

By then, the arithmetic has already drifted. Not to 2+2=5 yet — but far enough that correction hurts.

The paradox: morale improves right before a company becomes blind.

Saying 4 When Everyone Needs 5

In authoritarian systems, stability depends on shared agreement about what can be calmly said. In organizations, the same dynamic appears as cultural alignment.

People want confidence from a leader. But they trust a leader who remains in contact with reality.

To lead in unstable times, you have to separate two functions that most founders merge:

Provide hope about the future.
Provide accuracy about the present.

When these collapse into one sentence, teams lose orientation.

Practical habits matter more than charisma:

• Name the uncomfortable metric before interpreting it.

• Let silence follow bad news instead of reframing immediately.

• Reward the person who contradicts the meeting’s emotional direction.

• Admit uncertainty without outsourcing responsibility.

You are not protecting morale by smoothing facts. You are delaying contact with the environment — and the environment always wins.

Leadership as a Public Position

Orwell feared systems where truth required courage. In companies, truth often requires social permission.

Your role creates that permission.

People watch less what you decide than what you tolerate. If disagreement feels career-limiting, reality will be negotiated long before strategy is discussed. The organization becomes efficient at coherence and ineffective at survival.

The leader is not the enforcer of falsehood — only the reference point around which it organizes.

So the question is not whether you are honest.
It is whether honesty is structurally safe around you.

Surviving Times Like These

Periods of uncertainty — economic, technological, political — amplify the temptation to coordinate perception. Humans prefer stability over accuracy when the stakes rise. Leaders feel it first because others borrow their certainty.

Survival requires a discipline that feels counterintuitive: resisting the urge to resolve tension too early. You hold the tension long enough for reality to fully appear.

Not comfortable. Not efficient. Adaptive. Because once everyone agrees too quickly, you may gain unity and lose orientation — and orientation is the only thing a young company truly owns.

Orwell wrote about regimes where arithmetic became political. Most founders will never run a country, but every leader eventually governs a shared reality.

The moment people adjust what they say so the system keeps moving, leadership begins.

Examples in a startup:

• You don’t mention users are confused because the sprint is ending.

• You soften bad feedback so morale stays high.

• You delay raising a risk because the founder is fundraising.

• You present a metric optimistically because everyone is tired.

Nothing dramatic. Just small frictions removed.

Your task is simple and exhausting: keep in contact with what is true before it becomes convenient.

The “2 + 2 = 4” Leadership Playbook

If this piece resonated, I turned the ideas into something practical: a playbook on how to tell the truth inside a team without becoming the problem. It’s a guide to timing, language, and positioning — the difference between raising reality and triggering defensiveness.

Grab The “2 + 2 = 4” Leadership Playbook below!

Grab your playbook!

#GoldenFindings

My #GoldenFindings this time orbit a single theme: systems rarely collapse because people lie — they collapse because incentives quietly redefine what counts as reality.

1. The KPI Trap: How Misaligned Metrics Sabotage Performance
   How teams can all hit their targets and still collectively fail because each optimizes a local metric instead of the shared outcome.

2. Incentive Alignment in a Misaligned World
   Why complex systems naturally optimize proxies instead of goals — and why intelligent actors produce irrational outcomes when rewards drift from purpose.

3. Execution Drift in Fast-Growing Teams
   How organizations slowly lose contact with reality not through strategy failure but through daily micro-misalignments.

#CEOCheck

This week’s question for you is:
Where in your company are people optimizing what is measurable — instead of what is true?

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Season 2 coming soon! Here you can find more information about me and my career.

This playbook is especially useful for first-time CEOs and early employees — people with responsibility but little formal power.

Part I — Recognize Reality Drift

Before you speak, diagnose the situation. Most conflicts come from reacting to the wrong problem.

Signals the system is protecting harmony over accuracy…

Read more

P.S. Wanna get some evergreen publicity? Choose a Founding Membership Pack instead of just the book!

Pre-order my book & track the progress!

I recently had the incredible opportunity to participate in the first Lovable’s SheBuilds Buildathon. Out of 3000 applicants, I was lucky to be one of the 200 participants selected to build in this intensive AI-driven environment. This experience wasn’t just about building; it was a front-row seat to the paradigm shift we are currently living through — the rise of the “vibe coder.” This new archetype, exemplified by individuals like Lazar Jovanovic, whom I recently heard on ’s podcast, challenges our conventional understanding of what it means to build and lead in the technology sector. This newsletter is inspired by Lazar’s chat with Lenny.

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Code is becoming a commodity; taste is becoming the currency.

Lazar Jovanovic, a professional vibe coder at Lovable, builds production-grade products purely using AI, notably without a traditional coding background. His journey perfectly mirrors the insights I gained during the Buildathon: in the AI era, the “how” of implementation is increasingly being automated, while the “what” of vision, strategy, and orchestration takes precedence. For first-time CEOs, this represents a profound shift in how we must approach talent acquisition, team structure, and product development.

Strategic Implications of Vibe Coding for First-Time CEOs

Jovanovic’s approach to leveraging AI offers critical lessons for leaders navigating the complexities of a rapidly evolving technological landscape. These aren’t merely tactical adjustments but fundamental shifts in strategic thinking:

1. Embracing Non-Technical Backgrounds as a Strategic Advantage

Lazar’s success underscores a crucial point: a lack of traditional coding experience can be a significant asset. For CEOs, this means broadening the talent pool beyond conventional technical roles. Individuals who are adept at problem-solving, critical thinking, and strategic communication — rather than just syntax mastery — can become invaluable AI orchestrators. This perspective allows leaders to focus on the problem to be solved and the desired outcome, empowering AI as a co-creator, instead of getting bogged down in the minutiae of code.

2. Prioritizing Planning and “Chat Mode” for Enhanced Clarity

Jovanovic emphasizes dedicating most of his time to planning and iterative refinement within “chat mode,” and not just prompting. For CEOs, this translates into a need for unprecedented clarity in vision and requirements. Effective AI orchestration demands precise articulation of goals, constraints, and desired functionalities. It’s about guiding the AI effectively through continuous dialogue and refinement to ensure alignment with strategic objectives.

3. The 4x4 Debugging Workflow: A Framework for AI-Driven Problem Solving

Even without writing traditional code, a structured approach to problem-solving remains paramount. Lazar’s 4x4 debugging workflow demonstrates the necessity of systematic analysis in AI-driven development. For first-time CEOs, this highlights the importance of fostering a culture of iterative experimentation and analytical rigor. Understanding the AI’s output, identifying discrepancies, and systematically refining inputs are critical skills for leading teams in this new environment.

4. Design Skills and Taste as the New Competitive Edge

As AI assumes more of the technical implementation, the human element of design, user experience, and aesthetic appeal becomes increasingly critical. For CEOs, this means elevating the importance of design thinking throughout the organization. The ability to discern and cultivate exceptional product taste will differentiate offerings in a market saturated with AI-generated solutions. It’s about ensuring that AI-powered products are not just functional, but also intuitive, delightful, and aligned with user expectations.

5. The “Genie and Three Wishes” Mental Model: Mastering AI’s Limitations

Lazar’s analogy of AI as a “genie with three wishes” is a powerful framework for understanding and leveraging AI’s capabilities while acknowledging its current limitations. For CEOs, this translates into a strategic imperative to cultivate precise intent and clear communication. AI is infinitely powerful but requires extreme clarity in defining desired outcomes. Without a well-defined vision, AI can produce technically functional but strategically misaligned results. This model encourages strategic thinking about how to best utilize AI’s strengths while navigating its boundaries.

