In Chapter 9 of 16 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, Belarus-born American entrepreneur Slava Rubin answers "What Childhood Experiences Contributed Most to Shaping Your Passions for Food, Travel, and Film?" Rubin shares the experiences cultivating his passions for food, travel, and film. A latch key child with two working parents, Rubin watches "Yang Can Cook" and "Julia Child", learns to cook, and soon finds satisfaction feeding others and making them happy. Born abroad, Rubin prioritizes a college abroad experience to Belgium to broaden his cultural experience. Rubin's film interest shapes through Blockbuster visits and his tendency not to choose movies by quantity but by those showing film festival olive branch award logos. These collective experiences - enabling happiness, opening cultural doors, and creating fine art - influence Rubin to apply these interests and build the IndieGoGo mission.
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. 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: So, what childhood experiences contributed most to shaping your passions for food, travel and film?
Slava Rubin: I was a latchkey kid, I would say, where I was coming home and having to open the door by myself because my parents were both professionals and they were making money. My mom was a doctor and my dad was engineer. And I think I just got bored eating leftovers and cold food out of the fridge and so I just started deciding I just needed more tasty food. So I started experimenting with the microwave, watching Yang Can Cook and Julia Child, and whoever on PBS and starting making some food. I think I really enjoyed it and then saw that making food, but then feeding others with the food that I made really made them happy, which was kind of a happiness for me, which in the long run which was just very cool. So I think that perpetuated till today because I even love making food today.
I think the travel thing...I was born in Belarus, so you can say I was addicted to travel as soon as I was born because we moved to New York City right away, as my family moved to America. But when I was in college I studied abroad in Belgium, and I guess it's also cliche, I just fell in love with traveling because I lived in Belgium on purpose. It was kind of in the heart in Europe and I traveled all around every week and I didn't do much work for classes and it was cool. From there it's just been nonstop. I've torn through an entire passport and had to get additional pages and that good stuff.
In terms of film, I don't really know the answer to that except for when I was at Blockbuster as kid I wasn't always drawn to the wall that had the most titles. Just because you had 74 copies of something didn't mean that was exactly what I wanted to see. Sometimes I wanted to see were those olive branches, which back when I was a kid I actually didn’t know what those olive branches meant yet, but today those kind of mean it's a festival equals the olive branches, so I would kind of look for those branches to be like, ``Oh, which one got the most branches.`` It's kind of funny because they still do the same thing today and try to put a lot of branches on your DVD title. I was like, ``Wow, these are really cool movies.`` I mean, now you look back I know I know I watch ``Reservoir Dogs`` well before ``Pulp Fiction`` came out and back when Quentin Tarantino was not so special, but it`s kind of cool when you kind of find those gems. Plus, they're a little more interesting. You get a little more than just he vanilla and chocolate, you get all those crazy flavors.