{"id":92930,"date":"2020-10-20T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/envatoelemestg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=92930"},"modified":"2025-11-30T10:49:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T23:49:53","slug":"new-envato-ceo-hichame-assi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/new-envato-ceo-hichame-assi","title":{"rendered":"Five Minutes With Envato CEO Hichame Assi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI\u2019m not really one for titles, to be honest, and I never strove or thought about being a CEO,\u201d reflects Hichame Assi from his home office in Sydney. The former HotelsCombined CEO has joined Envato this month to take on the top job from co-founder Collis Ta\u2019eed and takes up a relaxed presence as he talks through his journey to now, with the afternoon sun of spring filtering through his window. \u201cFor me, I\u2019m always focused on solving the problem. I guess over the years I\u2019ve helped align teams to solve problems and eventually someone thought I must\u2019ve been good enough to be entrusted to lead.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a leader, I try to find the sweet spot between someone\u2019s passion and the needs of the business. I\u2019ve been fortunate to have some very inspiring people in my life along the way, whether my parents, partner, teachers, friends or colleagues. I have learnt from everyone and they have all had a role in shaping my perspective on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a leader, I try to find the sweet spot between someone\u2019s passion and the needs of the business.<\/p>Envato CEO Hichame Assi<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hichame\u2019s journey to Envato has been one of travel and adventure, from his formative years as a student in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo – where he also developed a love for NYHC punk<\/a> – through to post-graduate education in London and, eventually, settling down in Australia\u2019s harbour city. It\u2019s a unique experience, he acknowledges, that has marked him as a truly global citizen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m definitely grateful to be a TCK; a third culture kid<\/a>. My father is Syrian, my mother is English, and while I was born in France, I\u2019ve also lived in Syria, UK and Australia since 2008.  I feel at home everywhere and also nowhere as I don\u2019t think its where you go but who you\u2019re with<\/a>. I met a lot of different people growing up and learning in international schools, which themselves give you a unique perspective on the world and friends all over the globe. The main thing I got out of this is respecting a diversity of culture and thought, and in my career I\u2019ve found myself constantly striving to nudge this diversity towards alignment.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Envato
New Envato CEO Hichame Assi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Studying business and the finer points of managing global eCommerce startups were actually not Hichame\u2019s first choices when he graduated from secondary education in Syria. \u201cI wanted to study physics or pure math, but ended up studying literature and humanities; you can put that down to a quirk of the Syrian educational system.  But it was still fascinating for me to break down language and how to interpret it, especially psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m always focused on solving the problem.<\/p>Envato CEO Hichame Assi<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a few years later when I had the chance to do a Masters in eCommerce; I was part of the first cohort to take the course at the University of London, and it was a great experience. The course had three key tracks: Tech, Management and Economics, all meshing together to help explain the fundamentals of eCommerce. It also helped me realize that I did not have the patience nor attention-to-detail to be good at tech or economics!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was fortunate, however, to be doing this study while <\/em>working in a large global eCommerce business in the online travel space – OctopusTravel – where it was clear that the \u2018practicalities\u2019 of day to day running of such a business were evolving much quicker than the academia could deal with. I felt sorry for our professors and lecturers who had to balance between the reading material and the influx of daily changes in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The now-defunct Octopus Travel gave Hichame the reason to visit Australia, and while the company is now long gone from the fast-paced – some would say brutal – online travel industry, the rest is history. You could even argue his arrival at Envato was destined to be – as a ThemeForest <\/a>customer he already has front-end experience with the company\u2019s products! – so while the transition from running HotelsCombined to heading up Envato\u2019s global community of creative assets tools and talent might seem an irregular move, for Hichame, there are more similarities than not, \u201cI had 20 great years in the space and learnt most of what I know today in terms of scaling a business and leading teams,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is generally considered to be one of the most competitive industries out there and super fast-paced. Having to keep up while maintaining a strict focus needed a culture and ethos that was very entrenched in agile thinking and execution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat I can take these lessons and apply them in another fast-paced, values-driven culture is exciting for me, and I\u2019m looking forward to the challenge of helping Envato, and this inspiring team, scale globally for the next stage of its own journey in the digital creative industries.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Envato’s new CEO reflects on his journey to now. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":92931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-people-culture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elements.envato.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}