My Journey into Vibe Coding: Lovable’s SheBuilds Buildathon

These strategic insights into vibe coding resonate strongly with my own recent experience. My participation in the first Lovable’s SheBuilds Buildathon was a tangible demonstration of these principles in action. As one of 200 participants selected from a pool of 3000 applicants, I witnessed firsthand how diverse talents, guided by a clear vision and iterative AI interaction, could rapidly build innovative solutions. This experience further solidified my belief in AI's transformative power to empower individuals and organizations, regardless of their traditional coding background, to create and innovate at an unprecedented pace.

P.S. By the way, there will be another SheBuilds Buildathon for women on March 8th, the International Women’s Day, and I am planning an offline event around it in the Lisbon area. If you are around and would like to participate, express your interest by replying to this email.

The First-Time CEO’s Playbook for the AI Era

To help you navigate this evolving landscape, I’ve distilled my learnings into The Vibe Coder’s Playbook. This comprehensive guide goes beyond the theoretical, offering actionable strategies and frameworks for first-time CEOs to effectively lead in the AI era. If you're ready to transform your approach to product development and team leadership, you can dive deeper into these insights and unlock the full playbook below.

Grab your playbook!

#GoldenFindings

My #GoldenFindings this time explore the transition of vibe coding from a technical novelty to a mainstream strategic tool. They highlight the critical need for a "product layer" to simplify complexity, while cautioning that human expertise remains essential for security, architecture, and the "last mile" of production-grade development:

1. Most People Can’t Vibe Code. Here’s How We Fix That. – a16z partner Justine Moore explores the “Unix era” of AI agents and why the next frontier is building the “product layer” that collapses technical complexity for the 99%.

2. A new worst coder has entered the chat: vibe coding without code knowledge – A candid look from Stack Overflow on the “productivity tax” of vibe coding, highlighting how non-technical builders can create functional apps but often struggle with the “last mile” of deployment and debugging.

3. Vibe coding: Pros, cons, and 2026 forecasts from PVS-Studio – Expert developers weigh in on why “pure” vibe coding is risky for production, emphasizing that while AI sets the direction, human expertise in architecture and security remains the essential guardrail.

#CEOCheck

As implementation becomes a commodity, your primary role shifts from managing “how” things are built to curating the “vibe” of the outcome.

Are you building a tool that requires a manual, or a product that delivers an outcome?

If your team is vibe coding, who is responsible for the “last mile” of security and architecture—and are you hiring for syntax or for taste?

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Season 2 coming soon! Here you can find more information about me and my career.

My recent newsletter was inspired by ’s conversation with Lazar Jovanovic. My primary takeaway from both Jovanovic’s discussion with Lenny and my participation in the SheBuilds Buildathon by Lovable is the undeniable shift in the paradigm of software development. The focus is moving from rote coding to strategic AI orchestration. This new era of development is less about the lines of code and more about the vision, the intuition, and the ability to guide AI to bring that vision to life. It’s about feeling the ‘vibe’ of the project and translating that into effective AI directives. For first-time CEOs, successfully navigating this shift requires a new playbook:

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P.S. Wanna get some evergreen publicity? Choose a Founding Membership Pack instead of just the book!

Pre-order my book!

Dashboards are seductive.

They promise clarity, but what they often deliver is a kind of quiet frustration. Pageviews climb. That’s good, isn’t it? Yet conversions barely budge. The numbers alone offer no explanation. They are, at best, a mirror of what happened, not a map of why it happened.

In the early days of my career, I treated dashboards like crystal balls. I would stare at them, sometimes for hours, hoping the lines and bars would reveal some hidden logic of human behavior. But over time, I realized that numbers rarely speak for themselves. They reflect, they hint, they suggest—but they do not explain.

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So I learned to approach metrics differently. Instead of counting, I question. If something shifts, I ask:

Who exactly changed their behavior?
What was their last interaction before the shift?
When did this pattern begin, and what else was happening then?

It turns out, the work of understanding isn’t in the dashboard—it’s in connecting the dots the data leaves behind. Metrics, in this sense, are not maps. They do not tell you where to go; they reflect where you’ve been, where attention lingers, where behavior veers.

I follow a simple rhythm:

Signal. Identify the metric that feels “off.” Not every dip or rise warrants investigation, but some stir a quiet unease—a spike in churn, a drop in engagement. Those are your signals.

Segment. Break it down—by cohort, by channel, by time. Often, overall trends conceal nuance: perhaps only one cohort reacted differently, or a particular channel behaved unusually. Segmentation reveals the details hidden in the aggregate.

Trace. Follow the user path backward, from outcome to trigger. Who saw what, clicked what, ignored what? It is a detective’s work, tracing footsteps through an invisible landscape.

Hypothesize & Test. Define exactly what you expect to see if your idea is correct. Test your assumptions. Let the data speak back to you.

And then, the hardest part: leave space for surprise. For what you didn’t predict. That’s where insight lives—not in the tidy lines of a graph, but in the quiet, stubborn questions it provokes. It is in those anomalies, those stubborn outliers, that you begin to understand the human patterns behind the numbers.

I remember one particular instance: we had launched a new onboarding flow, and engagement looked promising. Conversions, however, remained stubbornly flat. Segmenting by cohort revealed a small subset abandoning midway. Tracing their path backward uncovered a tiny copywriting change on a single page. Hypothesis confirmed: that line of text, innocuous to most, was a trigger for confusion in just that cohort. We reversed it, and conversion rose. A small anomaly had held the story; the dashboard alone would never have told us.

Numbers are mirrors, not maps.

They reflect patterns, but the understanding—the insight—comes from curiosity, patience, and careful attention. Measure with questions, not just counters. Connect the dots. Trace the paths, test your assumptions. And always leave room for what you did not predict.

And perhaps the most important lesson of all is this: data is never neutral. It is shaped by the questions we ask, the moments we notice, and the patterns we are willing to follow. It is a reflection of our curiosity, our patience, our willingness to linger with uncertainty. To read numbers as stories, rather than answers, is to acknowledge the complexity of the people behind them—their unpredictability, their stubbornness, their capacity to surprise. And it is in that space, between reflection and interpretation, that insight becomes almost poetic: fragile, illuminating, and human.

The Data Interpretation Playbook for First-Time CEOs

To turn reflection into action, I’ve developed The Data Interpretation Playbook for First-Time CEOs. It’s a practical, no-BS guide for moving from raw metrics to insight:

• start with the question

• identify the signal

• segment ruthlessly

• trace the user path

• hypothesize and test

• leave room for surprises

• document everything

Each step pairs with real-world examples—from spotting churn in a SaaS startup to tracing drop-offs in onboarding—and recommended platforms like Mixpanel, FullStory, Optimizely, and Google Analytics.

Think of it as a full feedback loop: metric → question → cohort → path → hypothesis → test → insight → learning. Numbers are mirrors, not instructions—and this playbook shows you exactly how to read them.

#GoldenFindings

1. From Reports to Insights: Why Dashboards Alone Don’t Drive Better Decisions – Explores how to turn data into actionable insight.

2. Data Storytelling for Managers: Turn Dashboards Into Decisions – A narrative approach to using dashboards effectively.

3. Why Data Interpretation Is More Important Than Data Collection and Analysis – Contrasts having numbers vs. making sense of them.

4. 13 Data Analysis Questions to Improve Your Business Reporting Process – A list of probing questions to elevate reports from noise to narrative.

#CEOCheck

When a key metric shifts, what story does the data actually tell — and what assumptions are you making if you don’t dig deeper?

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Season 2 coming soon! Here you can find more information about me and my career.

Read more

P.S. Wanna get some evergreen publicity? Choose a Founding Membership Pack instead of just the book!

Pre-order my book!

Last week, I saw a LinkedIn post from a SaaS founder that stopped me mid-scroll.

It had 250+ comments — which usually means one thing:
someone managed to articulate a tension a lot of founders are quietly sitting with.

What made the post worth lingering on wasn’t the question itself — it was the comments.

