Doug Jaeger on Managing and Motivating Creative Project Teams

In Chapter 13 of 14 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, creative director and brand marketer Doug Jaeger answers "How Are You Learning to Better Manage and Motivate Teams?" Jaeger finds how he works best in spurts and builds his management style around this on and off approach. He makes sure to check in with his team when taking breaks from his own work and make sure there are no obstacles in their way. He favors this more casual approach over planning regular meetings. Doug Jaeger is co-founder and creative director at JaegerSloan Inc. where he focuses on brand and experimental marketing for clients such as Squarespace, Samsung and PwC. He is an adjunct professor at New York's School of Visual Arts (SVA) and co-curator of JnrlStr. He graduated from Syracuse University.

Doug Jaeger on What Makes Some Collaborations Better Than Others

In Chapter 14 of 14 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, creative director and brand marketer Doug Jaeger answers "What Have You Found to Be the Keys to Creating Successful Project Collaborations?" Jaeger shares what he has learned about collaboration building film teams for production and post-production. He finds ways to build working relationships with people that have different skills and to bring the right mix of skills together when hiring production crews and project teams. Working in a creative director role, he shares the challenge of getting the skills mix right on a project and how he and his business partner have learned to assess fit take people off teams with the fit is not right. Doug Jaeger is co-founder and creative director at JaegerSloan Inc. where he focuses on brand and experimental marketing for clients such as Squarespace, Samsung and PwC. He is an adjunct professor at New York's School of Visual Arts (SVA) and co-curator of JnrlStr. He graduated from Syracuse University.

Slava Rubin on How to Translate Confidence into Effective Leadership

In Chapter 3 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Role Does Confidence Play in the Work That You Do?" To Rubin, a confident approach is fundamental to his leadership style. He learns early in life things are unpredictable and finds being decisive yet flexible a combination that helps translate his confidence into team confidence. 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 role does confidence play in the work that you do?

Slava Rubin: I think confidence is really important. It’s very easy to not be confident ‘cause there’s a lot of things that go wrong. And when you have employees, and when you have a team, they really rely on leadership, and a lot of leadership has to do with confidence. Often, one of the most important things you can do when deciding between two things is not pick one or the other, but rather make the decision, ‘cause the lack of decision is a decision in itself, usually associated with lack of confidence and can just create a stumble for the whole entire team. So it’s important to take action and deal with the consequences.

Erik Michielsen: Is that something that you’ve learned over time? Are you getting better at or is that something as a core skill you’ve kind of always had?

Slava Rubin: I think the idea of taking action without regret and dealing with the next step associated with it and constant iterating based on feedback is something quite core to, you know, the way I grew up.

Erik Michielsen: Yeah? Tell me more about that.

Slava Rubin: I would say that it has to do with you can’t always project what the future will look like. You know, my dad died when I was a kid, so you can’t just say, “Oh, this is what’s gonna happen in the future and that’s what I rely on.” You gotta be able to be a bit more nimble. And I think that feedback loops are tightening so much that you can get so much more information so much quicker that you don’t have to rely on having long projected answers or predictions, that you can just, you know, have a step forward, get some feedback, and then pivot or move around. Yeah, the idea of standing in place is a decision in itself, so just by moving in one direction or the other, you constantly get more feedback.

Slava Rubin on Making Lofty Career Aspirations a Reality

In Chapter 4 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "How Are Your Aspirations Changing As Your Responsibilities Grow?" Rubin shares how his aspirations actually remain constant while his optimism toward how realistic it is to achieve those aspirations grows. Rubin shares how his lofty goal to revolutionize finance and change how the world funds projects is slowly becoming a reality. As he approaches the goal, Rubin works with his co-founders Danae and Eric to bring together more people to share in realizing the vision. 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: How are your aspirations changing as your responsibilities grow? 

Slava Rubin: I would say, actually, my aspirations are staying the same. Maybe I’m only starting to become more optimistic of how realistic it is to hit my aspirations, ‘cause maybe, if several years ago, I still have the same aspirations to become the world’s funding platform, but maybe I was lying to myself that it was even possible, or maybe I was so naïve. And now that it’s becoming a little bit more realistic, I think that I’m just trying to follow through in our potential and realize it, right? I don’t think that my aspirations are changing because it was always a pretty lofty goal.

