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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. For years, famed restaurateur Danny Meyer has wanted to reinvent the way diners pay their bills. Hes dreamed of a world in which patrons can pay for their meals and simply walk out of an eatery without asking and waiting for the check. Meyers vision for frictionless payments found its way to Frank Bisignano, who served as CEO of Fiserv, the financial services technology provider, until becoming commissioner of the Social Security Administration earlier this year. By 2020, the two executives hatched an idea for a checkless solution that would enable diners to settle their restaurant tabs without taking out a credit card or phone. It then fell to Krystle Mobayeni, a senior vice president and head of restaurants at Fiserv, and Kelly Macpherson, chief technology officer of Meyers Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), to build the software and systems that would bring their bosses idea to life. The result is a system called Checkless Payments, which the companies announced last week at the National Restaurant Association Show. It isnt unusual for the top executive at a company to be the driver of innovation, especially at entrepreneurial or founder-led organizations. Nearly half the respondents to a 2024 Fast Company survey of its Most Innovative Companies honorees said their CEO was in charge of innovation, and 60% said their top innovation executive reported directly to the CEO. INNOVATOR IN CHIEF Since founding Manhattans Union Square Café in 1985, Meyer has been a force in the hospitality industry. He was an early adopter of online reservations and has served on OpenTables advisory board. USHG, where Meyer is executive chairman, has expanded beyond restaurants to include Hospitality Quotient, a consulting and professional development arm. In 2017, he launched Enlightened Hospitality Investments, a private equity fund that backs businesses that share his values around taking care of employees and customers. I’ve made a career out of driving some people crazy, but in a nice way, Meyer says. If [an innovation] was easy, it wouldve been done already. With Checkless Payments, Meyer challenged the USHG and Fiserv teams to develop a solution that was elegant enough for fine-dining establishments. He didnt want patrons to have to take out their phones to scan a QR code to pay; nor was it practical to set up sensors or other hardware that are part of checkout-free experiences at Amazon Go stores and other retailers. And he didnt want a walled garden that would require customers to use only one kind of credit card or mobile operating system. He also wanted a system that could eventually be extended to other aspects of hospitality, enabling dinners to, say, alert the coat check room or valet that they are getting ready to leave the restaurant, letting them retrieve their belongings or car without waiting. Checkless transactions can benefit not just diners but restaurants, too. Meyer notes that the cumulative time servers and diners spend could instead be used to turn tablesrestaurant-speak for setting, seating, serving, and clearing a table. And Fiservs Mobayeni says restaurants can use the checkless enrollment process for deeper customer engagement. They can let guests know theres a featured menu item or they have a special wine, she says. She envisions a day when diners might use the platform to place their first drink order in advance, which also helps the restaurant operate more efficiently. ITS NOT DINE AND DASH USHGs Macpherson admits that diners may need some coaching on the new system, which was piloted at Manhatta, the groups fine-dining restaurant in New Yorks financial district. Even when I was using it there was this stigma of dining and dashing, she says. Servers, too, will have to adopt a new etiquette. Says Meyer: If Im a guest, heres what Id want my server to say at some point: I know youre part of the [Checkless Payments] program, and I hope Im going to have a chance to thank you and say goodbye, but youre welcome to leave any time you want. USHG will begin rolling out the program at additional restaurants this summer. Fiserv, which last year reported revenue of more than $20 billion, will then make Checkless Payments available to customers of its new Clover Hospitality point-of-sale system for upscale restaurants. I asked Macpherson what it is like to work for an executive chairman who is also an innovator with a reputation for high quality. Its inspirational and exciting, she says. Danny is a beacon in the industry, pushing us and challenging us to think bigger. I like thinking big, too. How can we do what people might say is the impossible? ARE YOU AN INNOVATOR IN CHIEF? Are you a CEO or executive chairman who leads innovation at your organization? Do your employees find your status as innovator in chief inspiring, or do you drive people crazyin a nice way? Send your thoughts to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Read more: Innovation starts at the top Can startups solve our thorniest challenges? Meet Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies of 2025 Mindset shifts to be a more innovative leader
