Thomas Zimmermann, the CEO of Freenow, is a marketer by trade. After filling senior marketing roles at several digital-first companies, he joined the European taxi app company as CMO seven years ago and stepped up to the top job in April 2022.
This career path, from marketing chief to chief executive, is becoming more common, as it equips leaders with many of the skills needed to run a business. “On the one hand, CMOs are the voice of the customer,” Zimmerman explains. “But they are also very focused on ‘money in, money out’.” Modern CMOs, he says, must posses strong business acumen and collaborate closely with other functions – both core skills for successful CEOs, too.
Here, Zimmerman discusses the other attributes that make great leaders, as well as the inspiration and advice that’s shaped his own leadership style.
Did you always want to be a CEO?
Not really. It wasn’t a life plan of mine to become a CEO – it wasn’t even part of a five-year goal.
I studied economics with a major in marketing and leadership. I started my career in performance marketing and data, then my role got broader and broader until it was a full-blown marketing leadership role.
Then, I started taking on more responsibilities. I always had data teams below me and revenue-management responsibilities. I always picked jobs I thought I would like to do and the rest is a combination of luck, the right opportunities and an ability to deliver performance.
Moving from CMO to CEO was a big step on the one hand but, on the other, it wasn’t such a big change, because I had led most of business functions at points in my career already.
What makes a good leader?
You need to be willing to learn constantly. You need curiosity, but also the self-reflection to understand that you don’t know everything. And, even if you thought you knew everything at one point, you might need to reinvent yourself because the world changes quickly. You need a constant willingness to evolve, revise your own opinions and be open to external input.
That is a must-have, then everything else is individual. Most CEOs I know who are successful in the long term are transparent and honest. I love Jim Collins’s concept of a ‘level-five manager’ – a leader who displays a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will.
In my experience, if you thrive in the spotlight and always want to be the centre of gravity, that works for some CEOs. However, in general, if you put yourself in the service of the company and the shareholders, you will have a much better long-term track record than if you’re a self-centred attention-seeker.
How would your co-workers describe you?
First and foremost, as somebody who doesn’t like to talk too much about himself! Over the years, though, you do get feedback, so I have a bit of an idea. On the personal side, I think they would say I am very approachable, very open and, hopefully, humble. Then, when it comes to business, very determined, resilient and analytical.
What are you looking for when you hire a leadership team?
People who are eager to evolve and learn. Obviously, at the leadership level, you need to bring experience, but you also need to understand that your experience can only get you so far.
For me, homogeneous teams don’t make sense. If everybody has the same opinion, decision-making gets boring. You don’t need to have meetings anymore because you already know all the answers. The diversity of ideas and views is extremely helpful for sense checks. Nobody knows everything, and we often need to make decisions that will have a big impact, without having all of the information we might want. So it’s good to include different angles and different views in that process.
Leadership teams must also understand their role. I tell everyone who joins this team: you’re not representing your function within management, you’re representing the management within your function. If you are in that position, you don’t just lead a function, you lead the company. Sometimes that trumps division-specific interests. So, if a decision is being made in the interest of the company, you need to be able to see that and advocate for that rather than just looking at how it will impact your function.
What is the best bit of business advice you’ve ever been given?
I have been given a tonne of good advice, but if I had to single out one piece, it’s something told to me by a former manager, the then-CEO of Goodgame Studios. He said: make sure you own your decisions.
That sounds very easy at first, but when you become a CEO there will be a million opinions and people will try to drive you in lots of different directions. It’s good to listen and it’s good to embrace other opinions – and even change your own, if someone makes a good argument or presents new data – but never, ever take a decision that you are not fully confident in. If you do and it works, great. The interesting part comes if it doesn’t work, because if you didn’t truly believe in that decision and it fails, then it becomes very difficult to own it. If, however, you make a decision that you believe in and it fails, it’s not nice, but you can own it and you can learn from it.
What is the biggest driver of change in your business?
One thing that is exclusive to us is our recent acquisition by Lyft, which is changing a lot of things for the better. They’re a complimentary partner to us. It’s a very similar cultural fit, similar mindset and similar ambition for growth. So that is changing a lot of things – it’s still very early days, but the impact is already clear.
More broadly, we are still at the beginning of the change in urban mobility. Cities are transforming from car-centred to human-centred. But such development takes time.
Technical advancements will play a big role. Lyft just announced that we, jointly, will launch the first-ever automated-vehicle trials in the UK and Germany by the end of next year. That’s a big step, with a lot of considerations. You need to look at what it means for drivers, for example. So there’s a lot of strategic thinking on how the industry evolves and how we can deliver the best for all parties: our drivers, our customers and the cities they live in. That’s a huge one for the next couple of years.
What’s been your proudest achievement in your current role?
It’s a combination. On the one hand, it is moving the company to profitability. New businesses are normally loss-making in the beginning. Small firms can scale up completely bootstrapped, but, at a certain point, they need to turn a profit. So making this company profitable is definitely one of my proudest achievements.
Then, making this deal with Lyft happen and finding a new home that opens up so many possibilities for the company is also something I’m very proud of. But it’s a team sport – let’s be clear about that. I’m lucky enough to spearhead the organisation, but these achievements were team efforts.
What book do you think every business leader should read at least once?
Definitely Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. Then you can add in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni and Radical Candor by Kim Scott to round out the picture, because no one book can answer all your questions.
But I like Jim Collins’ book a lot because, on the one hand, there are good lessons in there – I very much like the concept of the level-five manager, as I said. Then, on the other hand, I like Collins’ approach. He’s not saying: “Here’s my opinion. I’m Jim Collins. I’m very cool and I can tell you how the world works.” Instead, he’s very analytical and research-driven. And that’s not that common in management literature; normally, it is more opinion-based.
What is one piece of advice you would give to your successor?
Bring everything that you have, use everything that you have, but be prepared to unlearn and relearn almost everything over the course of the next two to three years, because it might be needed. Other than that, be prepared for the best rollercoaster ride of your life.
Thomas Zimmermann, the CEO of Freenow, is a marketer by trade. After filling senior marketing roles at several digital-first companies, he joined the European taxi app company as CMO seven years ago and stepped up to the top job in April 2022.
This career path, from marketing chief to chief executive, is becoming more common, as it equips leaders with many of the skills needed to run a business. “On the one hand, CMOs are the voice of the customer," Zimmerman explains. "But they are also very focused on ‘money in, money out’.” Modern CMOs, he says, must posses strong business acumen and collaborate closely with other functions – both core skills for successful CEOs, too.
Here, Zimmerman discusses the other attributes that make great leaders, as well as the inspiration and advice that's shaped his own leadership style.