One founder argued firmly for paid acquisition:

“If you already know your ICP and have a proven funnel, ads aren’t risky — not running them is.”

Another warned against skipping steps:

“Paid acquisition doesn’t fix unclear positioning. It just helps you find out faster that something’s broken.”

Someone nailed the sequencing problem:

“Organic is how you learn what to say. Paid is how you scale saying it.”

And one line stuck with me the most:

“Ads don’t fail quietly. They fail loudly and expensively.”

Taken together, the comments weren’t really disagreeing about ads.
They were disagreeing about order of operations.

The Order of Operations Most Founders Get Wrong

This is the real chicken-and-egg problem.

Founders and first-time CEOs often ask:
Should I invest in organic growth or paid marketing first?

But the better question is:
What needs to be true before paid marketing works?

In my experience, the sequence looks like this:

1. Organic discovery
   Conversations, content, partnerships, community.
   This is where you learn:

   • who your power users actually are

   • what problem feels urgent enough to act on

   • what language resonates without persuasion

2. Organic validation
   Patterns start to repeat.
   Certain messages convert. Certain channels outperform others.
   You’re no longer guessing — you’re observing.

3. Paid amplification
   Only now do ads make sense.
   Not to discover demand, but to scale proven demand.

This is why ads don’t create growth.
They amplify whatever signal already exists.

Ads Don’t Create Truth. They Amplify It.

You can turn on ads at almost any stage — platforms will happily take your money.
But ads don’t tell you what works. They just scale whatever you put into them.

If you don’t clearly know:

• who your power users are

• why they convert

• what language they use to describe value

• what moment made them say “this is for me”

…paid marketing becomes an expensive guessing game.

That’s why “organic vs. paid” is a false choice.
The real question is which comes first — and why.

So When Does It Make Sense to Spend a Lot on Ads?

Spending heavily on ads makes sense when:

• You can clearly define your ads’ ideal outcome, not just impressions

• You know which channels already work best organically

• Your creatives are grounded in real user language and outcomes

• You’re scaling what’s proven — not searching for proof

At that point, ads stop feeling risky.
They feel inevitable.

And How Much is Reasonable?

Very roughly:

• Early stages: small, experimental budgets

• Post message–market fit: 10–20% of ARR, deployed gradually

• Scaling phase: aggressive spend only when retention and payback justify it

$20K/month isn’t reckless if it’s amplifying validated insight.
It is reckless if it’s compensating for unclear positioning.

My Takeaway

Organic growth will only take you so far.
At scale, ads are mandatory.

But ads without organic insight are just expensive noise.

That’s why I’ve come to see organic work as the foundation — and paid growth as the accelerator.

Building real relationships with customers isn’t a “nice to have,” it’s the work. When I was a first-time CEO, I even asked my co-founder to build a feature that helped us identify our power users. I then personally reached out to all of them to understand how they were actually using the product.

What I learned was uncomfortable: I had built our entire communication strategy for the wrong target audience.

Only after I rebuilt our messaging, positioning, and approach around the right users did things start to click. Growth picked up — organically — and we eventually reached nearly $8K in MRR.

That experience fundamentally changed how I think about paid marketing. Ads didn’t unlock growth for us. Clarity did.

If you want to see how 👉 read my 90-Day Organic Growth Marketing for SaaS Blueprint in Exclusive Insights.

It’s the same system I developed to grow my previous AI SaaS from $0 to nearly $8K MRR in its first year — organically.

Grab your Blueprint!

#GoldenFindlings a.k.a useful links

1. Organic Traffic vs. Paid Ads: Finding the Right Mix for Sustainable Growth in 2025
   An up-to-date article arguing that organic and paid aren’t rivals — they’re parts of the same engine, and that balancing them builds more resilient growth than leaning on one alone.
   👉 https://clinkitsolutions.com/organic-traffic-vs-paid-ads-finding-the-right-mix-for-sustainable-growth-in-2025/

2. 2025 SaaS Industry Report: The Shift from Paid to Organic Marketing
   A 2025 industry report showing how many SaaS companies are strategically leaning into organic tactics (content, SEO, engagement) as part of cost-effective long-term growth.
   👉 https://flareai.co/news/2025-saas-industry-report-the-shift-from-paid-to-organic-marketing/

3. Paid Ads vs Organic Marketing | 2025 Guide
   A practical 2025 guide breaking down when paid ads help (quick visibility) versus when organic investment is smarter (trust and long-term authority), and how to make them work together.
   👉 https://www.zealousweb.com/blog/paid-ads-vs-organic-marketing-2025-strategy/

4. SaaS Growth Without Ads: Proven Organic Strategies for 2026
   A forward-looking piece focused on organic channels that outperform paid ads in 2026, useful for bootstrapped founders who need growth engines that compound over time.
   👉 https://www.brandedagency.com/blog/powerful-ways-to-market-a-saas-product-without-paid-ads-14-proven-strategies-for-2026

#CEOCheck

What’s the first piece of evidence you need from your organic efforts before you turn on significant paid spend — and how will you know you’ve truly found it?

Build the signal first.
Then amplify it.

— Victoria

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Season 2 coming soon! Here you can find more information about me and my career.

If the newsletter was an inspection, surfacing the tension between organic and paid growth, this blueprint is the operating plan for the first 90 days of building tractio…

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There is a particular kind of confusion that only founders experience.

The numbers are not disastrous. The product is not obviously bad. Customers are still there. The team is still shipping. And yet—nothing quite clicks. Effort goes in, progress comes out thin. Meetings multiply. Optimism becomes procedural.

This is the moment when founders often mistake motion for diagnosis.

Before adding strategy, hires, or capital, there is a quieter, more consequential task: figuring out what is actually broken—not what is loud or irritating, or what feels embarrassing, but what is structurally misaligned.

This is not a motivational exercise. It is an inspection.

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The Diagnostic Frame: Three Systems, One Problem

When a business feels chaotic, the issue almost always lives in one (or more) of three systems:

1. The Product System – what you’ve built and how it’s used

2. The Metrics System – what you measure and what moves

3. The Human System – how decisions are made and work is coordinated

Most founders default to fixing the most visible one. Diagnosis requires checking all three—systematically.

Let’s tackle all three one by one.

1. The Product Check: Is It Solving a Real, Repeated Problem?

Ask these questions without defending the product:

• Can users describe the value without your vocabulary?

• Is there a single, repeatable “aha” moment—or many vague ones?

• Do users return because they need the product, or because they are being reminded to?

Red flag: Usage exists, but urgency doesn’t.
Likely issue: The product solves an interesting problem, not a necessary one.

What to look at first

• Activation rate (not sign-ups)

• Time-to-value

• Repeat usage tied to one clear job-to-be-done

2. The Metrics Check: Are You Looking at the Right Signals?

When everything feels noisy, first-time founders and CEOs often track more. The move here is the opposite: track fewer, sharper metrics.

Start with these, in this order:

1. Unit economics

   • Do you clearly understand what it costs to acquire, serve, and retain one customer?

2. Churn (behavioral, not just logo churn)

   • Where exactly are people disengaging?

3. Acquisition channel ROI

   • Which channel works without heroic effort?

4. Velocity of iteration

   • How fast can you test, learn, and change direction?

Red flag: Metrics look “fine,” but no decision feels obvious.
Likely issue: You are measuring outcomes without understanding drivers.

3. The Team Alignment Check: Is the System Thinking or Reacting?

Misalignment often masquerades as execution failure.

Ask, plainly:

• Can everyone name the current top priority the same way?

• Do teams know what good looks like this quarter?

• Are decisions slowed by consensus—or rushed by avoidance?

Red flag: Everyone is busy, but ownership feels blurry.
Likely issue: The system lacks shared clarity, not effort.

