How two friends changed careers, learned to code, and built a startup

Plus, she’s always been a better developer than me!Also, I don’t directly manage Ruth, as my co-founder, Lewis, is the head of her team, so it still feels like we’re peers!Katerina and Lewis, Personably founders, with Ruth, their first employee!Ruth: It’s nice going to work for someone you’ve already worked with before, because you know how they work, and, at least in our case, there are no surprises.Rebecca: Katerina, you’ve been an employee, a freelancer, and now your own boss..Tell me about this journey.Katerina: They all contributed to where I am now!.Being an employee at a high-growth start-up was a great experience, I had a lot of responsibility early on and built my network in London tech through it..Freelancing was my first experience of finding work for myself, managing a project and having to be fully responsible for its delivery..I also got to see how other founders went about launching their businesses.Personably now with a team of six, venture capital investment and paying customers is very different to the first few months when it was Lewis and I trying to build something that we thought might be useful someday..We’ve got a lot more responsibility to our customers, team and investors so it’s a lot more like a real job – just higher stakes..It’s exciting though!Rebecca: Katerina, tell me more about your responsibilities as CEO..What do you most enjoy?.What’s the toughest part?Katerina: I’m responsible for hiring, sales, investment and anything marketing related..I most enjoy seeing the awesome team we’ve hired do the things we’ve hired them to work on better than Lewis or I could..I also really like speaking to happy customers and people who we’re saving hours of time!My job changes approximately every three months as the company changes and the team evolves..It means I never feel completely at ease with whatever problem I’m working on as often it’s for the first time!. More details

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