In Chapter 14 of 16 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur and IndieGoGo co-founder Slava Rubin answers "What Were the Milestones in the Seven Years You Worked at Diamond Consulting and What Led You to Pursue Other Opportunities?" Rubin reflects on the milestones achieved through his seven years working with Diamond Management and Technology Consultants. Rubin segments his progress into incremental steps, from doing analyst work to leading work to leading a team and then selling the work. Rubin discusses approaches to managing stress and overcoming challenge as well as building transferable skills useful in entrepreneurial pursuits.
Slava Rubin is CEO and co-founder of Indiegogo, the world's largest crowdfunding platform. Indiegogo empowers anyone, anywhere, anytime to raise funds for any idea—creative, cause-related or entrepreneurial. Prior to Indiegogo, Rubin worked as a management consultant. He earned his BSE degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What were the milestones in the seven years you worked at Diamond Consulting and what lead you to pursue other opportunities?
Slava Rubin: So, there`s really those various steps of consulting, if you want to generalize. There`s being able to do the work, being able to lead the work, lead the team, sell the work. It took me a couple of years to graduate from each one of those steps and it really was an amazing transition. As if I was at a new company or I had a new job. To be able to crank out models or presentations use to be really, really stressful, and they were hard.
Erik Michielsen: How did you manage that stress?
Slava Rubin: Again, it goes back to my childhood, understanding what`s a big deal and what`s a small deal. If you can make it through those other things what`s the big deal with a client yelling a little bit, your partner yelling at you a little bit? You have to be able to manage them. If you show them this is your plan, this is how you`re going to execute it, they have to believe in you and you have to execute. But, as soon as I knew how to do those, I wanted to do the new step, and the new step was able to lead that work by myself or a section. After I did that it was about leading a team and interacting with a client. There is nothing more valuable than getting the growth of leading a team, interaction with the client, having to manage that situation, knowing what is big fire, what is a small fire. This is when we`re getting into real entrepreneurial work, being able to manage those situations, so there definitely a lot of learning that happens.