The Decision Tree: Keep, Pivot, or Kill

Once you’ve diagnosed, you need a decision—not a debate.

Use this simple tree:

KEEP

• Core metric is improving

• Users demonstrate real pull

• Problems are executional, not structural

PIVOT

• Users exist, but value is mispositioned

• One metric moves while another collapses

• Learning velocity is high, outcomes are not

KILL

• No meaningful pull after repeated iterations

• Churn remains high across cohorts

• Progress depends on constant justification

If you can’t confidently place an initiative into one of these three, you haven’t finished diagnosing.

The Diagnostic Tool (Save This)

When things feel off, do this in one sitting:

1. Write down what you think is broken (one sentence).

2. Identify which system it belongs to: product, metrics, or team.

3. Pull one primary metric tied to that system.

4. Talk to three users or team members about that specific issue.

5. Decide: keep, pivot, or kill—then set a review date.

Clarity compounds faster than effort.

The Diagnostic Playbook: A Practical Guide for When Your Business Feels Off

When your business feels off but you can’t tell why, guessing gets expensive.

Grab a practical diagnostic playbook I created for moments like that! It shows exactly how to identify what’s broken across product, metrics, and team, and how to decide what to keep, pivot, or kill without panic. It’s a tool you can use the moment compounding stops.

Upgrade to paid to get access to The Diagnostic Playbook: A Practical Guide for When Your Business Feels Off, and to future no-BS guides, field notes by the experienced CEOs, and more.

Get access!

#CEOCheck

Before you change strategy, ask yourself:

• What am I assuming is broken without evidence?

• Which system am I avoiding looking at?

• If I had to kill one initiative this week, which would it be—and why?

If you can answer those honestly, you’re no longer guessing.

You’re leading.

Hit reply to share your answers. I read every email!

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Here you can find more information about me and my career.

If the newsletter was an inspection, this is the operating manual.

You don’t need inspiration here. You need a way to think clearly when pressure distorts judgment.

How to Use This Guide (Imp…

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There is a particular flavor of exhaustion that defines the end of a year for a CEO, and I remember it well.

It’s more than just fatigue. It’s a psychic weight, an accumulation of the year’s decisions, the ghosts of strategies not taken, the lingering pressure of stakeholder expectations, and the quiet, personal sacrifices made along the way.

You arrive at December’s doorstep feeling like a marathon runner, scanning the horizon for a finish line that seems to perpetually recede.

Now, as a former CEO of Olympia, I can look back on that annual ritual with a different kind of clarity. The distance has not erased the memory of the pressure, but it has revealed the patterns within it.

This year, that clarity feels especially needed. I am writing this to you just a few days after my grandfather passed away, and his loss has cast a stark light on a theme that whispers in the background of every leader’s life: the art of letting go.

It’s a concept we pay lip service to in business—sunk costs, pivoting, killing our darlings—but one we rarely confront in its full, unvarnished truth.

What does it truly mean to let go, not just of a product line or a quarterly target, but of a year, a deeply held belief, or even a person who has shaped the very architecture of our lives?

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The End of the Year and the Flow of Time

The Stoic philosophers had a powerful metaphor for this: life as a river. Its current is the relentless, ungovernable flow of time and circumstance.

When you’re a CEO, your instinct is to control this river. You build dams of strategy, divert its course with tactical execution, and measure its flow with KPIs. You believe, on some level, that with enough foresight and force of will, you can command the water. I know I did.

But the river always wins. A market shifts. A competitor emerges from a blind spot. A global event upends everything. Or, in the quiet of a winter morning, a phone call informs you that a chapter of your life has irrevocably closed.

To stand against this current—to cling to the past or resist the inevitable—is not a show of strength. It is a recipe for burnout. It is, as the Stoics would argue, a form of madness, for it is a fight against reality itself.

My grandfather’s passing is a powerful, personal bend in that river. It is an irreversible turn I must now navigate. The old CEO in me wants to fight it, to dwell on the bank of “what was,” to rage against the current that pulled him away.

But the work of a leader, and the work of a human, is to learn to float.

The Stoic’s Choice: What We Can and Cannot Control

This is where the Stoic framework moves from philosophical abstraction to a practical tool for leadership and life.

Epictetus, a man who was born a slave and became a revered teacher, built his entire philosophy on a single, crucial distinction: discerning what is within our control from what is not.

Within our control are our own thoughts, our judgments, our choices, our actions. Outside our control is… everything else. Market dynamics, competitor moves, investor sentiment, illness, and the ultimate timelines of those we love.

The CEO’s mandate is a direct assault on this principle. You are tasked with bending the world to your will. But one of the greatest lessons I learned from my time in that role is the paradox at its heart:

True control is found not in wrestling with the uncontrollable, but in achieving absolute mastery over one’s own response.

Letting go, in this context, is not surrender. It is a strategic reallocation of your most finite resource: your energy. It is the conscious decision to stop wasting it on fighting the river’s flow and to instead pour every ounce of it into steering your raft with integrity and grace.

Applying this to my grief, I cannot change the fact of my loss. But I can choose how I honor my grandfather’s memory.

I can choose to let his legacy inform my actions. I can choose to transform the pain of his absence into a deeper appreciation for the people who are still here. This is not about “getting over it.” It is about integrating the loss into a new reality and choosing a constructive path forward.

The Practice of Floating: How to Actually Let Go

This brings us to the critical question: how? How do you move from understanding this intellectually to practicing it under pressure?

The most profound illustration of this I’ve ever encountered comes from Elizabeth Gilbert, describing a concept known as going “all the way to the river” in her latest book. This isn’t just a phrase; it is a map of friendship and loyalty, drawn against the grid of New York City.

The metaphor works like this: there are the “Fifth Avenue friends,” the ones you see when you are polished and successful. Then, as you move east across the avenues, the friendships deepen. The friends on Avenue A, B, C, and D are the ones who know your struggles, your fears, your unedited self.

But the river—the East River—represents the ultimate edge. It’s the lowest point, the moment of absolute vulnerability, the final shore of life itself. You might only get one person in your life who will go “all the way to the river” with you. This is the person who doesn’t just tolerate your worst moments, but who accompanies you into them, offering unconditional love and support until the very end (which is death in Gilbert’s book).

Letting go, then, is not something we are meant to do alone. It is a journey we take, and if we are lucky, we have someone to walk with us to the river’s edge.

But for the things we must ultimately face by ourselves—the end of a year, the failure of a venture, the finality of a loss—this metaphor offers a different kind of solace.

It gives us a language for our own inner journey. It asks us to be our own “river friend”—to accompany ourselves through our darkest avenues with compassion, to see ourselves through our most vulnerable moments without judgment.

As a CEO, break this practice down into three disciplines:

1. Acceptance: This is the foundation. It is a clear-eyed assessment of reality, free from the distortion of ego or fear. It is acknowledging which street you are on, right now.

2. Non-Attachment: This is the ability to cherish a memory, a project, or a person without becoming so fused to it that you cannot move forward. It is loving Fifth Avenue without refusing to walk toward the river.

3. Gratitude: In the face of loss, the mind gravitates toward the void. The discipline of gratitude actively shifts the focus from what was lost to an appreciation for the journey you had. It is being thankful for the walk, no matter where it ends.

Looking Downstream

The end of the year is a powerful time to practice this. Look back at the year not with judgment, but with acceptance. Acknowledge the blocks you were on. The victories, the failures, the moments of grace, the moments of struggle. See them for what they were.

And then, let them go.

Release the weight of the past year’s regrets. Release the attachment to the plans that didn’t pan out. By letting them go, you don’t erase them. You integrate them as lessons and free up your energy to look downstream.

The river is always moving. The gift of letting go is that it allows us to lift our heads, pick up our paddle, and focus on what’s next.

What’s Next for The First-Time CEO Project?

