Why I Left Teens in Tech

Just over six weeks ago, I officially resigned from Teens in Tech, the company I joined over two years ago after being hired by Daniel Brusilovsky as a marketing manager. Over those two short years, I rose in the company’s ranks, serving as COO, then CEO, then CTO. I had a great run, spent a ton of time with people I care about, and learned a lot. I’m a bit sad to put the Teens in Tech chapter behind me, although I must.

As I reflect back, none of the job titles mean anything to me anymore. To be honest, they all really just blur together as no job title ever accurately described my role and what I provided the company. In my eyes, I was most importantly Daniel’s business partner the entire time (regardless of my rotating job title). Beyond writing code, I tried to keep the company on track and help Teens in Tech achieve its full potential. Even today, I attempt to maintain an advisory role, if in no other way than as Daniel’s friend.

Why no blog post has been written or announcement made about my leaving the company is a complicated issue, and quite honestly, not particularly interesting. What I can say, speaking only for myself, is that I have been intending to write a blog post about my departure for several weeks. I initially had so much on my mind (including high school final exams) and had no idea what to focus on or where to start. With the start of summer, I finally decided that it was time to post.

The following are my opinions and thoughts about Teens in Tech and why I left. They are relatively unfiltered and reflect my thinking process. I could have spent more time editing my thoughts and making them clearer, but I felt that might detract from the authenticity of the post.

Any company built on the premise of serving the needs of, advocating for, and bringing together huge numbers of enthusiastic teenagers with an interest in startups, entrepreneurship and technology has a ton of potential. The company’s mission is a good one as entrepreneurial young people need what Teens in Tech is trying to do. The company has done many things right over the years, most notably conferences, which for me have often been the highlights of my year. At the same time, expansion beyond conferences has been a bit hit or miss. Moving forward there’s a real opportunity to focus on the mission and achieve even more greatness.

Okay, Teens in Tech has a great mission and a bunch of unrealized potential. So why leave?

I am passionate about helping entrepreneurial teens. In fact, I’d love to lead an organization like Teens in Tech. My time as CEO, while short, allowed me to make a big impact on the company by deconstructing what Teens in Tech used to be, taking things back to the basics, and reminding everyone that Teens in Tech needs to be honest with who they are…and aren’t. But the simple reality is that Daniel was the founder of Teens in Tech and, as a matter of principle, he is and will continue to be the company’s leader.

When Daniel made me CEO and took the role of Chairman of the Board, we struggled to make it work. A company can only really have one leader, one visionary, one person to guide the company in the direction it should go. This is especially true in our case since our respective leadership styles and visions for the company were so different.

I needed to go so that Daniel could re-establish himself as the one clear leader of the organization. He can set the direction, make decisions, build the team. I’m happy to have left Teens in Tech on good terms—Daniel and I are still great friends, I still communicate to the board from time to time, and I even retained my stock in the company, which, regardless of whether it ever ends up having monetary value, is a meaningful symbolic gesture.

Now that I’m on the outside, I’d like to give Daniel and Teens in Tech three pieces of advice. Feel free to take it or leave it.

1) Daniel – perfect your skills, accept your weaknesses, and build a great team that complements your own talents.

Being a leader does not mean you possess the sum total of all the skills in the company with the added bonus of being in charge. If a leader was someone who could do everything by himself, he would not need to have any employees and would not have anyone to lead. Scaling would be rough, but you could probably find some kids willing to do what you tell them to do…at least for a while.

The truth is that you don’t have to know everything to be a good leader. In fact, you should probably assume you know nothing (at least nothing for certain). Look to your employees as your mentors, let them inspire you as you decide what the company should do and how to do it. Your job as leader is to keep everyone else on task. If you do this right, you will naturally come of as if you are a strong, determined, skilled leader that people trust and want to follow.

You will seem a lot more genuine of a leader if you accept your weaknesses and compensate for them by choosing employees whose strengths are your weaknesses, instead of assuming your weaknesses don’t exist and trying to do something you don’t know how to do. Asking for help and admittedly not knowing how to do something is one of the wisest things a teenager, like us, could do. If you try too hard to be an adult, you will be a fraud. If you accept your youth and ask for help, you will be unique in that you are young and will be wise for your age.

2) Focus, focus, focus!

This one applies to the whole company. It is so important to focus on defining a unifying vision that guides everything the company does. Everything you contemplate doing should be bumped up against the vision. Everything you do at the company is about making sure that every product, every idea, and every endeavor that the company takes on fits snugly into the vision as if it were a puzzle. Someone should be able to look at Teens in Tech as a whole and know what Teens in Tech stands for, not just what the incubator is or what the conference is or what the blog is, but how it all fits together to help accomplish the organizations vision.

3) Commit to a brand image and an internal culture to match.

If everything you do reinforces the whole, you’ll be able to build an image that is easy for customers and partners to understand. Someone will be able to look at your company and instantly know how you can help them.

As for the culture, it is important that all Teens in Tech employees know how to act, how they will be treated, and what they can expect. This way, employees can feel the most comfortable and will, in turn, be the most valuable to the company.

Perhaps, even more important, a culture needs to be defined for the customer’s sake. Zappos and Amazon are great examples of this. They really care about their customers, provide great support, and are generally friendly and supportive. Teens in Tech could really benefit from defining a culture that is welcoming of all teen entrepreneurs, teen bloggers, and teens interested in technology in general.

Your target market is immense–teens worldwide–just be careful not to turn any of them off. As you know, word spreads quickly.