Sage Wisdom from a Founder Post-Acquisition

Savage to Sage

Greg Kraios is an example of a startup founder who completed the start up journey, and is starting at it again. Greg was the CEO and founder of 250ok, an email intelligence platform to help email marketers understand what was happening to the mail they were sending. Through the early days of being a founder, he had a clear understanding of where his strengths were, and surrounded himself with insightful people to fill the other roles around him in order to build a strong company, greatly positioned for acquisition.

I’ve been surrounded by entrepreneurs most of my life. I’ve had a couple of family members that were successful entrepreneurs, friends, parents that were entrepreneurs. And it was just something that I was always drawn to... I always just felt that being an entrepreneur might give me a little more control over my destiny. -Greg Kraios

In our conversation, he talks about how he watched a friend build Exact Target, what he learned from his time there, and maintaining relationships that he was able to go back to and ask for advice when he started 250ok. He also shares some of the important tactics of relationship building between team members at 250ok, and he gives us a hint at what he’s working on now.

To reach out to Greg and follow this new journey he’s on, check out his LinkedIn profile at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gkraios/

Topics in this episode:

• Mentors that helped him along the way
• Why he wasn’t afraid to fail
• Things he learned about himself in the early days
• The 2 qualities he looked for in potential team members
• Defining a “start up” and recognizing when you’ve outgrown that label
• Mental health and working from home
• Intentionally creating a culture where time off is recognized as important