At the EQT Tech CEO Summit, which brought together tech leaders from across EQT Group’s Growth and Private Equity portfolios in North America and Europe, a session led by Polly Barnes, EQT’s Talent Operating Partner for Early Stage, explored the qualities that set great CEOs apart. The discussion drew on EQT’s Founder Six framework, a model for assessing founder potential, and was enriched by reflections from Manoj Ganapathy, Co-founder and CPO at Paid, Jen Hollingsworth CEO at Cast & Crew, André Schwämmlein, Founder & CEO at Flix and Katie Obi, CPO at OneAdvanced.

The CEO Challenge: Leading Through Uncertainty

One recurring theme was the loneliness of the CEO role. As André from Flix shared, being at the helm means navigating unprecedented situations where no clear blueprint exists. Every decision carries weight, employees, regulators, investors, and co-founders all look for certainty in an environment that rarely provides it. Successful CEOs must become what André called “positive paranoids”: constantly challenging themselves, but resilient enough to project confidence externally.

Traits That Endure: The Founder Six in Action

EQT’s Founder Six framework was mirrored in the qualities discussed:

• Resilience in the face of turbulence, from cast and crew strikes in Hollywood to regulatory hurdles in mobility.

• Transparent self-awareness, openly admitting mistakes and adjusting course, as Jen noted in her transformation mandate at Cast & Crew.

• Magnetic leadership, where people follow not just the job or paycheck but the story and the person behind it.

• Systems thinking, a trait highlighted by Katie as essential for leaders in complex organizations with multiple verticals and products. CEOs must diagnose whether challenges stem from people, structure, or market dynamics, and adapt accordingly.

Balancing Humanity and Hard Calls

Several leaders reflected on the need to balance humanity with discipline. Jen described the tension of wanting to develop her leadership team while also making swift changes in a turnaround. Manoj highlighted how younger, Gen Z talent works differently, fact-checking leadership, seeking empowerment, and thriving on inspiration rather than instruction. For today’s CEOs, leadership is less about directing and more about creating clarity, context, and autonomy for others to act.

The CEO as Storyteller and Systems Builder

Perhaps the strongest insight was that modern CEOs must be both narrative leaders and systems leaders. They must embody a story that unites people, whether inspiring regulators to open a market after 10 years, or rallying employees through transformation, while also building organizational systems that scale, endure, and institutionalize culture.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Successful CEOs combine resilience, adaptability, and magnetic leadership with deep self-awareness.

• The role is increasingly about being a systems thinker, seeing the knock-on effects of decisions across markets, functions, and people.

• Balancing human empathy with decisive action remains one of the hardest but most critical aspects of the job.

• Leadership is narrative: CEOs must embody a story that employees, investors, and stakeholders can follow, even when certainty is impossible.

This session underscored that while markets, technology, and operating models evolve, the essence of leadership, resilience, clarity, and the ability to inspire others, remains timeless.

The Founder Six, learn more here: https://thefoundersix.com/