When It’s Time for Founders to Step Down as CEO
episode
Startup Success: A Podcast for Founders & Investors
23 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 15 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What inspired Tony Jamous to found Oyster and how does the platform work?
Welcome to Startup Success, the podcast for startup founders and investors. Here you'll find stories of success from others in the trenches as they work to scale some of the fastest growing startups in the world. Stories that will help you in your own journey. Startup Success starts now.
Welcome to Startup Success. In this episode, I'm joined by Tony Jameis, co-founder and executive chairman of Oyster, and Hattie Moussa, CEO of Oyster. Together, they're building a company on a mission to make it possible for anyone to work from literally anywhere. We dive into Oyster's rapid growth, the transition from founder led to new leadership. Tony has recently passed the CEO role on to Hattie, and we unpack that and what it takes to scale a global company. Tony and Hattie share insights on building trust during leadership change, the future of borderless work, and how startups can think differently. about talent in today's global economy. Well, thank you again for both of you for being here. Tony, let's start with you.
If you could set the stage for us and let us know, you know, what motivated you to found Oyster and your background that led you to it. I think that would be really helpful for the listeners.
Yeah, absolutely, Kate. So for the audience, Oyster is a global employment platform. So we help any company, hire anyone, anywhere. Essentially what you're doing is making planet Earth as one employment market. And why I founded this company because I was born in Lebanon, a country with very little economical opportunity and a lot of young people has to leave. As I did. I left when I was seventeen to the West for better economical opportunities. And I realized that in In today's age, that's not necessary anymore. People can stay in their home countries, can stay in their communities, in their tribe, and still have access to amazing job opportunities in more developed economies. Just to give you some data point, there are 80 million jobs going unfulfilled in Western economies due to lack of talent, while at the same time, we
Expect one billion knowledge workers coming into the workforce in the next decade, mostly from emerging economies. Wow. So it became clear to me that building a platform that makes global hiring as easy as local hiring, you can not only build a big business quickly, but you can also reduce wealth inequality and reverse brain drain.
I love it. I especially because for startups it's all about capturing that talent early on, which is very difficult and competitive and can be very expensive. If you wouldn't mind, because we have so many founders listening, could you tell us quickly how this platform works so they can understand?
Yeah. So So if you let's say you found Mary, she's an amazing AI developer in Athen, right? You are a startup in London or or New York, right? And you want to hire Mary, but you're not going to go and spend six months finding a lawyer in Athens, an accountant, a payroll provider, a benefit provider. You don't want to have an HR person knowledgeable with the Greek market. So all of that we do for you. You go on our on our platform and we extend an employment contract for Mary. We give her great benefits.
Why did Tony realize it was time to step down as CEO of Oyster?
We onboard her on the payroll and we take care of her employment for the duration of that employment. So to do that, we build a global employment platform in 150 countries. And on top of that, we're using software and AI to To make global employment few clicks away.
That's excellent. It sounds like it's very turnkey for founders, right? Like it would be just, you know, you can just get going right away. And we talk we hear from that, all about that from founders, how they struggle with finding talent. Is that what motivated you to found Oyster? Is you ran into this or you just what was your motivation?
Yeah, I was there. I started my first technology business in two thousand and ten, was an API business for building communication applications. And we employ people in 40 countries. And I realized how difficult it was. We had to build our own internal Oyster, and that cost us millions of dollars.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Tony Jamous to found Oyster and how does the platform work?
0:01–3:38
2
Why did Tony realize it was time to step down as CEO of Oyster?
3:38–6:13
3
How did Tony use 360‑degree feedback to decide on a leadership change?
6:13–9:15
4
What steps did Tony and Hadi take to ensure a smooth CEO transition?
9:15–11:41
5
How did the team and customers get communicated to during the hand‑off?
11:41–15:14
6
What advantages does global hiring give startups in the AI era?
15:14–17:58
7
What is Hadi’s vision for scaling Oyster after the leadership change?
17:58–20:55
8
What final advice do Tony and Hadi give to founders facing growth challenges?
20:55–23:39
Speakers
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