GoFundMe CEO: Risk-profile yourself to build your career

In this instalment of our weekly video series, My Business Leader Secret, we talk to Tim Cadogan, the British businessman leading US tech firm GoFundMe.

His secret is that in order to advance your career effectively, you need to first measure your own appetite for risk, so you can decide which roles will suit you best.

Cadogan grew up and studied at university in the UK, before moving to California in order to develop his career. After two stints with big management consultancy firms, he worked at Yahoo! for five years, before co-founding his own adtech start-up, OpenX.

He joined GoFundMe as CEO in 2020, just as the Covid-19 global pandemic was taking off.

It is one of the biggest of the crowdfunding platforms and has generated over $30bn in funds since it launched in 2010. It is based in San Diego, California and has more than 800 employees.

Cadogan thinks you need to weigh your own risk profile in order to figure out your best personal career moves.

He says: "Are you [happy] taking maybe 80 per cent of what is coming to be new and really challenging and 20 per cent being what you are comfortable with? Or are you more risk averse, so you want to be, you know, 50-50 or 40-60?"

It's obviously a question Cadogan has thought about carefully, when it comes to himself.

"So in my case, I like to be about 50-50, which is to say, 'Hey, new opportunity, I feel like 50 per cent of it I got it and I think I can nail that [other] 50 per cent being new and challenging and a little bit scary - that's a good mix."

"Understanding yourself, understanding your risk profile, and then looking at opportunities that map to that is a great way to think about what you might do next."

Watch the rest of the My Business Leader Secret series.