"Everything we learn throughout our life contributes to who we are."
Meet Adam Korbl, a seasoned digital entrepreneur, currently leading Amplify, a SaaS lab headquartered in London.
Amplify’s portfolio includes Fill and iFax, leading SME products that rank among the highest-grossing business app on the Apple, Android, and Window stores. Previously, he co-founded and served as a Chief of Product and Marketing at Glide, pioneering the visual communications platform serving 25M+ users in the United States and helping you to develop CMRA, the camera band for Apple watches.
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Table of Contents
Welcome to your ValiantCEO exclusive interview! Let’s start with a little introduction. Tell us about yourself.
Adam Korbl: I am a seasoned digital entrepreneur, currently leading Amplify, a SaaS lab headquartered in London
Amplify’s portfolio includes Fill and iFax, leading SME products that rank among the highest-grossing business app on the Apple, Android and Window stores. Previously, I co-founded and served as a Chief of Product and Marketing at Glide (glide.me), pioneering the visual communications platform serving 25M+ users in the United States and helping you to develop CMRA (getcmra.com), the camera band for Apple watch…
I also founded Crowded Road, a mobile app consultancy that serviced leading brands such as Billabong, Inc. and Riot Games (creators of the multi-billion dollar League of Legends franchise, acquired by Tencent) and built 30+ mobile and web based apps.
My ventures have been awarded Techcrunch Disrupt Audience Choice, Best Video Innovations company by Fast Company and “Best of the Web” by Time Magazine, and been featured by the NY Times, WSJ, and Techcrunch.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get to where you are today? Give us some lessons you learned along the way.
Adam Korbl: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and to create things that can help others. This is what fuels me in founding my companies today. I’ve learned to be patient, to work hard and to make sure that you are surrounded with the right people.
Tell us about your business, what does the company do? What is unique about the company?
Adam Korbl: iFax, in short, is a Fax machine for 21st century. It includes everything needed to send and receive faxes security online. You can capture documents with the mobile scanner which include in this app, then connect to cloud storage platforms, import documents and face them securely, and ultimately, fax history is maintained and encrypted in the cloud for optimal security and accessibility. In addition, you can sync fax records and fax numbers online from ANY device.
Most importantly, this is the lowest-cost fax you’ll find,
How to become a CEO? Some will focus on qualities, others on degrees, how would you answer that question?
Adam Korbl: I think I would go for qualities. Becoming a CEO takes hard work and dedication. Effective leadership is the most important aspect of a company and its’ team’s success. A CEO must have: Vision to focus on their direction, Receptiveness to listen to others around and Inspriring trust for the stakeholders to have faith in your ability.
What are the secrets to becoming a successful CEO? Who inspires you, who are your role models and why? Illustrate your choices.
Adam Korbl: I think people expect me to say Bill gates or Steve Jobs is my role model. However, the one who inspired me the most is Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, who grew a company from 30 people and $4.7 million in revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $7.7 billion. Back then, I take my cue from her playbook on how to constantly adjust and change to maximize current market conditions and make your company successful.
Many CEOs fall into the trap of being all over the place. What are the top activities a CEO should focus on to be the best leader the company needs? Explain.
Adam Korbl: I think the main activities that a CEO should focus on is build a healthy, trustful company culture, it is also the roof of a thriving company.
Many CEOs overlook this factor and leave the culture stuff to human resources, but they don’t know that they are missing an excellent opportunity to put their leadership stake in the ground and attract a cohesive, motivated team.
So, to make all of this “culture stuff” happen, you should communicate with employees regularly, honestly and transparently, make data accessible for everyone, create an environment that is inclusive and welcoming, and most importantly, make an accessible, two way pipeline for employee feedback.
The Covid-19 Pandemic put the leadership skills of many to the test, what were some of the most difficult challenges that you faced as a CEO/Leader in the past year? Please list and explain in detail.
Adam Korbl: While working at home makes employees safe and comfortable, the cons about hybrid working still exist. Miscommunication and misalignment are the most common challenges faced by remote and office employees. That is why proper communication is vital to a company that has a hybrid setup. Communication saves the work every day.
What are some of the greatest mistakes you’ve noticed some business leaders made during these unprecedented times? What are the takeaways you gleaned from those mistakes?
Adam Korbl: Growing from a startup or mid-market company into a scale-up is a challenging transition. Over the past decade, from my experience, and also from my relationships, I’ve found out that most startups’ mistake is lack of resources. Some entrepreneurs think it’s a luxury to have an accounting, finance or other support functions. If you don’t have someone to do that for you’ you’ll end up spending all your time on things that aren’t critical to growing your business.
In your opinion, what changes played the most critical role in enabling your business to survive/remain profitable, or maybe even thrive? What lessons did all this teach you?
Adam Korbl: From my experience, It’s innovation. The successful exploitation of new ideas is crucial to a business being able to improve its processes, bring new and improved products and services to market, increase its efficiency and profitability, you can identify opportunities for innovation by adapting your product of service to the way your marketplace is changing.
You already shared a lot of insights with our readers and we thank you for your generosity. Normally, leaders are asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is the most useless skill you have learned, at school or during your career?
Adam Korbl: Useless skills? I don’t believe in learning useless skills. I think we benefit from any skills or learnings we acquire along the way. Everything we learn throughout our life contributes to who we are.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. We will select these answers for our ValiantCEO Award 2021 edition. The best answers will be selected to challenge the award.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make, this past year 2021, for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Adam Korbl: As you all know, we are now in the “new normal”, that means employees can work in their office like back then. One of the difficult decisions is whether to shift the Hybrid workforce or not.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, I was kinda old fashion. I wanted to work in my office and talked to my employees directly. However, the pandemic changed everything, we had to work remotely for a long time, but that was when I realize that working remotely isn’t so bad, in fact, it didn’t stop my employees from being productive and creative as we both can work in our favorite environment, home. So they talked to me about their idea in the “new normal”, that they want to try the hybrid workforce, so they can still work in their dedicated place, and go to the office 2-3 days a week with their co-worker about tasks that need to discuss directly.
As I’ve mentioned about my ideal work culture, I listened to them carefully and gathered all their opinions. At the end I decided to try the hybrid workforce anyway, If it makes my employees both comfortable and productive, then why not?
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Adam Korbl for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Adam Korbl or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
