Dominik Pintér on His Childhood, Career Path, and the Reality of Being a CEO
Few people know exactly what they want to do with their life from childhood, but Dominik did. In this interview, our CEO Dominik Pintér looks back at the path that took him from a kid fascinated by computers to leading Kentico. He shares how the company has changed through the years he's been part of it and gives an honest look at what the CEO role really involves.
An Early Fascination for Technology.
When you were a kid, what did you think you'd be doing today?
I was always genuinely fascinated by computers and wanted to work in software starting from a very young age. I remember it even from preschool. I was lucky enough that we got a computer at home through some kind of program, which was far from common at the time. My parents supported me in it from early on, especially my dad, who saw a future in it. They weren't involved in software themselves, though.
I started programming in elementary school. I started with Basic in third or fourth grade, then moved on to Pascal. What really fascinated me was computer security. I once read an article in a magazine called ABC (a Czech science and technology magazine for kids) about Kevin Mitnick, one of the famous hackers who broke into systems like the FBI and NASA. That's what hooked me, and from there I wanted to know how it was done.
Looking back, was there a moment when you thought: I might actually lead a company one day?
No, I never imagined it that way. I always saw myself more as a programmer or developer. I was already earning money from programming at fourteen. One of my first jobs was managing the e-shop for a local PC store. I'd add functionality, fix bugs, and handle inventory. Back then, public APIs didn't really exist yet, so I was supposed to manually upload new products from a B2B supplier. I got paid a few crowns per product uploaded. Instead, I wrote a Python script that scraped the product data straight from the supplier's HTML and uploaded it through my own API. I obviously never told the store owners, since they were paying per item. I just hit enter and it all uploaded itself.
Later, when I was sixteen, I was writing homework assignments for Faculty of Informatics (FIT) students at Masaryk University. When I started studying at FIT myself, I realized the assignments hadn't changed at all, so I used my old code, just modified enough not to look like plagiarism. As a teenager I mostly worked as a freelancer, but I found that people took advantage of me because I was young. That was one of the reasons I later wanted to get a regular job instead.
Once I was at Kentico, I flirted with the idea of starting my own company. But my co-founders weren't really committed to it, and since I was working at Kentico at the same time, I decided not to go through with it. I had one or two more ideas afterward that I tried to get off the ground, but I eventually concluded that I'm not really the right type to build a business from scratch; my strengths lie elsewhere. I'm much better suited to taking over a company at some stage and moving it forward.
I've kept a long-term personal vision with certain milestones. One of them was to reach the C-level of some company by the age of thirty-five. I gave myself a deadline: either start my own company by then or reach the C-level. In the end, I became CEO of Kentico at thirty-four. I never planned to go that high, but the opportunity came up, so why not.
Beyond the Title: The Life of a CEO
You left Kentico and came back. What surprised you most when you returned?
What surprised me most was that the company had barely moved forward since 2015, when I left. I left at a time when the company was starting to stagnate, because an internal startup had emerged and everyone was focused on that. I took over the company right out of that stagnation, and my job was to make sure it had a future. I think we managed to do that over these five years and that's down to the whole team, not only me.
That transformation is far from finished, though. The coming years will be quite demanding for a lot of people at Kentico, because of how fast the market is moving and because of the gap between what people expect and what the market actually delivers. I already saw this coming in 2020, and I've been gradually transforming Kentico to be more results-oriented.
What surprised me very positively, though, is that we have a pretty high success rate when it comes to people who once left and came back a few years later to help us build a new, better Kentico. For example, there's Štěpán Kozák from development, and Mirek Jirků from marketing.
One more thing that surprised me positively was how warmly the Kentico community welcomed me back. Partners still remembered me, and we were able to pick our successful collaboration back up.
What's something about being a CEO that people outside the role don't understand?
I think it's a completely different level of responsibility, and nobody who's never been a CEO can really imagine what that means. I couldn't imagine it myself before I was in the role.
For about nine months after I came back, Petr Palas was still CEO and I was Managing Director, responsible for the business. I thought that was basically the same thing but I couldn't have been more wrong. Once you become CEO, you lose one thing: any problem that someone in the hierarchy can't solve can always be passed up to someone above them. As CEO, it's always on you. At the same time, you don't have anyone at the same level: you have people below you, and above you there's only the board, whose job is essentially to evaluate you.
Suddenly you have real responsibility for the whole company, for everyone who works there, for the product, for the customers and every result. And at the same time, as CEO you never have a fixed job description, you have to figure out yourself what needs to be done for the company to thrive as much as possible.
Most CEOs eventually get a coach or mentor to talk through problems with. It's also good to have some kind of peer group of other CEOs to exchange experiences and network with.
And then there are things you can never fully tell anyone, decisions you simply can't discuss. That's why CEOs often lead a fairly lonely life and have to find their own ways to relieve stress.
The Secret to Success? Staying On the Move.
The market is changing faster than ever. How do you make sure you stay ahead?
I've realized that the game has changed. In the past, the companies that won were the ones that could predict the future. The world between 2010 and 2020 was relatively calm and predictable, so it was a lot easier. But since COVID, we've been going from one crisis to the next. First COVID, then the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis in Europe, and plenty more.
The world is now completely unpredictable. I no longer try to predict the future. Instead, I focus on making sure we're able to adapt quickly to whatever future comes. I think that's how the game has changed.
You're into biking, running, and apparently now golf too. What do these give you that a full day of meetings can't?
When you run for an hour straight, spend two hours on the bike, or hit golf balls for two hours, you release tension because you're focused on the movement or your breathing. At the same time, ideas I wouldn't otherwise have come up with often surface.
It's an important part of my mental hygiene, because the stress is enormous. I deliberately choose sports I can do alone: you don't want anyone interrupting you or having to talk to someone, you just want to be by yourself and focus on that one shot in golf.
Another thing is switching into the present moment. As CEO, you constantly have to plan far ahead, you kind of live in the future. That's pretty demanding, but it helps that when I'm on the bike, running, or hitting balls there's nothing in that moment but the movement and the breath.
What's one thing people considering joining Kentico should know, something that doesn't make it into the job ads?
I think Kentico gives people the opportunity to grow and move forward, whoever joins us has that chance. But we're not a company you come to for a rest. If you're looking for something stable and calm, with clear tasks and peace of mind, we used to be that kind of company in the past, but we're not anymore, and we won't be in the future either.
If you want to achieve something, keep growing, and enjoy a challenge, we're the right place for you. But if you're looking to take it easy and have everything handed to you, I'd guess that the software industry itself might not be the right fit for you anymore.
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