In Chapter 7 of 12 in his 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, IndieGoGo co-founder and entrepreneur Slava Rubin answers "Where Has Learning to Say No Been Most Impactful in Your Growth as an Entrepreneur?" Rubin notes that between his Year 1 and Year 2 Capture Your Flag interviews, his company has grown and press, new business, and investor opportunities are abundant. He needs to make sure he is managing company growth, evolving a working product, and managing client relationships while choosing to engage new opportunities. Rubin is co-founder and CEO of IndieGoGo.com, a crowdfunding startup whose platform helps individuals and groups finance their passions. Before IndieGoGo, Rubin worked in management consulting for Diamond Consulting, now a PWC company. Rubin founded and manages non-profit Music Against Myeloma to raise funds and awareness to fight cancer. He earned a BBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: Where has learning to say no been most impactful in your growth as an entrepreneur?
Slava Rubin: Well, especially going from our previous interview to now, there is just so much more opportunity at IndieGoGo whether it be new press opportunities, new clients, new business development opportunities, new investors, new interviews, new anything, and you can really go crazy trying to follow all of these opportunities but you also have to build your company and have happy clients and make sure that the product works really well and improve it.
So it’s really around balancing what you should say yes to and what you should say no to. I lean towards saying yes, but the focus and the execution requires no’s, and I think it’s just really important to be confident in when no is the right thing to say.