Name: How Zocdoc's Cofounder Transitioned to Becoming CEO
Uploaded: 2017-06-28
Duration: 4 min 23 s
Description: Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz gives his advice on leading a successful startup.

Oliver, you cofounded Zocdoc with Cyrus Massoumi, and for the first eight years of the company he was the CEO. Now, you're in charge. Why the change in leadership? I think it's natural and happens as companies go through stages. I respect Cyrus tremendously, and the company would not exist in its current form without his leadership early on. I think as we followed how the market developed and as the market consolidated to help this was logical for us to double down on the enterprise, double down on marketing and product, and those sort of things that have traditionally left. So Zocdoc is big for a startup. You're valued at almost $ 2 billion. You do business all across the country. What do you have to do As a leader to set the course for Zock Dock now that you're in charge? Yeah the most important piece for us is to maintain the startup credo and the startup agility. So I've introduced the idea of the thoughtful failure, how can we continue to experiment? And reward individuals as we get larger. Because innovation and being able to be, and to continue to be first on the things that are unproven are very, very important to us. One of your leadership mantras is be an optimistic pragmatist. What do you mean by that and how is that principle guiding you in this new role that you're in. And so whats an optimistic pragmatist. Someone who assumes success and at the same time, plans for all the eventualities. And that's something that we have done at Zock Dark very well. We have a clearly articulate plan. The pragmatist part is that I want to understand, what is plan B? And I also wanna think about when do I stop investing into an effort. Gating an investment is one of the hardest things to do both for companies and entrepreneurs alike. How do you encourage leadership and innovation at all levels of the company so that? People take the initiative to change the things that they're supposed to change, take some risks. And rather than just playing it safe. Well, I'll give you an anecdote of my prior life. When I got accepted into med school, the first thing I did is start working as a [ INAUDIBLE ] Nurse's Assistant, and I [ INAUDIBLE ] from top to toe, so I would always understand what everyone in chain of command actually has to do. And being able to level with everyone in the organization is very, very important. And then you need to have an open ear. People need to know that they can bring up their ideas, no matter what their station in the organization, and that those are taken very seriously. Independent of hierarchy, because many times folks on the front end, they know more about what the customers want, what the patients want, than I might. And related to this is that what have you been saying to your employees to get them to believe in your new vision for a Zockdoc. And so that they follow your lead, and especially as you're going through this transition period? Look, I think it starts with radical honesty and candor. I told them, this is where I think we should go. These are the things we don't know yet. This is what we have to prove. This is your role and you proving this out. And as you do that, people get energized and say, yes, I think this is possible. I understand what I need to do in this. And then you collectively succeed And you collectively adjust as you see that parts of that need to be changed , sometimes accelerated or sometimes changed completely. That is very energizing for an organisation. But then, there are the holdouts, the ones who resist to that change. How do you get people on board with your vision? We As a technology company we need to accept that life is constantly changing for us. What we build today has a half life of two years and we will have disrupted ourselves. And so I think it's great to see how the organization as a whole has really embraced the need to change. All the time. It's not because I've become CEO or at some point in the future, someone else becomes CEO. We should be changing ourselves. Why wait for an external event? [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Zocdoc's Cofounder Transitioned to Becoming CEO

Leadership

Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz gives his advice on leading a successful startup.