Tuesday, November 1, 2022

“A Good Tech CEO Has Half A Dozen Jobs”: Altrios Raj Singh On How He Made It

“A Good Tech CEO Has Half A Dozen Jobs”: Altrios Raj Singh On How He Made It

Raj Singh's real estate startup is only two years old, but it has grown significantly. Altrio's goal is to modernize the real estate market with Origin, its flagship software that helps investors use data to make better deals. The company raised $8 million in Series A funding in June, and Altrio now hosts three of the world's four largest real estate investment firms on its platform.

Age: 41 years
Headquarters: Toronto
Degrees: BA Politics and Economics (University of Toronto) and MBA (University of Calgary)

My first memory:

When I was a kid, I awkwardly walked into a board game between some of my cousins ​​and they got really mad that I basically ruined their game. I remember wondering why everyone was yelling at me. I think I was one of the early destroyers.

I thought it would be:

I read physics textbooks literally for fun, and all my heroes were scientists, so it seemed like a natural path. I started working in college before switching to political science and economics.

Best advice I've ever heard:

A teacher once told me that I shouldn't jump into management too quickly because you can't keep learning about management. Now, when I lead people, I often remind them that they have an opportunity to learn.

My main holidays:

When I was 19, I did a summer internship at Brookfield Asset Management. I worked in IT and had a great boss who spent a lot of time teaching me skills that went beyond what I needed to do. I knew how to program and wrote a very simple application that the CEO used to simulate interest rate scenarios. As a student, I was able to gain work experience in one of the largest companies in the world.

My most memorable mistake:

Shortly after that, I sold my first company, a data startup called Voyanta, to the Altus Group. I got a job as a product manager at a company called Cadre after trying to be my own boss. I realized very quickly that if I was going to work for a company, I should probably run it. It was hard not to go.

I never mix:

Selling Value It's much easier to convince someone to buy something than to create something that will actually improve someone's life. In the long run, sales are a poor, often misleading indicator of real value creation.

He is a great leader

One that matches what your team needs: encouragement, resources, guidance or inspiration.

My version of the power suit:

So that I don't have to decide what to wear every day, I always wear the same thing. In the summer it's a t-shirt and jeans, and in the winter it's a hoodie and jeans.

One thing needs to change in my industry:

Real estate is famous for being involved in technology; His take on the state of the art is email and whiteboards. At the institutional level, the search for work colleagues occurs almost exclusively offline: at conferences and through mutual friends. This means that investors end up with suboptimal portfolios because they choose assets from too small a pool. My company is trying to solve this problem by creating a platform that puts all parties, data and transactions online.

My current obsession:

Avoid making decisions about anything. A good CTO has half a dozen job openings. A very narrow focus is a luxury we cannot afford.

This article appears in the Fall 2022 issue of Canadian Business Magazine . Buy an issue for $7.99 or better yet, subscribe to the quarterly print magazine for $20.

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home