‘Three heads in one’: A day in the life of Hussein Ahmed, founder & CEO of Oxygen Bank
- Hussein Ahmed is the CEO of Oxygen, a challenger bank tailored to digital native consumers and to freelancers, independent contractors, and entrepreneurs.
- From walking his dog Oreo, to meeting VCs, to putting out email fires, here’s a typical day in Hussein Ahmed’s life.

There are challenges that come with starting a challenger bank. And as the founder and CEO of one, you’re faced with the task of managing all of them.
Hussein Ahmed is the founder and CEO of San Francisco-based challenger bank, Oxygen. He’s not a stranger to startup chaos — he founded two other companies before starting Oxygen.
Ahmed started the bank after realizing there was a gap in financial services for freelancers and independent contractors — members of what he calls “the hustler generation”. The incentive came from his own personal experience as an independent contractor.
“I was consulting on the side and working out of a WeWork location, and realized quickly that to large banks, I was atypical in that I didn’t have an ordinary 9-5, office-based job,” said Ahmed. “I saw a gap in the marketplace for creatives, freelancers, and contractors. Oxygen was started as a bank for these people, the hustler generation.”
SPONSORED
But while the bank may be called Oxygen, Ahmed doesn’t get a lot of time to breathe. With a team spread all over the world, he has to remain present and accounted for at all sorts of hours.
Starting at 7:00 a.m. and ending at 3:00 a.m., here’s a day in Hussein Ahmed’s life:
07:00 a.m.: It’s me, my wife, and our dog Oreo — that’s kind of our household fusion.
So at 7, I wake up and take Oreo out for a quick walk. Then I come home and have breakfast with my wife.
08:00 a.m.: After breakfast, I kickstart the day with meetings. My early meetings are usually with a partner in New York. Today I’m meeting with — not sure I can say his name — let’s call him Mike, one of our partners on the East Coast.
08:30 a.m.: I start catching up on Slack messages from the teams in Europe and San Francisco.
This content is available exclusively to Tearsheet Outlier members.
Missing out? Subscribe today and you’ll receive unlimited access to all Tearsheet content, original research, exclusive webinars and events, member-only newsletters from Tearsheet editors and reporters and much more. Join Outlier now — $59/mo Already an Outlier member? Sign in to your account