GoTo CEO's eight business rules to be a successful leader

In 2020, New Jersey-based Rich Veldran joined GoTo (formerly LogMeIn), which provides businesses with the tools for collaboration, IT management and remote work support. He became CEO in January 2024 and oversees 4,000 staff globally.

To avoid the Budapest traffic commuting across the river, the company founder developed a software tool in 2003 that would allow him to log in to his office computer remotely from home. GoTo now has over $1bn in annual revenue.

I’ve never committed the eight rules I’ve lived by in my business career to paper until now, but I live by them every day in some shape or form.

I worked for Sara Mathew for a decade in a variety of roles and she has been by far the most formative person in my career. In many ways, I followed her career path. We both started at Procter & Gamble, although I didn’t know her there, while I worked for her at data analytics provider Dun & Bradstreet, where she was CEO and I was CFO.

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Who I am today and the rules I have learned are a derivative of my time with Sara.

1. Jumping in the pool is key: try new stuff, try hard stuff. My career has been characterised by taking career risks and it’s been very much at the assistance of Sara.

2. Intellectual curiosity is the number one aspect I look for when I interview people today. If you’re curious and willing to learn and improve, you will do well.

3. Set the bar high and never settle for a low bar. You might not always hit it and it might not be the most comfortable path, but set the bar high for what you want to achieve but also for what you expect from your people.

4. Talent, both on a skill and a will matrix, is paramount and people must be motivated to make a difference. Don’t settle for anything other than great.

5. Know your stuff always and everywhere. One thing I learned at Procter & Gamble was that if you got into a lift with a senior leader and were asked a question, you better know the answer. Every touch matters and every interaction matters. That’s the tone I set for the team.

6. Be a driver, not a passenger. It’s a bit of a cliché, but leadership and ownership absolutely matter.

7. To pause and listen is something I haven't quite mastered yet, yet it’s absolutely critical.

8. Collaboration and context. As CFO, many times you say no and lay down the law. But working with people, explaining the business rationale and giving people context for decisions makes all the difference. Without the corporate jargon, making people feel part of it, rather than subject to it is key.

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If I really think about what’s made a difference it’s these eight core things I learned while working with Sara, with the challenges she set and the expectations she had of me.

Our goal was to turn Dun & Bradstreet back into an innovative, driving machine. To do that you had to instill a new culture. It truly does make a difference and Sara’s bar was set high. To be a successful CFO you need to drive a strategy, you need to get into the operations and the best way to do that is to run a piece of it, which is what I did when I ran the Japan business.

I hadn’t met anyone in person when I joined GoTo in 2020 and I knew that becoming a private equity-backed company we would do a lot of cost production in the first year.

I knew it would also be challenging to tell people remotely, during COVID, to restructure the company. But I went back to my rulebook: be fearless, set the bar high and drive the company forward and it worked out quite well.

When we rebranded from LogMeIn in 2022, we had several different products, including a password manager, which didn’t fit with the brand.

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We wanted an umbrella company with a modern brand and to use it to sell the entire portfolio to smaller businesses. It was quite the endeavour.

We run a decentralised, very remote organisation and finding the best talent regardless of where they are is what really makes the difference and we really make that work.

One of the most important things for me is also developing people and I’ve had 12 of my direct reports become CFOs and one become a CEO over time.

Training the next generation is extremely important and to be able to build a legacy is something I’m very proud of.

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