✍️ Outsider Ink: Michael Praeger Rewind, Charlotte Startup Growth, Practices for Leadership
Outsider Ink is a bi-weekly newsletter from Outsider Inc.
The early momentum for Outsider Inc. continued last week with another outstanding episode—this time with Michael Praeger. He is co-founder and CEO of AvidXchange, a Charlotte-based accounts payable platform for mid-market companies. Mike led the company from its humble beginnings in 2000 to a 2021 IPO valuing the company at more than $5 billion. As CEO today, Mike leads a platform that employs 1,600 people, services 9,000+ customers, and processes $215 billion in payments annually. More than that, Mike is a humble and pragmatic entrepreneur who shares his wisdom on leadership and business culture, based on his decades of experience as a CEO.
Listen: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music
Follow: LinkedIn, Instagram, X, BlueSky, TikTok
Charlotte’s Tech Ecosystem
Following the episode, I took a look at the data to better understand the growth and evolution of the Charlotte tech startup ecosystem. In the chart below, I plot the annual number of venture deals—an imperfect but useful measure of tech startup activity— in the Charlotte metropolitan area between 2010 and 2024 (green bars) against the region’s share of such deals across the United States during the same period (blue lines—actual and smoothed for trend).
The chart illustrates the steady rise in Charlotte’s tech startup activity, which is now roughly 5-6x in recent years compared with a decade and half ago. Charlotte’s share of US venture activity rose from around 0.3% in 2010 to 0.5% today—still relatively small overall but a steady increase compared to the rest of the country. It’s still early days for Charlotte’s tech startup ecosystem, but breakout success like AvidXchange, and emerging strengths in key areas like fintech and data analytics should fuel the fire.
Practices for High Growth Leadership
During the episode, Michael mentioned his book, The Journey to CEO Success: 7 Practices for High Growth Leadership. Drawing from his firsthand leadership journey and co-author Patrick Thean’s decades of executive coaching, the book distills seven core practices that build the foundation for sustainable leadership—from cultivating curiosity and humility to aligning teams, building culture, and focusing on the core customer. A mix of personal stories and practical frameworks, the book offers both emerging and seasoned leaders a blueprint for personal as well as company growth.
What stood out to me most is how practical and deeply personal the book feels. It’s not another generic leadership book filled with clichés—it’s a grounded, experience-driven guide from people who have been in the trenches as founders and executives. I also appreciated how the book doesn’t separate leadership from personal growth—a mistake that can prevent leaders and companies from achieving their full potential. I found this genuine take about durable leadership to be deeply refreshing.
For those interested, Michael and Patrick describe the key themes from their book in this short podcast, The Power of Change.
Episode Highlights
To conclude, here are two of my favorite moments from the Michael Praeger Outsider Inc. episode. In this first reel, Michael advises founders to keep their execution plan as narrow as possible early on, and to not try to take on too much:
And in this clip, Michael shares his perspective on hiring the right people for the right stage of the company—what works at scale may not work early on.
I greatly appreciate Michael’s adherence to the customer’s voice and his commitment to personal development. I’d love to have him back to go deeper on both topics.
Up Next
Tune in next week when I’ll be speaking with Wade Foster, the co-founder and CEO of Zapier—a workflow automation software company. Wade has led the company from its humble beginnings out of a Startup Weekend hackathon to several hundred million in annual recurring revenue and a reported $5B valuation, all after raising just $1.3 million in outside capital—a meager amount by today’s Silicon Valley standards. Wade continues to lead the fully-remote company today from his home in Central Missouri.