Erik Michielsen: Yeah.

Slava Rubin: Changing the world of finance and allowing people to fund whatever matters to them is a huge goal. So that’s still the same goal but, you know, now, I just want more co-workers and people to be part of the team to help realize our dream together.

Erik Michielsen: Do you have those moments where you look at Danae, look at Eric, and just shake your head, and say, “How did this all happen?”?

Slava Rubin: It’s actually incredible. We just opened our new office in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful, incredible office, built out, brand new for us, and it’s really a signature Indiegogo office, and we just had our all hands there, with 60 employees, and I stood up, gave a State of the Union talk about Indiegogo, and it’s really incredible to have all these great talent, all these great employees, co-workers, just working towards the same vision, to change people’s lives, have an impact, and let people fund what matters to them.

Slava Rubin on How an Executive Coach Helps Him Be a Better CEO

In Chapter 5 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Skills Are You Working on Right Now to Become Better at Your Job?" Rubin shares how working with an executive coach helps him be a better CEO by improving his decision making, listening, and management skills. He shares how the executive coaching relationship complements what he learns from his cofounders, board of directors, and investors. 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 skills are you working on right now to become better at your job?

Slava Rubin: Definitely around how to lead, how to make decisions, how to listen, and how to focus on people.

Erik Michielsen: Where do you get that direction? Do you have a board of directors now?

Slava Rubin: We do have a board of directors. We’ve had a board of directors since we closed the seed round 2 years ago.

Erik Michielsen: And how do you receive guidance from the board of directors and how does that compare and contrast from the guidance that you receive from, say your co-founders?

Slava Rubin: Typically, in the board meeting, it is a little bit more functional for us, where we’re discussing “What are the challenges? What are the opportunities? How do the numbers look? What are we focusing on the next quarter or what do we do for the last quarter?” But I am in touch with the board and the other investors and advisors a lot throughout them, 3 months between board meetings, plus we’re constantly in touch as executive senior management of the team, and I also have an executive coach. So these are just things where we pull together different feedback, and listening, and keep on trying to improve.

Erik Michielsen: What have you found most helpful in the executive coaching relationship?

Slava Rubin: An executive coach is helpful from the standpoint of everybody has a little bit of bias sometimes in their relationship with you, so it’s hard to be completely open and be able to really have complete feedback as part of the process because an investor has their bias, a co-founder has their own bias, an employee has their own bias, so it’s good to speak to somebody who is a professional, who is just constantly speaking to your type of similar individuals. For me, the situation is founder or CEO, and being able to parallel that, to explain, “Hey, this is what I’ve seen. Are there people going through a similar situation? Maybe this is what you’re going through, and maybe have you thought about this?” So it’s helpful.

Slava Rubin on How a 5 to 5 Policy Improves CEO Productivity

In Chapter 6 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "As a CEO, How Do You Decide What Time Horizon to Focus on in Your Work?" Rubin shares how growing from 15 to 60 employees has changed his and his co-founders' job responsibilities. He manages his commitments and priorities by using a "5 to 5" policy of working on things that can get answered in 5 minutes or that relate to 5-year company goals. 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: As a CEO, how do you decide what time horizon to focus on in your work?

Slava Rubin: I think that’s a great question ‘cause it’s probably one of the things that I’ve really evolved in my work. When it was just Eric, Danae, and I, as the three founders, we were constantly just be working on everything all the time, collaborating, whether it’s something that need to be done in the next 5 seconds, or whether that needed to be done in the next week, or whether that needed to be done in the next 3 months, we all work to collaborate mainly on it. I think as we’ve slowly grown, and now that we’re harboring around 60, and we’re really looking to establish the foundation to potentially grow and to even be a bigger company when I talk to you next year, I think I’ve learned—Well, I’ve spoken to the team that my new policy is I work on 5 to 5, and they work on everything in between, and what that means is I work on things that need to be answered in the next 5 minutes or things that we’re working on to figure out in the next 5 years, and everything in between is what my management team should be working on with their team to figure out, because if I as CEO is too much involved in the between, it means I’m stepping on their toes and not empowering them to do the work, right? And if I’m forcing them to work on the things on 5 years without knowing what it is for me, then they’re not working towards a vision, and, similarly, sometimes things need to be escalated appropriately in the next 5 minutes. So that’s usually how I’m working on things.

