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NETOPIA Payments is the leading provider of digital payment solutions in Romania, offering online card and SMS payments for businesses.

Our ecosystem carries strong logos, but what matters most is the community behind them.

Some people write books about what they’ve studied.
Dave Morrissey wrote Grow Like Tech about what he lived. You can buy this incredible book on Amazon, today.

Fifteen years inside Meta and TikTok.
Two very different worlds, one built on alignment, the other on speed.
Both obsessed with growth.
Both flawed in their own ways.

This week, Dave joined EVOLVE to share what happens when companies scale faster than their culture, when “fail fast” becomes a slogan without a North Star, and why real leadership is the art of bringing clarity to chaos.

We opened with the question:
“Can fail fast become a lazy excuse?”

Dave didn’t hesitate.

At Meta, he saw structured experimentation, teams knew their mission, their metrics, and what they were chasing.
At TikTok, speed was oxygen but sometimes without a compass.

The difference?
Energy with direction versus chaos at scale.

That set the tone for the hour.
Because moving fast isn’t what builds great companies moving with purpose does The illusion of control

Before tech, Dave was in music managing artists, touring with DJs, living in the rhythm of sound.

And it was there, he said, that he learned the three traits that make any team world-class:

He told a story about working with a DJ who would spend eight hours sound-checking a venue, sketching out the setup, and later sending feedback back to the promoter just to make the next event better.

That small act of care, of giving back, became his blueprint for leadership.

That’s also what EVOLVE is about curiosity that leads to progress, persistence that builds careers, and generosity that strengthens community.

Dave said something that landed deeply with our members:

At Meta, culture was a framework clear mission, localized autonomy, and a shared sense of purpose.
At TikTok, it was energy without alignment.
The difference, he said, wasn’t resources it was listening.

Meta’s leaders didn’t just push a mission from the top down; they localized it.
TikTok, by contrast, tried exporting Eastern playbooks into Western markets — with friction as the result.

Every company says “people first,” but few operate like they mean it.

When the topic shifted to meetings, the room came alive.

Dave laughed, then said:

That one sentence stopped everyone.

He explained how layers of middle management often compensate for a lack of clarity — endless calls, alignment sessions, and status updates.

His rule of thumb:
Every meeting should have one thing a desired outcome.

If you can’t define it, don’t schedule it.
If the outcome is simply to connect then make it human, not performative.

That single principle, he said, transformed how he worked at Meta.

It’s not the number of meetings that matter — it’s the clarity they create.

Jeane, one of our members, added a sharp observation: most meetings are survival mechanisms a way for insecure managers to protect themselves.
Dave agreed.

And then he introduced a phrase that resonated with everyone:
Impact over effort.

It’s how he prioritizes everything from decisions to communication.
“What’s the easiest way to create the greatest impact?”

It’s not laziness it’s focus.
And in that Irish way of phrasing things, he said,

When asked about what the East and West could learn from each other, Dave didn’t sugarcoat it.

At TikTok, the intensity was electric “volume at all costs,” he said.
At Meta, it was structured ambition.
Both systems work until they don’t.

And yet, he warned, speed without reflection leads to burnout — and boredom is becoming a lost art.

By the end, the session came full circle from fail fast to think slow.

He talked about how product names like Claude and Anthropic feel sterile, disconnected from the people they serve.
The more AI advances, the more human we’ll need to be.

Here’s what the room walked away with:

Every EVOLVE session connects to a bigger truth that leadership is changing.
It’s not about control anymore; it’s about clarity.
Not about speed; about direction.

Dave’s reflections reminded us that culture isn’t a side effect of growth — it’s the engine that drives it.

And that’s what EVOLVE stands for:
A collective of leaders who value depth over noise, humanity over hype, and long-term thinking over trends.

We’re not chasing what’s next.
We’re shaping it together.

And that’s exactly what EVOLVE stands for:
to become the most trusted and global house of senior commerce experts the Michelin-level standard for excellence.

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