In Chapter 2 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, crowdfunding entrepreneur and IndieGoGo CEO Slava Rubin answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing As You Get Older?" Rubin shares how he, his mother and his brother recently took their first family trip in 14 years. He shares the challenge of convincing his mom that leaving corporate America to start a company was a sound decision and how a funny Starbucks moment helped her better understand the business. Slava Rubin returns to CYF for his Year 3 interview. As CEO and Co-Founder, Rubin has helped transform cause and project fundraising by establishing his company IndieGoGo as a global leader in crowdfunding. He is also active in philanthropy, starting the Music Against Myeloma annual charity event to fight cancer. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?
Slava Rubin: Well, I just had my first vacation with my mom and my brother together, the three of us in a long time. The last time we were together was I believe 14 years ago. My brother is older and he’s married with three kids. I have three nephews and, you know, sometimes we’re all hanging out with other people but we haven’t had a vacation just the three of us. So, it’s is a very timely question. I would say that the relationship is great. I love my family, I love my mom and it’s really a matter of – Probably the funniest thing is my mom when I first started Indiegogo thought that I was a nut job because I left a corporate job that was paying fairly well to not only not get paid but actually pay money to work since I invested into my own company, to Bootstrap it, and she had no idea what we were doing and then just recently, Howard Schultz from Starbucks was talking on CNN about this new program about how to donate $5 so that you can get a bracelet from Starbucks so they’ll give that money to jobs, to entrepreneurs so that they can have jobs or create businesses and my mom turned around and said, I think he’s stealing your idea. So, it’s great to have my mom on my side.
Erik Michielsen: That’s great. And how are you learning to better support your mom and your brother as you get older with an increasing amount of activity in your lives?
Slava Rubin: I mean, we’re just very family-oriented and it’s important to amongst all of the hustle and bustle to take some downtime and you know, we like to just cook together, which is our downtime. So, that’s fun.