Erik Michielsen: How does that compare and contrast, say with what Danae and Eric are doing?

Slava Rubin: Yeah, so we all have different roles. Eric, you know, built the site and moved over to be head of insights, and then Danae was the heart of the company and now is really focused on thought leadership and people-recruiting culture, so we all have our distinctive roles and it’s working out really well.

Slava Rubin on How to Let Go and Hand Off Responsibility to Others

In Chapter 7 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Has Been Most Challenging About Handing Off Responsibilities to Others?" As a self-proclaimed control freak, Rubin struggles with the challenge of letting go and handing off responsibility to others on his team. Through co-worker support and executive coaching, Rubin learns techniques to share responsibilities with others and empower and motivate employees to take ownership of the work. 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 has been most challenging about handing off responsibilities to others?

Slava Rubin: The hardest thing about growing and handing off responsibility is if you’re a control freak, like somebody in this interview might be, then it’s hard to just empower somebody else, but no one person can build their company by themselves to be at a scale where they need to be, so you need to really find great other people. So it’s really around that balancing act of knowing what you wanna accomplish, knowing how you might do it, but maybe it’s gonna be much better if somebody else did it, and it could be even more better if you can empower somebody who does an even creative approach. So it’s really that balancing act of finding the right people, having that relationship with them where it’s mutual trust and pushing it forward. If you can find that mutual trust between co-workers, I mean that’s super scalable, that’s awesome.

Erik Michielsen: Has this been something where you use a coaching relationship to best go about that process of handing off responsibility? 

Slava Rubin: Yeah, I mean I think I’m still learning. I think there’s plenty for me to learn. I think that my management team has been a great—done a great job of both listening to me, advising me, giving me feedback, and vice versa, but yeah, an executive coach is definitely helpful because I’m biased in a situation, and they can help think of techniques or ways for you to get better.

Slava Rubin on How to Have a Better Career Advice Conversation

In Chapter 8 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "How Have You Learned to Give Better Advice When People Ask You For Help?" Rubin shares how as he has gotten older, he is less prescriptive in giving advice and more investigative. By helping those he coaches and mentors work through key issues and questions, Rubin creates ownership and accountability they can then use to follow through. 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: How have you learned to give better advice when people ask you for help?

Slava Rubin: I think when I was younger, my advice would usually be about giving a specific answer and telling them what they should do because they weren’t clear on what they should do and they just needed somebody to tell them.

Which I think that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned from some of my mentors that good advice is not telling somebody what to do but is asking all the right questions and providing the experiences, so you can help guide their expectations as to where the decision might take them. So these days I really wanna pull out the facts where they get to understand the situation, help them understand themselves, and help them, guide them to their own answer as opposed to telling them the right answer or the wrong answer.

Erik Michielsen: Can you tell me a bit more about how one of the mentorship experiences taught you that? An example?

Slava Rubin: Yeah, I mean even with Indiegogo in the early days, sometimes I would ask for one of my mentors, sometimes even looking for the answer for him to tell me but he was like, you know, “This is not my company to run. It’s your company to run. So I’m just gonna help guide you with some of my experiences and thoughts, and then you gotta make the decision and feel accountable to it.”

Erik Michielsen: How are your mentoring relationships changing as you gain experience and have new responsibilities?

Slava Rubin: I mean it’s great. As CEO of Indiegogo, I’m definitely getting more people I get to mentor people that wanna be entrepreneurs, I try to mentor them, whether it’s officially or just a one-off conversation or email, but the mentors that I have are super valuable because I’m constantly getting myself into a situation that I’ve never been in before and I wanna have some people’s feedback as to what they think about it. It’s never about “Are you older than me, or younger than me, or smarter than me?” Rather, “Do you have experience that I can learn from?” So that’s really what I look for.

Slava Rubin on Empowering Leaders as Startup Grows to 60 Employees

In Chapter 9 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Leadership Skills Are Becoming More Relevant to You As Your Career Progresses?" Rubin shares how his startup, Indiegogo, has grown from 15 to 60 employees in the year between his 2012 Year 3 interview and this Year 4 interview. Rubin notes how it no longer is about individual work but rather empowering new leaders to make decisions in a supportive structure that uses relevant business processes. 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 leadership skills are becoming more relevant to you as your career progresses?

