Silvija Martincevic, the Croatian born, San Francisco based CEO of Australian founded Unicorn Deputy.

Silvija's executive career has been immense in the world of fast-growing technology, as the COO of Group On, and then the chief commercial officer of Affirm, that scaled annual revenue through the billion-dollar ceiling and beyond IPO.

Silvija grew up in Croatia and while she didn't learn English until she was 18, she's an incredibly lucid storyteller. We traversed some key scaling challenges from moving Deputy from a point solution to a full workforce management platform trying to move from the fickle SMB market towards solving larger and more complex problems for mid-market customers. All of this is wrapped up in a big global push to continue the growth trajectory that now has reported revenue well over a hundred million dollars a year.

While Silvija is known in the industry as an incredible executor, as an operator, it's her leadership skills that have been front and center in Deputy’s post Covid transformation, despite not being the founder, her ownership mentality is the cornerstone of her values-based leadership principles, which come clearly through as accountability, trust, and empathy.

Her insights into scaling culture as a non-founding CEO were a real highlight of the conversation.

As always, please reach out if you have any feedback or comments, and for more insights on a whole range of topics the new TDM website is a great resource for investors and operators alike.

Jan-Kees Emmer: “Ik zet prinses Beatrix op de foto, terwijl ze van de heuvel af skiet en ik mocht niet meer op het persmoment komen”