The Founder's Exit: Letting Go of the CEO Chair [Alex Tomic]

​Alex Tomic co-founded Alea and built it into one of the industry's most recognisable aggregator brands. Then he did something most founders can't: he stepped down as CEO and handed the day-to-day to someone else.

​For the founders and CEOs in this room, that's the decision most of you are quietly avoiding. Not because you can't find the right person. Because letting go means confronting who you are without the title.

​This session isn't about succession planning theory. It's about the actual mechanics of stepping back, and the harder question underneath it: what happens to your culture, your best people, and your own identity when you're no longer the one making every call.

​What we'll discuss:

• ​The Founder-to-Chairman Identity Crisis: What actually happens to your sense of self when you're no longer "the CEO." How Alex navigated that transition without losing his grip on the business.

• ​Toxic High-Performers: The people who deliver but poison the culture around them. When to protect them, when to cut them, and how to tell the difference before it costs you your best people.

• ​Corporate Culture as a Founder's Fingerprint: Why culture doesn't survive a leadership transition by accident. What Alex deliberately built in, and what he had to let go of.

• ​Personal Brand as Business Strategy: Alex has been unusually open that his public persona (the podcast, the visibility, the hyperbaric chamber stunts) is a calculated business decision, not vanity. How founders can use personal brand without it becoming a liability.