In Chapter 10 of 16 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Slava Rubin answers "What Non-Business Experience Has Done the Most to Bolster Your Self-Confidence?" shares how he was thirteen years old when he lost his father and what he learned about himself helping his mom through the grieving process. The experience provides Rubin perspective he later uses to apply his parents' encouragement to plan big goals and work to achieve them.
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 non business experience has done the most to bolster your self confidence?
Slava Rubin: What I would say, this is a really tricky question. What I would say, the truth of the matter is… Well, my dad died when I was 13 and it`s as simple as my brother was four and a half years older than me, so my brother was just going to college so he wasn`t at home, so it was just my mom and me. You know my mom did great, she`s a wonderful person but no one deals very well with having their husband die or the father of their children and you know my mom had some tough times but really I was there with her and we dealt with some tough times together. I think we figured out that you know all these other things like hitting the ball into the right part of the court or getting an A on a test or cleaning up the leaves correctly or asking a girl out were really no big potatoes compared with hanging with my mom and growing with the issue of having my dad pass away.
So I think that`s the main factor, not that I wish that for anyone to have their parent pass away because that really sucks, but before that I was saying that my parents just really instilled a lot of confidence in me, they told me I could do whatever I want, my parents were smart, they put disciple in me and they said if I work hard, you should be able to accomplish it.