I allowed myself to rest this past December. Visiting my friend on the coast gave me a clear understanding that I want to live by the ocean again, and so I moved.

The fresh air, the stunning views, and the big water were so good for my mental health that I decided to make myself a gift of natural abundance once again (and maybe permanently?).

Giving myself permission to just be, having long walks, breathing salty air, sleeping in, and being lazy was the best decision ever. Getting used to achieving, grinding, and the hustle started making me sick. So I might as well get back to what’s called real life in every moment.

So Season 2 of The First-Time CEO podcast has been postponed, the book I was writing in public, and the newsletter have been paused.

But I feel ready to come back to the project. And this time, not from the place of rush, overachievement, and proving to myself and others that I can no matter what, but from the place of creativity, curiosity, and peace of mind.

First, I will complete Season 1 in the book (and the plan is to do so by March 2026), and then launch Season 2 of the podcast. I’d like to concentrate on one project at a time, instead of mixing all the formats together, potentially burning out before the book is even finished.

I will send you all the updates weekly. And for now I suggest you watch and listen to my amazing guests from Season 1 on:

YouTube, Substack, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

And if you’d like to support my work, pre-order my book by tapping on the button below. You can also become a part of the project as a founding member and get some serious perks. In that case, purchase the Founding Membership Pack via the same link, and I’ll contact you shortly for next steps!

Pre-order my book!

#CEOCheck

The question for you to reflect upon this time is:

What can’t you still let go as a CEO?

Happy New Year!

My wish for you, as leaders and as human beings, for 2026, is not a calm river. That is not promised to any of us. I wish you instead the strength to navigate the rapids, the wisdom to accept the current, and the peace that comes from knowing that wherever you are, you are exactly where you need to be.

We’re on this block now. Let’s be here.

Happy New Year!

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Here you can find more information about me and my career.

I was listening to Brené Brown on The Diary of a CEO the other day, and something she said hit me like a punch to the gut:

“It’s not fear that gets in the way of us being brave with our lives and our work. It’s the armor that we reach for to self-protect when we’re afraid. And how that armor moves us away from love, connection, and our values.”

I’ve been wearing armor all year. Heavy, polished…stupid armor. The kind that makes you look like you’ve got it all figured out while you’re quietly falling apart inside.

2025 has been a shitty year.

I moved across continents. I went through the heartbreak and betrayal. I’m about to move houses for the sixth time by the end of this year. I’ve been in a constant state of grief and transformation, which today feels like rebirth, and feels like death tomorrow.

And yet, I kept pretending. I kept telling myself — and everyone else — that everything was alright. That I was holding my shit together. That I was moving forward at full speed, full of life and ambition.

The reality? I was tired of proving and pretending, of self-improving, of fixing things, of changing myself, of staying strong.

But I wore the armor. I polished it every morning. I made sure it looked good in public. I avoided mirrors that reflected the real me. And the real me wanted to sleep, or disappear, or just stop.

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The Marble Jar of Trust

Brown talks about trust as a “marble jar.” Every small act of genuine connection —remembering someone’s birthday, checking in when they’re struggling, showing up consistently — adds a marble to the jar. When you need to share something really private and personal, you look for a friend whose jar is full of marbles.

But here’s what I’ve learned: you can’t build trust with others when you’re lying to yourself. You can’t fill someone else’s marble jar when your own is empty because you’ve been too busy maintaining your image to be real.

And the people worth trusting aren’t the ones who make grand, public gestures. They’re the ones who show up with small, consistent acts of kindness, especially when nobody sees them.

Same with leadership. As Brown puts it:

“Leaders believe that in the middle of a crisis … they can just look at people and say, ‘Trust me, here’s what we’re going to do.’ And it means nothing. What matters is the leader that walks past you in the morning and says, ‘Hey — good to see you. How’s your mom’s chemo going?’ Marbles.”

The Cost of the Armor

I thought I was being courageous by pushing through, by staying strong, by not letting anyone see me break. But armor doesn’t protect you — it isolates you. It moves you away from the very things that make leadership meaningful: vulnerability, connection, and the willingness to be seen as you actually are.

“The opposite of courage is armor,” Brown says. “The opposite of courage is self-protection.”

The cost was real. My creativity suffered. My nervous system suffered. I was so busy pretending to be okay that I couldn’t actually get better.

I wasn’t honest with myself. On here, my newsletters were inconsistent. On LinkedIn, I promised to launch Season 2 of the podcast in September, to finish Season 1 in the book, to build my new SaaS I vibe-coded during the Lovable hackathon in public… I was trying to bite more than I could chew, and I was failing. The First-Time CEO project did not go as planned. Damn, my life did not go as planned! And I didn’t dare to face the ugly mirror that was whispering, “Surrender!“

The Surrender

It took me until the end of the year to finally surrender. To face myself and say the ugly truth I didn’t want to hear: I am tired of pretending. I am tired…

So I’ll be taking a break from my creative projects this December: no promises, no pretending, no confusion. I really enjoy my new role at Ability AI as a Flow and Visibility Architect, so I’ll keep doing a good job. I’ll walk by the ocean, hike in the forest, breathe, sleep, bike, and meet with friends. In fact, I’m moving to the coast, since it’s been a healing experience here for the past month, and I don’t want to give it up. I’m happy here, in nature, by the big water.

I’ll launch Season 2 early next year. Until then, I’ll be chilling all the way through the holiday season, celebrating life, relaxing, and expressing gratitude for everything I have today, and for those by my side.

The Challenge for First-Time CEOs

If you’re reading this as a first-time CEO or founder, I want you to ask yourself:

What armor are you wearing?

Are you failing and pretending you’re not? Are you tired and pretending you’re energized? Are you broken and pretending you’re strong? Are you lost and pretending you know exactly where you’re going?

We do this so often. We think we need to have it all together. We think we need to prove we’re capable. We think we need to maintain the image of success, especially when everything is falling apart. But that’s performance.

You can’t shortcut it or fake it. You have to show up, consistently, honestly, and let the marbles accumulate. But first, you have to take off the armor.

The Invitation

I’m inviting you — daring you, really — to look in the ugly mirror before the holidays. Do it today. Be honest with yourself. Face the ugly truth you’ve been avoiding. Confess that you’re failing, or you’re tired, or you’re lying to yourself and others. Admit that you need help, or rest, or space to figure things out.

Take off the armor. Build the marbles, one small act of genuine connection at a time. And remember: When the crisis happens, you don’t need to say ‘trust me.’ You just need to say what’s on your mind.

But first, you have to trust yourself enough to be real.

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Here you can find more information about me and my career.

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On any given morning, you wake up somewhere between two worlds.

In one world — the high altitude — you sit in an invisible cockpit, co-pilot to history. You feel the thin air of possibility there, with its sweeping patterns and tectonic shifts. What does it mean to build a company in this moment? How will technology, geopolitics, and culture converge (or fracture) in the next decade? How will my business, small as it is, help shape that emerging horizon?

But in the same breath, you wake up in the low altitude: the zoom calls, the pricing debates, the customer who wrote in to say they’re thinking of churning. Those calls hum with the proximity of real-world risk. Cash flow, people, code — they don’t wait for big ideas to land. Every decision matters, every task compounds, every inch gained feels both urgent and provisional.

This is the twin-lens life of a first-time CEO: you navigate both altitudes, constantly shifting. And as you do, you learn a surprising truth: being a founder is about translating between two domains that speak different languages.

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The Two Altitudes and Their Tensions

High Altitude (10,000 ft)

• Here, you think in epochs, not quarters.

• You imagine futures that don’t exist, ask what legacy could be.

• You feel the weight of meaning, the responsibility to build something more than just a business.

• You pattern-match: technology trends, customer archetypes, macro shifts.

