Do You Want To Have Dinner With The Guy You Want To Hire? Christos Cotsakos, Founder Of ETrade And CEO Of EndPlay (Part 6)

Sramana: From a point of view you want diversity, but you also need to have some form of basic chemistry. I am very picky about whom I want at my house for dinner!

Christos Cotsakos: Exactly. That is the gating factor. If you are going to work closely with an entrepreneurial team, you better make sure you all fit. You have to fit intellectually, culturally, and behaviorally. That is all part of the mix.

Sramana: How does that philosophy scale?

Christos Cotsakos: It scales well. I have been dealing with people over the course of my career whom we have recycled through many companies and projects. If you build it right, the same people come over and over again. They also get to reinvent themselves and learn more, and they get smarter and better over time. They want to surround themselves with the same types of individuals. You all move in the same direction. Even though you zig and zag, you all end up getting to the same place.

Sramana: You are at a point in your life where you have had a variety of successes in your career. You have also had a significant entrepreneurial success. Why did you choose to come back and do another startup?

Christos Cotsakos: I never really left. Everything I have been doing has been of a startup nature. We have done a few quiet ad private startups. From my brand of management and leadership, I prefer to look at small teams that want to reinvent something in the marketplace and then focus on doing it together. To me, the camaraderie is very important. Doing things on a large scale are equally important. Making a difference in the lives of a lot of people is even more important. We have been doing that in our business efforts, our philanthropic efforts, and our educational efforts. My daughter and my wife are also entrepreneurs. It’s just the way our family is.

Sramana: I understand that you have been involved in the investing and mentoring aspect of entrepreneurship, but why did you return to a CEO role?

Christos Cotsakos: There are some ventures that you look at and realize that it is interesting, and you want to jump in and take it on yourself. It depends on where it is in the life cycle of things you are working on and working with.

Sramana: I know many entrepreneurs who are at similar points in their careers. Most of them are doing angel investment or sitting on boards and coaching entrepreneurs. I find it interesting that you jumped back in as a CEO, and I predict that you won’t stay in that role for very long.

Christos Cotsakos: I don’t know that this is the case. The old saying is that those who predict by the crystal ball are doomed to eat glass. I will say that there is received wisdom in the marketplace that at certain points in your career you can do only certain things. That is not true anymore. Today, if you want to engage, you can do so on any level that you want to, at any phase that you want. Health is the determining factor.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Do You Want To Have Dinner With The Guy You Want To Hire? Christos Cotsakos, Founder Of ETrade And CEO Of EndPlay
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