CEO Rapidfire: Quantum Metric's Mario Ciabarra Talks Innovation, Vulnerability ... And Flower Power

Welcome to CEO Rapidfire, fast-paced questions with today’s most successful founders and CEOs. Be sure to look for these special Q&A editions of my newsletter, where I’ll share insights from the amazing leaders in my network.

This time around, I’m speaking to Quantum Metric founder and CEO Mario Ciabarra, who has some good news: It doesn’t need to be lonely at the top. (To find out why, keep reading!)

Long before Mario launched Quantum Metric, I knew him as the founder of his first business, DevStream, an application performance monitoring (APM) startup in the same space as AppDynamics, my first company.?I guess we were technically competitors, but we became good friends.

Mario has gone on to build Quantum Metric into a powerhouse digital analytics platform that helps organizations use data to understand their customers and build digital products faster. To drive its process, called Continuous Product Design, the Colorado Springs–based company captures insights from almost 30% of the world’s internet users. With a client base that includes 20% of the Fortune 500, it counts 3M , Crate & Barrel and lululemon athletica among its customers.

Mario, who earned a BS from Penn State focused on biochemistry, molecular biology and computer science, is a serial entrepreneur. He sold DevStream in 2004, when he was just 26, then went on to start two more companies—Rock Your Phone and Intelliborn, both key players in the alternative iPhone app market—before launching Quantum Metric in 2015.

He’s justifiably proud of that company’s 98% customer retention rate, making a comparison with Gmail. “When you sign up for a Gmail account, you don’t really ever close that account,” he notes . “That’s the kind of success that we’re having with our customers. Once they start using Quantum, they don’t ever want to go back.”

Given his many other interests, it’s surprising that Mario found the time to launch four businesses. A keen traveler who has visited more than 60 countries , he’s also a skier, rock climber, pianist and carpenter. “Life is about being passionate about anything and then following that dream,” he says .

Here's what Mario shared in our CEO Rapidfire interview:

The one secret to succeeding as an entrepreneur, in 5 words or less: Passionate team.?

What was the most exciting “minute” of your entrepreneurial journey? Walking through a mall, and my kids pointing to half the stores that were customers of Quantum.

One truth you wish you knew about entrepreneurship before starting? To achieve a $10-million to $20-million success, you need a good idea. For larger endeavors, ideas are such a small part. It’s all about the people.

If you had to do battle with a giant, what weapon would you use? I’d probably try to find a magic mushroom or the nearest flower to power up? It’s-a me, Mario.

Your worst mistake as an entrepreneur (and what you learned from it): Expecting the best outcomes. I’ve learned to hope for the best, but plan for the worst—being grounded helps you avoid so many problems.

Top 3 websites, blogs, or podcasts you can’t imagine your day without: Truthfully, I really enjoy reading the news and understanding the changes to the world. With that, I spend more of my content time on NYTimes.com and WSJ.com than most.?

What popular entrepreneurial advice do you disagree with? I disagree that leadership is lonely. It can be if you make it, but personally, I feel surrounded and supported by people I would spend my days outside of work with, too. Love is, shockingly, a word that’s used a lot when I talk about what I do and the people I work with.?

One life hack you can’t live without: Be vulnerable. It’s OK to not be perfect. You will connect more deeply with people, and they will be more likely to help you in times of need.

One soft skill that you’ve realized is supremely important: Connecting with people before getting into business. I try to start every conversation with learning more about the person than their work updates.

The one thing that makes a good leader great is: Passion—I love what I do, and I believe my team, customers and partners can feel it.

Your secret to building a great team is: Find people smarter than you. It’s easy to want to be the best, but being able to delegate work and have that work done better and faster than you can do is such a pleasure.

The key to navigating hypergrowth is: Keep pushing for soft spots. You will make mistakes—accept them, adjust and run. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Every entrepreneur must read: One of my favorite reads was on how to achieve consistent innovation, The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures . It’s probably a little self-serving—I majored in biochemistry and ended up as an entrepreneurial programmer. I won’t give away too much, but the connection to my background and consistent innovation becomes more obvious with that book’s thesis. It helped me hire people outside of the norm, and those individuals have brought greater diversity and perspective that continues to push our success.?

What are you most excited about at work right now? John Chambers, our board member, previously CEO at Cisco , often highlights Winston Churchill’s quote, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” He shares, specifically, that 2000 and 2008 were tough years, but they were also years that Cisco broke away from the pack. It’s a difficult year, but I believe we are seeing signs of these breakaway moments.??

Specifically, we’ve launched Atlas, which allows analytics to be less about sophisticated analysts and more about democratizing real-time and at-scale customer feedback to a number of functional team users across marketing, UX, design, product, DevOps and leadership.?

Your one “non-negotiable” in business (or life) is: Love what you do (in business and your personal life). If you aren’t doing this, you will eventually die and have regretted the time you’ve wasted.

Thank you, Mario Ciabarra, for sharing your leadership thoughts this week. To learn more, follow Mario on LinkedIn or check out Quantum Metric .

Thank you for reading! I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments below. For more insights from my experience as a serial entrepreneur and how we can harness the power of software to change the world, be sure to subscribe to Entrepreneurship and Leadership.