• You question: If the world is shifting, what role should my company play?

Low Altitude (10 ft)

• Here, you handle survival: payroll, hiring, roadmap, bug fixes.

• You deal in concrete outcomes: revenue, churn, engagement.

• You manage people’s time, your own energy, team morale.

• You build and iterate: MVPs, feature launches, customer feedback loops.

• You steward cash like it’s sacred — because often, it is.

These altitudes are not separate jobs. They are deeply intertwined. The mistake many first-time CEOs make is thinking they must choose: either be the visionary or the operator.

But the strongest founders don’t choose. They oscillate. They become altitude shifters.

Why This Oscillation Matters

1. Vision Without Execution Fades
   You can dream as big as any founder, but if you never come down to the ground, the company will not survive. High-altitude thinking without the day-to-day follow-through is hollow: ideas stay in the ether, unbuilt.

2. Execution Without Vision Is Hollow
   Conversely, if you only stay low, you risk building a business that serves nobody’s long-term needs — a cash-flow engine, maybe, but one without soul or direction. The daily grind becomes meaningless if disconnected from deeper purpose.

3. Perspective Tension Strengthens Resilience
   When you move between altitudes, you build muscle in both humility and imagination. On the ground, you learn how fragile things are. From above, you imagine how fragile things could become robust. That tension gives you a resilience that static roles don’t.

4. Better Decision-making
   Decisions made purely from one altitude are incomplete. High-altitude decisions risk being disconnected from reality; low-altitude decisions risk being shortsighted. Oscillation machines in the middle — and that’s where better, more balanced decisions are made.

How to Practice Altitude Shifting

Here’s a practical playbook for building and living in this dual-altitude life:

A. Build a Rhythmic Altitude Dashboard

• Create two mental “spaces” in your calendar: a weekly high-altitude session and a weekly low-altitude session.

• In your “high” sessions, journal about macro trends, existential risks, and long-term strategy. Ask big questions: “Where is the world going? Where do we belong in that future?”

• In your “low” sessions, review metrics, team updates, feature progress, burn. Ask pragmatic questions: “What are our immediate risks? What do we build next? What feedback just came in?”

B. Use Narrative as a Translational Tool

• Develop a north-star story: a short narrative (1–2 pages) that describes why you’re building this company, what problem you’re solving, and how it matters in the world.

• Use that narrative in all-hands, board meetings, and customer communications — a shared myth to translate high altitude to low.

• Revisit and refine the story quarterly, as both you and the world change.

C. Run Altitude-Aligned Experiments

• High-altitude experiment: once a quarter, test a “big vision bet” — a 10x idea, a new market, a moonshot.

• Low-altitude experiment: run a micro-bet — a small product feature, a customer outreach campaign, a process optimization.

• Then run a translation retrospective: what did the moonshot teach you? How did the micro-bet align (or misalign) with your long view?

D. Invest in Emotional Altitude Awareness

• Track both your financial and emotional burn rates. After switching between altitudes, pause: How do you feel? Inspired? Exhausted? Disconnected?

• Create emotional check-ins: maybe a weekly 10-minute reflection, or a quick “altitude log” in your journal: “High → low → how I landed.”

• Share this practice with your leadership team, so they understand that shifting altitude takes energy — and that it’s part of your operating rhythm, not a bug.

E. Build a Team That Mirrors Your Altitude Needs

• Hire or partner with people who naturally anchor different altitudes:

  • A visionary cofounder or advisor who lives comfortably in high-altitude thinking.

  • A COO or operations lead who thrives on ground-level execution.

• Create roles and rituals that reinforce altitude shifting: strategy offsites, all-hands with purpose framing + metrics review, “big idea” brainstorms + “how to make it real” working sessions.

The Inner Cost — and Reward — of Altitude Shifting

Operating at two altitudes is not free. It comes with a kind of existential fatigue, because you’re always carrying both worlds. Sometimes, after a high-altitude session, you’ll return to the office feeling lost: the “meaning” you just mined feels too abstract next to the concrete chaos of bug reports and unpaid invoices. Other times, after slogging through trivial but urgent tasks, you’ll feel like you’ve built nothing — even though you’re working.

But here’s what changes over time: when you commit to this oscillation, you begin to internalize a new identity. You’re no longer just a “builder” or a “dreamer.” You are a translator, a bridge, a steward of both the practical and the visionary. You begin to trust that your small decisions matter — because they feed the big story. And you begin to trust that your big story matters — because it gives purpose to your daily grind.

That identity becomes your superpower.

Why This Altitude Work Matters Now

This moment in history feels, in many ways, like a precarious one for first-time CEOs. The old maps are failing: venture models are under pressure, culture is shifting, macro risk is no longer a distant concept — it is the terrain itself. Meanwhile, building a business is still a daily slog. But founders who can operate at both altitudes — who can conjure meaning and also ground it in execution — are the ones who will navigate these unknowns with vision and survival.

In building that capacity inside yourself — the capacity to fly high, then land cleanly — you’re not just building a company. You’re building a way of being in leadership that is deeply human, deeply ambitious, and deeply real.

#GoldenFindings on Leadership Altitudes / Multi‑Dimensional Leadership

1. “3 Strategies to Transform Leadership Development for the Future” – Harvard Business Publishing

   • This report outlines how leaders today need to develop capacities beyond traditional skills — to think differently, adapt in complexity, and lead across multiple “levels” of thinking.

2. “The Altitudes of Leadership” – Go Nail It & Scale It

   • A practical, modern business-blog piece. It lays out three altitudes (50,000 ft, 50 ft, and 5 ft) and warns of “altitude sickness” when leaders get stuck in one. (Go Nail It & Scale It)

3. “Integrating the Three-Dimensional Leadership Model into Business Modeling, Strategic Planning and Strategic Management”

   • An academic-ish article in Innovations journal discussing a “3D Leadership Model” integrating Personal, Relational, and Organizational dimensions.

#CEOCheck

What decisions in your company are currently being made without either high-altitude vision or low-altitude grounding?

Hit reply, and tell me about it. I read all your notes!

Let’s Connect!

For more content like this, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Here you can find more information about me and my career.

Join Forces!

AUTHOR BIO

Eugene Vyborov is a serial tech entrepreneur and investor who has led multiple teams through growth, exits, and innovation. He is the founder and CEO of Ability AI, developing autonomous AI agents that automate full-cycle marketing functions — from strategy and content creation to media buying and analytics. Previously, Eugene was a Co-Founder, Board Member, and CTO of YayPay, a B2B SaaS finance automation company that raised ~$18.5M, served 300+ clients, and processed $40B+ on its platform.

You’ve invested in the best AI tools. You’ve hired the consultants. You’ve mapped out the perfect automation workflows.

So why are your AI projects stalling?

The issue probably isn’t your tech stack. It’s the natural, human resistance from the very people you need to make it work.

Let’s be honest — even I look at the pace of AI development and I’m scared sometimes. I can only imagine how it feels for people who aren’t living and breathing this stuff every day. This fear is the root of what I call subconscious sabotage.

It’s not malicious. It’s a survival instinct. When employees feel their roles are threatened, they won’t overtly fight the change — but they won’t champion it either. They’ll find reasons why the old way is better, point out every small flaw in the new system, or simply drag their feet.

And this doesn’t just happen in big companies with large AI budgets. Whether you’re leading a small startup or scaling fast, these dynamics appear the moment you introduce any form of automation or new process — not just AI.

The reality is — you can’t force adoption. You have to lead people through the change.

Here’s how to counter subconscious sabotage and turn resistance into momentum:

• Acknowledge the Fear Directly. Don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. Talk about it openly. When you say, “I know this is unsettling, and it’s okay to feel that way,” you validate their concerns. This builds the trust you need to move forward. Ignoring the fear doesn’t make it go away — it just pushes it underground.