Slava Rubin: As a founder, it was all about just getting the work done, seeing a wall right in front of you and just like putting your head right through it. That was the core skill of being an entrepreneur. I think now we’ve grown in the last year since I last spoke to you, from about 15 employees to 60 employees. I really need to rely on my leadership team to do a lot more than managing and empower them to do a lot of the core decision making. It’s really about empowering my leaders, about listening whether it’s from my leadership team all the way down to the most junior person, and to try to suss out that information as to connecting the trends as to what’s going on, and it’s also about analyzing data in a good way that can make big decisions easier.

Erik Michielsen: And what does that look like when you’re 15 versus 60? 

Slava Rubin: I mean definitely the aura is changing in terms of what the structure looks like, but it’s also you need to set up systems and processes that are just more scalable and just escalation policies in place, so you can’t constantly be running around like a chicken with your head cut off on any decision, and we can’t have every decision go through one individual whether it’s the CEO or not. So we just need to really figure out, you know, how do you escalate decisions? To what level? When and why? How? And who do you empower? For what? How do you manage? And, yeah, just use a lot more data as part of the decision making.

Slava Rubin on Creating Scalable Systems to Grow Your Business

In Chapter 10 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Procedures and Processes Are You Putting in Place to Manage Company Growth?" Rubin notes why scale matters when you grow a company. He shares scalable systems his team is creating, from publicity, sales and web analytics to project management effectiveness measures to key performance indicators (KPIs) of company success. Collectively, these processes create a structure that helps Rubin and his team manage company growth. 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 procedures and processes are you putting in place to manage company growth?

Slava Rubin: As you grow a company, and as you try to get bigger, and we now service millions of customers, we’re now distributing millions of dollars, things need to be scalable. You need to not have it as one-off distractions or one-off exceptions. And these need to be scalable systems where the next person can just plug in and do that, and it’s really incredible the challenge of how hard that is to do ‘cause somebody always has that exception, “What about this? What about that?” Sometimes you just need to cut that off for the sake of the process and making it clean, but it’s imperative to create scalable systems.

Procedures and processes have been put in across the board, whether it’s how we analyze the PR, the sales, the analytics, the SEO, the SEM, whatever it is that we’re using as our campaign measures, whether it’s the product team around our [PH] sprints and our product road map, and our velocity of how well things are being implemented, whether it’s our insight team where they’re really helping to develop a lot of the analyses and numbers, whether it’s our KPIs or key performance indicators that we track the [unintelligible] of the entire company, that we review every week, whether it’s our people performance processes like our performance reviews or recruiting on-boarding process, I mean it’s really endless. Obviously, there is a financial rigor, and I’m talking about the quarterly numbers, and the board numbers, and monthly measures, so there’s just a lot of numbers. Those are processes which is just like, “Here are the escalation policies. This is how we treat the customers. Here are the SLAs, service levels agreements, as to how we follow up. Everything always has to be 24 hours that we respond to, how we treat partners, how we deal with refund, no matter what it is, there are things that need to get institutionalized. 

Erik Michielsen: In the last year you’ve grown from 15 to 60 employees, what were some of the steps involved? What were some of the priorities that you set with those processes, as to hit first, second, and third?

Slava Rubin: Customers are always first. For example, I have a 24-hour response time. How do we create product experiences that we can measure, that people like—? Making sure that we invest in our own people would be very important. Making sure that we have a high level of tracking in how well the company is doing with that. We have financial targets and also KPIs. And I don’t wanna make it sound like it was all perfect all the time. The only reason it got better is because we’ve made the mistakes and we saw how bad it was. So because we’ve made the mistakes, we then learned, and we’re like, “Whoa, we gotta improve that,” and we figured out how to improve it.

Slava Rubin on Why Lawyers are Fundamental to Running a Business

In Chapter 11 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Has Working With Lawyers Taught You About Business?" Starting a company opens Rubin's eyes to how fundamental lawyers are to starting and growing a business. He sees lawyers as another example of subject matter experts that help executive management teams make decisions on running the business. From dealing with intellectual property to fraud to fighting lawsuits, Rubin gets an accelerated education on ways lawyers protect and serve business owner interests. 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.

Transcription

Erik Michielsen: What has working with lawyers taught you about business?

