Inspirational Leadership: Stories of Strategy and Success with Aydin Mirzaee

In my work at Odgers, I have the privilege of speaking with Canada’s most dynamic leaders, including those at the forefront of innovation and technology. Aydin Mirzaee, CEO and Co-Founder of Fellow, is one of these leaders. As a lifelong entrepreneur, Aydin brings a unique mix of scrappy startup energy and visionary thinking to the evolving world of artificial intelligence, meetings, and productivity. His story is one of continuous reinvention, strategic growth, and staying grounded in the midst of rapid change.

An Entrepreneurial Spirit From the Start

Aydin’s entrepreneurial drive emerged early. “My brother, Amin, and I, from a very young age, were starting all sorts of businesses and he has been alongside me for every one of our startups,” he shared. Growing up in New York City, they built websites, launched a search engine, and designed custom software solutions with the goal of developing creative solutions to real-world problems.

After moving to Canada to attend university, Aydin pursued engineering but always knew entrepreneurship was the goal. While working at Nortel, he co-founded his first startup: BOK Systems, a clever workaround to make long-distance calls behave like local ones in the pre-smartphone era. “It took off,” he said, especially among international university students calling home. As his first startup, the experiences learned from starting BOK Systems planted the seeds for what was to come later.

In 2008, Aydin teamed up with co-founders Samuel Cormier-Iijima and Eli Fathi to build Fluidware, a provider of online survey and application review tools which was acquired by SurveyMonkey. “We tried to raise money, but nobody would give us any, so we decided we had to bootstrap and make it profitable quickly,” he explained. The experience taught him to lead with resourcefulness and urgency, shaping a leadership style grounded in scrappiness, decisiveness, and an ability to thrive under pressure.

Fellow: Reinventing the Modern Meeting

In 2017, Aydin and his co-founders launched Fellow with the goal of supporting managers by building a product designed to serve as a co-pilot for leadership. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Aydin made a decisive pivot, quickly evolving the platform to meet the new realities of remote work. Under his leadership, Fellow transformed into a full-scale AI-first meeting productivity tool that reflects not only technological innovation, but also a deep understanding of how leadership needs were shifting. “It’s changing the way people work,” he said. 

Fellow enables leaders and teams to get more from fewer meetings, thanks to features like AI-generated summaries, follow-up recommendations, and what Aydin calls a "virtual chief of staff." This concept isn’t just a tagline; it reflects his broader leadership philosophy which involves equipping people at all levels to act with the clarity and confidence once reserved for the executive suite. “Previously, only CEOs would have chiefs of staff, and now with Fellow, everybody can have one,” he explained.

Evolving Leadership Philosophy

Reflecting on his journey, Aydin noted differences in his leadership from Fluidware to Fellow. “At Fluidware, we didn’t have one-on-ones, no management meetings, no board, no CFO, no HR,” he recalled. “It was very unconventional, but there was a deep desire to do things and get things done.”

Now at Fellow, Aydin leads an experienced and balanced team with a more structured approach. “Everybody acts like a co-founder,” he said. "When something doesn’t go well, I’m not the only one sweating it. Sometimes they sweat it more than I do."

They also codified cultural values early. “We were 12 people when we came up with our cultural values,” he said. Those values continue to evolve as the company matures in the high-speed world of AI. For Aydin, defining and refining these values has been essential to maintaining alignment, supporting decision-making, and reinforcing a strong culture as the team scales and adapts to rapid industry changes.

Learning From Uncertainty

Aydin openly acknowledges that early setbacks took a toll. “When I was first starting my career, something bad would happen and I’d be depressed for an entire month,” he shared. Over time, though, experience shifted his perspective. “Now, I realize most of the time when I freak out, it turns out it wasn’t as bad as I thought.” That shift in mindset has become a defining feature of his leadership. Rather than viewing challenges as failures, he now sees them as part of the process, or as opportunities to learn, pivot, or uncover something better. This ability to stay grounded has helped Aydin approach the unpredictable nature of startup life with greater resilience and long-term focus.

His outlook on uncertainty is now both philosophical and pragmatic. “It’s always too early to conclude whether something is good or bad,” he said. “One of the questions I like to ask myself is: what can I do to make it so that this thing was the best thing that ever happened to us?” It’s a question that not only reframes adversity but also drives action. For Aydin, leadership isn’t about avoiding risk, it’s about navigating it with clarity, purpose, and a mindset focused on turning setbacks into strategic inflection points.

Looking Ahead: An AI-First Future

For Aydin, the future of work is AI-enabled and radically different. He envisions a workplace where AI agents collaborate with one another, summarize meetings, and surface only the insights humans need. “We're going to work in organizations where there will be ten times more agents than humans,” he said. “Everybody becomes a manager in that world.”

Despite the pace of change, Aydin remains optimistic about AI’s potential to create opportunity, not just disruption. “If people are ten times more productive for the same cost, there’s a lot more ROI in hiring great people,” he said. “It’s going to make the Industrial Revolution look like a Tuesday.”

Authentic, forward-looking, and deeply grounded in experience, Aydin’s leadership offers a compelling glimpse into the future of work, and the mindset required to shape it.