Beam CEO Alex Stephany: Being Fired Twice Was the Best Career Move

Things changed when he got a smartphone. He started going to tech events and applying to startups. He forced himself to ask people for coffee. That led to a job in the startup space, and he eventually became CEO of JustPark, an app for parking in London.

In 2017, he founded Beam, which uses AI to help social service workers. The company has about 200 employees and operates in five countries. Stephany said years of underemployment built resilience and adaptability that help him as a CEO. People who have only known success, he said, are not suited to startup life because failure is constant.

Stephany said he now knows he is not bad at adulting, but just not wired for corporate roles. He said his role model is not Elon Musk but his great-grandfather, a businessman who helped Jews resettle in London before World War II. Stephany called himself a social entrepreneur, following that path.

He said he names the bosses who fired him among the people who helped him most.