Slava Rubin: I had no idea how much lawyers are actually just part of the business process. I always thought lawyers need to be like the worst case scenario, that something has gone really bad. But what’s interesting is that maybe it’s the type of platform we have, so we have really equal opportunity, and we get ourselves into really interesting situations to the platform where people create their campaigns on our platform. Lawyers are just another subject matter expert that helps to navigate a decision, and knowing more facts and knowing more information helps to navigate the decision, so it’s really interesting.

Erik Michielsen: How do you interface with lawyers in your work? Slava Rubin: We have to talk to lawyers in all kinds of different areas, whether it’s setting up international entities, whether it’s dealing with fraud cases, where you have to deal with,customer issues, whether it’s IP or other digital media concerns. We actually dealt with a lawsuit where we were sued once and we were able to win, and, yeah, it was really interesting.

Slava Rubin on Recruiting Smarter to Hire and Retain Top Talent

In Chapter 12 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Problems Are You Trying to Solve to Grow Your Business?" Rubin notes how product market fit is no longer a problem - the market has been established and the product has been validated. As his company has grown from 15 to 60 employees, Rubin faces new challenges with talent acquisition and employee retention. From honing strategic hiring practices to improving the Indiegogo talent development cycle, Rubin and his team work to put the processes in place to hire, motivate and retain top talent. 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 problems are you trying to solve to grow your business?

Slava Rubin: I think that earlier, when we’ve met, probably one of the first times that we met, one of the first things to solve was product market fit, so creating the product, identifying the market, and figuring out how those two things connected. And because we’ve had a lot of usage of Indiegogo, we’re now distributing millions of dollars every week, I think it’s fair to say that that has been solved. That doesn’t mean we can’t improve, it’s just it’s something that has been replicatable, and scalable, and something that’s there. I think that probably the biggest challenge these days, especially as we’re trying to grow a large company that makes an impact on the world where we allow anybody to fund what matters to them, that’s totally global, is really about people. So the biggest challenge is on acquisition and retention of people. Like I’ve mentioned we went from 15 to 60 people in the last year. Some of those hires were perfect. Some of those hires may have not been perfect. It’s really around what are the programs you could put in place to retain these people. How do you learn from them? How do you give them the right performance reviews? How do you give them the right metrics, the right mentorship? In acquiring, how do you set up the right brand? How do you filter? How do you make decisions? How do you do the interview process? If you hire the right people, you don’t have to manage as much or worry as much because they will figure it out, so it’s really around finding the right people.

Erik Michielsen: Now you’ve worked in management consulting before starting an internet startup, Indiegogo. How is that talent development cycle different in where you’re now, you know, and how is that talent development cycle different in your work now than what you did before?

Slava Rubin: I’ve actually learned a lot from when I was a consultant, especially on recruiting strategies, how you identify that people are smart, how to identify if they are the team players, so I think I learned a lot from being a consultant. In terms of the retention programs and performance reviews, I also learned a lot there that I look to apply in my company, which is what kind of questions to work towards in terms of performance reviews, how often to do it, or what it would mean. It was more structured back in the days ‘cause those companies were more established, our company is very young and nimble, and we’re trying to literally just put those processes in place, so we only strive to have the same sort of people programs, but I definitely learned a lot.

Erik Michielsen: Is there a generational element that comes into play when you think about managing talent in what you do?

Slava Rubin: From my viewpoint, there is no difference based on age. I mean people just wanna work at a great company. They wanna have an impact. They wanna feel like they’re empowered to have decisions. They wanna know what their role is. So that hasn’t been different. So I haven’t really noticed any specific generational difference.

Slava Rubin on How Core Values Help Create Company Culture

In Chapter 13 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Steps Are You Taking to Maintain a Strong Company Culture in a Growing Business?" Rubin shares why culture is important from the moment you start a company and how establishing core company values helped him and his co-founders craft a culture at Indiegogo. Referencing his 2013 SXSW talk "10 Myths of Entrepreneurship", Rubin notes how many entrepreneurs overlook culture when starting a business and why this is not a good idea. 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 steps are you taking to maintain a strong company culture in a growing business?