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“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”This timeless insight from renowned 20th-century Austrian-America management consultant Peter Drucker is especially relevant for startup leaders who aim to build something that stands the test of time. In todays digital economy, global expansion has never been easieryet many tech founders are still focused on an initial geographical market. While starting with that thinking may seem practical, failing to embed a global mindset from the get-go can limit long-term potential. The reality is, startups that delay international thinking face tougher roadblocks laterscaling infrastructure, product-market fit, cultural nuances, and competition become bigger hurdles than necessary. The best startups anticipate these challenges early, positioning for global impact before opening a second office. Ive seen this firsthandsetting out to empower the world with your companys tools shouldnt just be a tagline; it should shape every product decision, hire, and expansion effort. For founders unsure where to start, heres what Ive learned about building global-first from day one. Establishing a clear vision A strong vision serves as a guiding light through the thousands of decisions a company must make. Startups that scale successfully have a clear and ambitious purpose that informs their strategy from day one. For example, at Canva, weve aimed to make our product accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. And while this seemed massively aspirational at our founding, it’s helped us avoid complacency, and feels more realistic as you focus on hitting incremental milestones. In the early days, you wont be able to build a solution for every conceivable challenge. Focusing on your most obvious core audience, or, finding a niche that isnt too restrictivetools for real estate, e-commerce, marketing, etc.can ensure the foundation to support future expansion. Balancing ambition with practicality isnt just a challengeits a necessity. Those who master it pave the way for sustainable, scalable global success. Solve a problem that transcends borders Startups often face resource constraints, making it tempting to prioritize short-term gains over long-term scalability. However, founders must resist the urge to build products solely for their initial market. Instead, they should develop solutions with modularity and adaptability in mind. I believe in focusing on solving a fundamental problemsimplifying graphic design was our strategic focuswhile ensuring that a platform can evolve for different industries, languages, and cultures. As your startup grows, maintaining flexibility becomes even more important. More than 10 years in, my company is still adapting to changing markets, shifting consumer expectations, and emerging trends. Balance focus and flexibility If you are an American startup founder, remember that 95.7% of the worlds population lives outside of the U.S., and many of them may fall into your target customer demographic. Therefore, the ability to refine strategies based on global opportunities is a crucial trait of long-term success. This goes far beyond just translating the interface. It involves integrating local payment methods, content, templates, SEO strategies, and much more. At Canva we refer to a helpful metaphor of cupcakes and icing. The cupcake is our core offering of design and workplace software. The icing is the way we build on top to suit different countries, languages, and industries. The most important thing is that the cupcake is made in a way that it can expand and serve all of these different needs. The power of passion and storytelling A founders passion is contagious. When a team believes in the companys mission, theyll go the extra mile to execute it. But passion alone isnt enoughit must be communicated effectively and proven in actions. Founders should meaningfully lift the hood on their own motivations as often as is appropriate, whether it’s the inspiration behind the product, the obstacles overcome, or the impact their product has had on customers worldwide. I know from experience that this can be extremely successful in uniting a workforce around a shared mission. This becomes even more critical as a company scales across borders and languages. Consistently telling and refining your story ensures alignment and momentum, especially as new markets open up. A globally resonant narrative makes it easier to expand into different regions while maintaining a strong brand identityand it starts at the top! Integrating emerging technologies Startups that embrace new technologies early gain a competitive edge. Staying ahead means keeping a pulse on industry shifts, making judgement calls as to whether a new technology aligns with your goals, and taking calculated risks. It also means building to adapt, and minimizing reliance on any single model or partner. Find ways to be pluggable with other tools and technologies so you can evolve your tech stack without starting from scratch. In Q3 2024, AI startups accounted for 31% of global venture funding, signaling an industry-wide shift toward automation and intelligent systems. AI is offering an unprecedented opportunity to grow efficiently, without adding costs. Companies that delay integrating these advancements risk falling behind. Regardless of a startups stage, a forward-thinking approach to technology is key to long-term success. Building internationally and for decades to come The most successful startups arent those that expand internationally just because they need to continue to grow sales; theyre the ones that embed a global mindset into their culture, strategy, and vision from the get-go. Founders must recognize that the world is their market, not just their home country. From my native Australia to America and everywhere in between, each market might benefit from a product in different ways. Wise founders will commit to exploring and embracing those differences by building adaptable prducts, crafting a resonant brand story, hiring teams with diverse perspectives, and leveraging technology to stay ahead. In the end, the startups that think globally from the beginning are the ones that dont just react to the futurethey create it, just as Drucker envisioned.
