30 Best CEOs of the Year 2020 30 Best CEOs of the Year 2020 | Page 68

could not fulfill. To overcome this,
we developed and implemented our
AI-powered recruiting platform.
What would you say was the
single most influential factor
in your business’ success?
I think the single, most influential
factor in our business’ success is
the willingness and ability of my
team. The team’s willingness and
cooperation to take on different
roles and different tasks, knowing
that they may not be the best fit
and still really putting in an effort
to make that position and role a
success, especially in our start-up
phase was absolutely the most
influential factor in our success.
What other CEOs do you look
up to?
I look up to Richard Branson; I love
his style, passion, and vision. I also
really look up to Frederick Smith,
CEO, and Founder of FedEx. He has
a remarkable story of being college
student at Yale and submitting
a paper that outlined his entire
FedEx business model, and it was
basically graded as a failure. But he
proceeded and launched FedEx at
incredible success, then very quickly
began running into huge failure at
which point he went to Vegas and
gambled the company’s last dollar
hoping to collect enough in winnings
to keep the company going – which
he did and now look at FedEx today.
What do you think is the
most memorable moment
in your career?
As someone who started
entrepreneurship early on, I’ve
never really had a job. My most
memorable moment in this
experience was when one of my
business ventures, which at the time
was the biggest, failed very quickly.
That taught me a very valuable
lesson when you are not innovating
and creating you are shrinking and
I always keep that with me.
If not a business leader/CEO,
what else you want to be?
I’ve always had a love for airplanes
and jets, so I would love to be, if not
this, a pilot.
If you had one piece of advice
to someone just starting out,
what would it be?
Don’t give up. There are a lot of
times where you feel it is not going
to work out, maybe the numbers
don’t make sense, maybe the
personality situation doesn’t make
sense. But you had a strong enough
inclination to do what you are
doing, so don’t stop, make sure you
see it through and focus on the big
picture. Just because you are having
a bad week, that doesn’t define
your business over the course of a
year, so look at the bigger picture or
longer timeframe because that can
give you a better snapshot and you
can’t lose sight of that.
SR
Ashkan Rajaee: A Charismatic Entrepreneur
Ashkan is an entrepreneur at heart; he grew up playing
basketball, a sport he truly loves. He received a scholarship
to a school in Texas, during his time in school he came to the
realization that he was not going to go into the NBA. Being a
naturally spirited entrepreneur, Ashkan started his first business
and although it failed he learned a lot from that experience and
had a lot of fun throughout the process. From that point, he moved
onto various different ventures which eventually led him into the
world of software. Ashkan found success in the software industry
and as a partner; he helped to lead a company from $6 million in
yearly revenue to approximately $60 million in yearly revenue in
less than three years. As a partner, when this company was sold,
it was his experience in that venture that helped him to see areas
where he could do better and improve the business model so he
started TopDevz.
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Ashkan Rajaee, CEO & Founder