• Show the Path Forward. Don’t just give your team a new tool — give them a new map. Clearly communicate how their roles and responsibilities will evolve. Instead of focusing on what AI will replace, focus on how it will amplify their skills and allow them to focus on higher-value work.

• Frame AI as a Teammate, Not a Replacement. Position your AI systems as tools that handle the tedious 50% of the job nobody wants to do. This frees up your team’s uniquely human skills — creativity, strategy, and critical thinking — for the work that really moves the needle.

You don’t need a full-scale AI transformation to see this in action — even adopting small AI tools can surface the same cultural and leadership challenges. The sooner you learn to navigate them, the faster your company will grow.

The goal isn’t to just implement technology. It’s to build a company where humans and AI work together to achieve more than either could alone.

On November 18th, at 11 am EST, I’ll be diving deeper into this in our upcoming webinar, Why Most Companies Fail to Implement AI — and how to lead through it differently.

Join FREE Webinar!

To your success,
Eugene Vyborov
CEO, Ability.ai

P.S. We’re designing the Ability.ai Business Engine with this human-centric approach at its core — empowering teams, not replacing them.

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Meanwhile, I’m editing Episode 1 of Season 2 of The First-Time CEO podcast with not one, but two guests! It turned out epic. Stay tuned!

This year, my nights learned a new language. I’d wake at 3:17 a.m., mind already mid-sentence, as if I’d come in late to a meeting I didn’t remember scheduling. I’d lie there, watching thoughts stack: what happened, what’s next, what I could have done differently. Losing a business I had worked hard on for two years was more than a professional rupture; it was a nervous system event. It took me at least half a year to adapt to a new reality after moving across the ocean and starting my life anew. Even after the dust settled, my body didn’t believe it. Workdays bled into evenings, sleep came fractured, and the hum of vigilance stayed. At some point, I realised that I was running on survival circuitry.

Add to that the war in my home country, Ukraine, where my family, friends, and millions of innocent people live with daily fear. The anxiety and pain are constant, like background music in the supermarket you can’t turn off. Except this isn’t a store you can leave; it’s a waking nightmare that keeps replaying, testing the edges of sanity and hope.

Through it all, I managed to keep it together, but something deeper kept shaking, because there’s a silent system that runs the show. Keep reading to learn all about it.

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What’s Allostatic Load and Why Should You Care?

Entrepreneurship is written in verbs—build, raise, ship, scale—but the body asks different questions: Can I down-shift? Can I recover?

When we skip those questions long enough, we don’t merely feel “tired.” We accumulate what scientists call allostatic load—the physiological wear-and-tear of chronic stress. It’s the price of constant adaptation, and leaders overdraw this account more than most.

Entrepreneurship, researchers note, is among the most stressful occupations. A meta-analysis of over 140 studies found that founders experience uniquely high uncertainty, blurred work–life boundaries, and an emotional investment that fuses identity with performance.

A Frontiers in Psychology study quantified the effect: perceived entrepreneurial stress correlated negatively with well-being, while well-being itself predicted resilience. In other words, recovery isn’t indulgence — it’s infrastructure.

What the Body Is Trying to Tell You

The nervous system has two pedals: sympathetic activation (get moving) and parasympathetic recovery (slow down). Healthy regulation is alternating between the two. Chronic overdrive locks us into vigilance — great for short bursts, destructive when sustained.

One physiological marker of that balance is cardiac vagal control, linked to emotion regulation and stress recovery.

Simple, low-cost inputs make measurable differences:

• Slow, paced breathing — around five to six breaths per minute — reduces anxiety and boosts high-frequency heart-rate variability, a sign of parasympathetic activity.

• Mindful breathing or short meditation sessions improve cognitive control and stress response when practiced consistently.

• Psychological detachment — consciously ending the workday and avoiding “affective rumination” — predicts better well-being and next-day performance.

None of these are wellness by the way. They’re ways of teaching your body it’s safe again — the necessary precondition for clarity and creativity.

A Practical Rest Protocol for CEOs

You don’t need a monastery or a sabbatical. You need a system.

That’s what I told myself after running in stress mode for too long, and started doing this:

1) Schedule 20–30 minutes of “nervous-system maintenance” daily.
Treat it as a meeting with your future self. Step away, close your door, and breathe slowly (inhale 4 s, exhale 6 s) for ten minutes. Add a body scan or light stretch. Or even better — get out for a walk!

2) Build micro-pauses into your day.
Every 90 minutes, stand up, look out a window, and take three slow breaths. It resets visual focus and interrupts sympathetic dominance — a cheap way to lower cognitive fatigue.

3) End the workday on purpose.
Thirty minutes before bed, start a shutdown ritual: no screens, no Slack. Write down the unfinished, promise to revisit it in the morning. Detachment is discipline, not laziness.

4) Schedule social regulation.
A weekly founder check-in — one business topic, one body topic — creates accountability for recovery. Studies have shown that perceived social support moderates stress and enhances entrepreneurial resilience.

5) Protect one hour a week for restorative activity.
Yoga, walking, breathwork, gardening — anything rhythmic and non-competitive. Over time, the nervous system learns the cue: this is when we down-shift.

Why This Is a Performance Decision, Not Self-Care Theater

When you’re sympathetically jacked, you think faster but decide worse. You read threat into neutral feedback, overcorrect timelines, and tighten conversations until they snap. The body keeps score in your tone, not just your pulse.

Rest is recalibration. Leaders who regulate well make better strategic calls and communicate from stability. Those who don’t become unpredictable — to themselves and everyone around them.

From an accountability lens, I can see my part in it. When I was a first-time CEO, I treated urgency as leadership. I let adrenaline masquerade as focus. I believed my body should keep pace with my ambition instead of partnering with it. If I could redo that season, I’d plan recovery better.

Try This for One Week

• Block five nervous-system sessions (20–30 minutes each).

• Before and after, rate your physical tension from 1–10.

• Follow a shutdown ritual four nights this week.

• Ask one peer: “What’s one thing you’re doing to recover?” Borrow it.

Then watch what changes: reaction time, tone in meetings, clarity in decisions. The ROI shows up fast.

#GoldenFindings

Rest won’t write code or close your next round, but it restores the only system that can — you. If mastery means performing under pressure, then true mastery means knowing when to release it.

For those curious to explore this further, here are a few Golden Findings — essential reads for first-time and aspiring CEOs learning to balance performance and recovery:

1. Harvard Business Review — Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure
   A foundational read on why sustainable performance depends on recovery cycles, not nonstop output.

2. The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
   A groundbreaking exploration of how stress and trauma are stored in the body, and how understanding this connection helps leaders rebuild emotional and physical resilience.

3. Huberman Lab Podcast — Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
   Practical, science-based tools for regulating the nervous system through breath, movement, and mindset.

#CEOCheck

When does your body first tell you you’re over the line — and what would it look like to respond before it shouts?

We’re so busy during the week, and I’m sure your mailbox is overloaded, just like mine. So, I am revisiting the original idea of sharing my emails with you on Sundays, when we all can breathe and reflect better.

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Here you can find more information about me and my career.

There’s something about Joan Westenberg’s writing that always gets under my skin — in the best way. It doesn’t just make me think; it makes me notice where I’ve been standing still.

Her recent piece, The Map Is Not the Territory (and It’s Definitely Not Progress), made me confront how much time I spend thinking about doing instead of actually doing. In it, she mentions the South Indian monkey trap from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig:

You drill a hole in a coconut, put rice inside, and wait. The monkey reaches in, grabs the rice, but then can’t pull its fist back out through the hole. The monkey could escape by letting go of the rice, but it won’t. It’ll sit there, trapped by its own grip, while the hunters approach.

Joan uses this image to describe how we get stuck in analysis — mistaking understanding for progress. She writes that our brains even reward both with the same dopamine hits.

