Dax Da Silva, CEO of Lightspeed Commerce, throws away his job description every year to match what the company actually needs. He went from coding to managing finance at a public company, and credits his conversion to Judaism in 2004-2005 with giving him the resilience to keep learning new domains.
Chapters
If your company is growing quickly, then you know that as a CEO, your job changes all the time. Same company, different job, different version of you needs to show up. In this clip from The Startup CEO Show, Dax Da Silva, co-founder and CEO of Lightspeed Commerce, talks about how he throws away his job description every single year. I'm, I'm curious. I do want to carve out some time on your leadership philosophy, but this seems like a natural place to ask this, you know, so that, that kid who was coding till 4:00 AM, not naturally communicative, other than just putting in the reps and putting one foot in front of the other, what have you done? Like what, I don't know, tools, resources, support, like whatever comes to mind, have you surrounded yourself with to always be the CEO that this company needs and to kind of stay one step ahead of the company?
Yeah, I think it's, it's definitely a little bit of a philosophy of, let's throw away your job description every year and, uh, and see what does the company need from me, uh, this year. Uh, and also then that means stepping away from things that you're really good at and really love. Like, for example, you know, have a design background. You know, there's a lot of artists in my, in my family. There's a lot of creativity. Uh, that's, that's why the look, the original version of Lightspeed was so such a hit was Um, the, the user experience, user experience, and I was an okay coder, but those are two things that I got a lot of satisfaction out of. Uh, fast forward and you're, and you have me, you know, in the, in the finance world, running a public company, no background in that. It's like, there's been, there was many moments between me being a designer coder and me being a public company CEO where I'd throw out my job description so many times., and had to step into something I was super uncomfortable with and didn't know how to do it, you know. And so that, I think, is something you've got to show people, uh, at the company that you're willing to do, uh, and that you're gonna— might need to ask them to do, uh, to push the company forward, right? So you need to be able to do that and not hang on to, uh, things because you like doing them or you're, you're, you're or you're good at them. You have to, you have to do that. So, and I think that comes from, you know, I would say, what are my tools, Mark? I would say it's, I've made a lot of investment in spirituality in terms of, in terms of my journey. I mean, my journey as a startup CEO, I did it, my, it coincided with my conversion to Judaism. It was the same year, 2004, 2005. And that, that journey,, you know, we're very spiritually inclined and also creatively inclined family. And, uh, was drawn, drawn to that. And so my whole journey as, uh, you know, as, uh, of my conversion mirrored, uh, my, my journey with Lightspeed. And so the more, the more I invested and the more I deepened, uh, my faith, the more I was a foundation for Lightspeed, uh, through, through everything that could happen.
Hey, thanks for listening to the Startup CEO Show. If you'd like to connect with me, be sure to visit my website at markmacleod.me or follow me on LinkedIn at The Mark MacLeod or Twitter @MarkMacLeod_. And if you want to tune in again next week, be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next time.