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E-Commerce
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have just answered a question thats probably occurred to Lego fans for decades: What if I could instantly turn any idea into a Lego set?In a paper titled Generating Physically Stable and Buildable LEGO Designs from Text, published last week, six coauthors lay out an invention theyre calling LegoGPT. This generative AI model can take a text-based prompt, like an acoustic guitar with an hourglass shape, and determine all of the necessary Lego pieces needed to build that structure and how to assemble them. The LegoGPT demo and code is publicly available through the study, meaning that Lego hobbyists are free to try it out at home. Although outputs are currently limited to around 20 categories (including basic items like chairs, guitars, boats, trains, and cars), the researchers are working to expand the models capabilities into more complicated categories. Ultimately, they think a LegoGPT-type tool might serve as the basis for a variety of real-world tasks in architecture and product design.[Image: CMU]How LegoGPT predicts its next blockLegoGPT is a fine-tuned version of Metas LLaMA-3.2-Instruct-1B language learning model, which you can think of as an open source ChatGPT. To teach the model how to make Lego structures, researchers trained it using a database of 47,000 Lego structures and 28,000 unique 3D shapes, each with their own descriptive captions. Based on that vast swath of designs, LegoGPT is able to predict how to build a hypothetical object using only a text prompt.To do that, LegoGPT uses something called an autoregressive model, which is common among the most popular generative AI platforms.[Image: CMU]ChatGPT and Llama are autoregressive models because, given the string of words that theyve already outputted, they want to predict the next word, explains Ava Pun, one of the studys coauthors and a PhD student at CMU. So if you ask, What is the weather, and it predicts The weather today is, then it will try to predict the next word: sunny, rainy, and so on. With Lego GPT, instead of predicting the next word, it wants to predict the next brick.Once LegoGPT has created a 3D model it thinks will work, the LLM needs a way to make sure that the structure will actually be stable. According to Pun, that proved tricky, considering that existing simulators arent trained to understand the physics of a Lego brick. So, the CMU team built their own physics algorithm for LegoGPT to check its work.We developed a customized physics reasoning algorithm that accounts for all the physical forces that the bricks experience: for example, the downward force due to gravity, friction forces, and contact forces from the other bricks that theyre touching, Pun says. The algorithm constructs a force model for the structure and then evaluates the forces over the entire structure. If these physical forces sum to zero, that means the structure will not move around. LegoGPT automatically uses this algorithm to ensure that its found a viable solution. If any of the block its chosen is causing the model to turn out wobbly, the model will continue iterating until it lands on a new version that passes the test.[Image: CMU]A future real-world applicationSo far, researchers have used LegoGPT to create a range of structures, including vintage cars, steamships, and an electric guitar. Currently, the model only works on a 20x20x20 voxel grid, though Pun says the team is already planning on adding more brick types to the models database and expanding the grid resolution.For Lego fans who want to play around at home, the studys demo, available through a public portal, can turn simple prompts into a buildable 3D Lego model and a list of necessary parts. Because LegoGPT isnt made to be Lego-builder-facing, it doesnt produce step-by-step instructions, meaning the main challenge will be figuring out how to arrange the component parts in the right order. Pun says her team used Lego brick assembly to test AIs 3D-building capabilities because of the blocks accessibility. Eventually, though, they believe this concept could be applied to real-world scenarios, like helping architects draft buildings or designing custom furniture from a predefined set of parts. Todays generative AIs cant offer thatyou can generate a cool image or video of a chair, but the model doesnt know how these things can be made in the real world, Pun says. We wanted to address this challenge by integrating physical laws and assembly constraints into generative models and creating objects that function in reality.
Category:
E-Commerce
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