Yes, i am now the CEO of Caresharing Inc. Not that i wanted to be one since ever ever, but someone has to do it.

I need to find these black turtle neck shirts. I have the phone covered already, and the hair, even hair color, and also the body size — nooo problem.

You see, i’m a programmer, a natural pure blood programmer. You know like in vampire movies, where there are mix and in-breed kinds; nope, i am not like that, i was born 100% to be a programmer. And in most times, i do act like one.

However, in other times, i also act like the ones programmers hate most, the men in suits. And like in vampire movies, men in suits are the humans, they are weak, has no special powers, can’t fly, can’t break through walls, or eat bullets, are impractical, but, somehow they always find a way to win the day.

Early this week i promoted myself to CEO. Since we had no CEO in the first place, and i already have the GM title. And GM is very similar to a CEO, except that CEO’s has to look good, wear nice clothes and has some attitude. Wearing nice clothes is easy to do, but looking good, hmmm, we’ll have to see what we can do about that. Getting to medium size is a good start.

There are some debate about having a Founder CEO or a Professional CEO. And we have discussed this, a lot. It took a while to reach our decision, knowing that me and Harm are not the CEO kind. We are both technical people, who likes to build things. If we have it our way, we just want to build stuffs that people pay money to use.

We understand the pros and cons between the founder and the professional CEO. And at this point, it makes sense to have a founder as a CEO, since there are still a lot of things not fully baked in. Someday, we will have that professional CEO, and we founders can go back to doing what we love doing, like build things.

However, we also understand that as we grow, there are bigger areas in the company to take care of. And two of which is equally important as building nice products, which are people and customers.

It does not mean that we are not giving these areas some focus, we are, we would have not reached our position now if we had not paid attention. However, the level of focus needed is so much more than before, that now we have to hire more people, and in turn we have to increase our revenue. And these two areas, have nothing to do whatsoever with how good and how much coding i do.

I don’t have a problem with the work expected of a CEO. It is very similar to what i’m already doing anyway. Though, having the title, i agree has some intense feeling to it. There’s a constant expectation that i have to figure out the next move (24 hours, 7 days a week). Compared to as a GM, where the overall strategy and vision is set already. As a CEO, i have to constantly find that next big thing we have to do, while at the same time, improve what we already have.

So what can be expected from me moving forward? I think more visibility. I will probably be blogging more. It’s the bread and butter of CEOs, inspire people, get people to move forward, get customers on board, talk, write, talk, write, make a speech, pat someone’s back. It’s a lot of hard work.

I know, lots of people who know me, are probably wondering, WTF men, you no make a CEO. Honestly, i don’t have a ready answer for that, i guess only time will tell. What i do know that i am good at, is doing stuffs i’m initially not good at; and doing it over and over again, until i get it perfect. I overdo a lot of things, so i can master them.

Moving forward, at Caresharing, we’re looking at going into new markets, initially with the local market here in the Philippines, and a new market segment in Europe. We have some product ideas already to start with, and it’s exciting to do something a lot of us can relate. Finally, our friends and relatives can easily relate to what we do, since it is easier to explain it in the context of our Healthcare system.

p.s. I am also toning down my personal persona, making it more legit or safe for people to deal with. I am an abnormal kind of person, so for the benefit of the people who have to deal with me, i’m going to adopt a more gentlemen-like manner, so nobody gets hurt. 🙂