That hit of “I’m working on it” is seductive — and it’s often my trap as a first-time CEO. I can spend hours building strategies inside my head, convincing myself I’ve moved mountains, when in reality, nothing tangible has changed. The illusion of busyness is exhausting.

Can you relate?

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What’s Trapping You?

I’ve learned that first-time CEOs don’t get trapped by bad ideas — we get trapped by almost actions. The pitch deck we keep tweaking. The new feature we keep “refining.” The hire we’ll make “once things settle.”

It’s the same monkey trap in a different form. We grip our rice — our plans, our control, our imagined perfection — and wonder why we can’t move forward. But progress doesn’t come from understanding. It comes from release. From trying, testing, risking embarrassment. From stepping into the territory where things are alive, unpredictable, and uncomfortable.

The growth hides in the mess.

For me, that meant finally letting go of my own handful of rice: the need to have every chapter, every interview, every plan perfectly mapped before I started. I stopped waiting for clarity and just began.

Pre-Order The First-Time CEO Book

Big news! I launched the pre-sale of my book, The First-Time CEO: 50 conversations on Leading While Becoming. I’m writing it in public chapter by chapter through fifty podcast conversations with modern leaders, reflections from building Olympia, my AI startup, and some of my most-read newsletters from here.

Buy the Book

🔺 If you’re a founder, new CEO, or organization looking to reach an audience of emerging leaders, you can also become a Sponsor Founding Member by purchasing a Founding Membership Pack — with visibility, a spotlight, and even the chance to be interviewed and featured on the podcast, in the newsletter, and in the book itself. Press the button to learn more about it.

Join as Founding Member

Meanwhile, I’m editing Episode 1 of Season 2 of The First-Time CEO podcast with not one, but two guests! It turned out epic. Stay tuned, it’s coming out next week!

If you’ve been caught in your own version of the monkey trap — stuck planning instead of building — maybe this is your nudge to move. Not when you’re ready. Now.

Three takeaways for first-time CEOs:

1. Beware of “productive paralysis.” Thinking feels safe — but it’s often a disguise for fear.

2. Perfection is a trap. You don’t need a better plan; you need a smaller first step.

3. Momentum creates clarity, not the other way around. Action is the only honest map.

#GoldenFindings on Letting Go, Progress, and Building in Motion

1. The Map Is Not the Territory (and It’s Definitely Not Progress)
   — Joan Westenberg’s piercing essay on how we confuse motion for meaning — and how understanding can masquerade as progress. A reminder that thinking is not doing.
   🔗 Read here

2. Inside the Monkey Trap
   — Economist Bryan Caplan revisits the parable that inspired so many metaphors for human behavior: how holding on to what we want can be what keeps us stuck.
   🔗 Read here

3. The Overthinking Trap: How to Stop Planning and Start Living
   — Explores how planning can become paralysis and why taking imperfect action often beats perfect preparation.
   🔗 Read here

#CEOCheck

What “rice” are you holding onto that’s keeping you from building what really matters?

Let’s Connect!

For more authentic content on leading companies for the first time, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and The First-Time CEO podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Here you can find more information about me and my career.

Join Forces!

AUTHOR BIO

Maria Yarotska is the founder of Hackbox, a company that helps run hackathons for startups and ecosystems. She’s passionate about turning ideas into impact and mentoring first-time founders across Europe.

Foreword

As I’m writing this, my country — Ukraine — is mourning the loss of yet another handful of civilians, including children, killed in a night of rocket and drone attacks.

This is my daily reality as a founder and a professional: to keep going, to carry on with the work that can feel small against the backdrop of war. Survivor’s guilt is a powerful writer’s block.

So, if this finds you in a dark place, please remember — your work still matters. Founders keep the world moving: we solve problems, create jobs, and build things that didn’t exist before. And sometimes, that’s our own form of resistance.

Keep doing the right thing.

About me

I’ve started and co-founded projects across very different worlds — from Banka, a zero-waste shop I opened because my city didn’t have one (and somehow ended up winning hackathons for sustainable innovation), to Hackbox, a platform that helps others host their own hackathons.

So I’ve been on both sides of the table — the participant building from scratch, and the organizer watching hundreds of founders do the same.

That’s why I believe hackathons are not just competitions. They’re education through technical enablement — the fastest, most collaborative way to learn how to build.

What’s a hackathon, really?

The word gets thrown around a lot: ideathon, datathon, buildathon, hackathon. They all boil down to the same idea — learn by building fast.

You gather with people you’ve just met (or sometimes already know), you get a challenge, and over 24–72 hours, you ideate, prototype, pitch, and present.

You might:

• Build your MVP

• Meet your future co-founders

• Get feedback from mentors

• Win prize money

• Or simply spend the weekend surrounded by people whose brains feel on fire

It’s a crash course in execution and resilience.

Some hackathons only accept new ideas, banning existing startups. Personally, I think that’s short-sighted. Founders who are already committed to their ideas tend to contribute more meaningfully and are far more likely to stick around — especially if they find the right technical co-founder or partner during the event.

The paradigm shift: from Red Bull to Lovable

Two years ago, hackathons looked like this:
A room full of engineers surviving on pizza and energy drinks, working through the night. Technical mentors were the rockstars. Every now and then, someone would ship something brilliant or catch a bug that could’ve cost millions.

The goodie bag? A t-shirt, a granola bar, and maybe socks.

Today, it’s different.
A mom of two shows up with a real problem, zero coding skills, and an open mind. Two hours later, she’s using AI tools to build a market-ready prototype with a solid business model and GTM strategy.

Goodie bag? A UV water filter, a book, maybe a jetpack.

This isn’t a joke — it’s a paradigm shift that is changing my own value proposition for Hackbox.

Hackathon sponsorships are moving from developer tools to AI platforms. The business layer — storytelling, market validation, use case design — is almost as strong as the technical one.

Is AI stealing everyone’s job again? Not quite. Because the future belongs to mixed teams. Let a Rust developer spend an afternoon building with a pharmacist or a teacher — someone who deeply understands a real-world problem — and watch what happens.

That’s where the real magic is.

Why every first-time founder should do a hackathon

Hackathons compress what usually takes months of meetings and hesitation into a single, high-energy weekend.

If you’re already building:
Use a hackathon to test a new feature, find a teammate, or pressure-test your MVP.

If you’re thinking about building:
It’s the best way to start. You don’t need a co-founder or a big idea — just curiosity and willingness to learn by doing.

Hackathons aren’t ballrooms with keynote speeches; they’re workshops with soldering irons, code editors, and sticky notes. You’ll leave with something real — and more importantly, with the confidence to keep building.

How to find (and win) your first hackathon

There’s one for everyone. My team is helping organize an IRL hackathon in Lisbon in January – come by and say hi if you’re around: https://luma.com/yxrbeoyd

A good place to start online would be with the platforms like:

• NASA Space Apps Challenge — one of the world’s largest and most accessible hackathons

• Devpost — perfect for global online sprints

• Dorahacks.io and TAIKAI.io — active Web3 and AI communities

And once you’re in, here’s my advice:

• Read the judging criteria like scripture. Every winning project starts there.

• Prioritize your storytelling. Don’t just show what you built — tell the story of why it matters.

• Stay curious. The best teams are open to feedback and iterate fast.

Closing: The founder’s playground

As founders, we already know how to work under pressure, with limited resources, trying to collaborate with people we’ve just met. Hackathons feel exactly like that — even profit at the end is optional (however, unlike in business, there are very clear guidelines on how to win).

So why step out of your comfort zone again — and on a weekend, of all times? The answer is simple: innovation thrives in proximity. To get that Eureka moment, you have to show up, get your socks wet, and see what happens when ideas start to collide.

Happy hacking!