Analysis

March 19, 2021

How do non-founder CEOs prepare for the role?

Can you ever really prepare for the top job? We asked five non-founder CEOs.


Monique Hoell, CEO HelloBody

When Arne Schepker took on a new role as CEO of Babbel, a Berlin-based language learning app, he didn’t anticipate the job would be so hard. 

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Arne Schepker, former CMO at Babbel, took the reins of CEO last Spring.
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Biggs, an early Bitcoin thought leader, was previously head of innovation at HSBC before joining Valour as CEO.
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Maria Raga, was previously VP of operations at Depop before becoming CEO.
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Hoell joined HelloBody when the company had little traction. It now has 1.5m customers and an annual profitable revenue of more than €65m.
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Hanoa, a two-time CEO, says that having downtime is crucial to being effective at the job.
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“Wiw iiv’g rbugx a zvlltk pq hwqd kfhz jsp fgnht.” 
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Miriam Partington

Miriam Partington was a senior reporter at Sifted, based in Berlin. She covered the DACH region and the future of work, and wrote Startup Life , a weekly newsletter on what it takes to build a startup.

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