Slava Rubin: Culture is really important. As a matter of fact, I just gave a talk at South by Southwest where I gave the 10 myths of entrepreneurship, and one of them was that it’s okay to start thinking about culture later in the process, don’t think about culture to start. And I think we got very lucky or we were very smart that the two co-founders and I, Danae, Eric, and myself, thought about culture from the very beginning. Maybe not on day one, but when we were doing recruiting and making decisions we started arguing with our opinions. I’m like, “No, no, no. That’s not how we’re deciding. We’re deciding like this.” And we really need to ground where was the decision coming from. So what we did was we stepped back and we thought, “What are the values—?” Well, we’re sitting on top of which will help make these decisions, whether it’s recruiting, how we treat our customer, who we partner with, and how we move forward with initiatives. And we’ve come with a “face”, which is fearlessness, authenticity, collaboration, and empowerment. So building on top of these four values, we’re able to permeate all these other things. And it’s not something where you can just say once in training, on day one, and then they will just embody “face”. We have our quarterly all hands meeting where we pull together everybody and do a 2-day investment, every quarter, into our own company, and, you know, aligning ourselves around the vision, collaborating, and celebrating our own successes. We also make sure to have weekly meetings to talk about things and other ways to just permeate it throughout the company on a regular consistent basis, so I think culture is huge.

Slava Rubin on How to Build Startup Teams That Perform Under Pressure

In Chapter 14 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Does It Mean to Perform Under Pressure in the Work That You Do?" As a CEO of a venture capital-backed startup that has raised over $17 million dollars in financing, Rubin notes that the work environment is intense and the investor expectations are high. As a result, Rubin looks to hire employees who thrive under pressure and meet the company's "FACE" values formula, fearlessness, authenticity, collaboration, and empowerment. 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 does it mean to perform under pressure in the work that you do?

Slava Rubin: Pressure definitely is part of the job. We’re a VC-funded company, with some people like to say that’s like getting on the treadmill and never being allowed to get off. We don’t have the luxury of saying tomorrow, I think maybe I wanna take a break and slow down and maybe not try to build a bigger company ‘cause we already have some significant investors. We took 17 million dollars of VC money. So I think people thrive in the pressure, that’s who we’re looking to hire. We have our values as part of our recruiting process, and one of those values is fearless “face”- fearlessness, authenticity, collaboration, and empowerment. First one, fearless. So we need you to be fearless and do things that you never thought you’d be able to do and know that we need to accomplish things that are just challenges and no one else has done, so pressure is just part of the process.

Slava Rubin on How Specialist Job Roles Help Young Companies Grow

In Chapter 15 of 15 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin answers "How Are Your Recruiting Priorities Changing as Your Company Grows?" Rubin shares how growing from 15 to 60 employees has shifted hiring needs away from generalist or "athlete" skills sets and toward specialist skill sets. As structure is added to manage organizational growth, job roles and responsibilities also get more structured and specific. Rubin shares why it is important to constantly evaluate these shifts to maintain company culture. 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.

Transcription

Erik Michielsen: How are your recruiting priorities changing as your business grows?

Slava Rubin: We’re constantly meeting to re-org the company as it evolves in terms of the size, and as part of that, when you’re smaller, you want more of an athlete, which is you’re not exactly sure what they’re good at, but they can just be a valuable asset to the company, they can be versatile, and you start getting bigger, you don’t want people who are just athletes, you wanna have them start specializing. So you can almost think of it in basketball terms. Sometimes you just have five great athletes, or sometimes you have like the 7-foot-3 guy as the center and he’s exactly the center, and this other guy is a 3-point shooter and he can’t do anything else, but it’s actually nice to have those really locked down pieces if that’s where you need to focus on, if you have those other athletes. So as you have more specific roles, it’s important to get those specific recruits, but it’s a balancing act as we’re evolving from more athlete-driven to finding some specific focus.

Erik Michielsen: And how do you maintain that culture as you’re shifting from focusing on athletes to more specialists?

Slava Rubin: I think that’s a great question. You need to constantly evaluate on the specific role. Is this somewhere where you can still go with an athlete or is it somebody that’s so precise where their experience needs to be so clear, and their knowledge base subject matter expertise is so unknown that they need to be a specialist? And every position has a different evaluation

One of the specialist positions that we just hired for was actually our head of international. So that was one of those things where it’s hard to be an athlete to just say, “Oh, I think you’re or she is really smart, and I think they can figure it out.” It’s really nice when that person has done international for years and they have gone to those examples and those experiences and be like, “Oh, that’s a problem. That’s gonna be problem. You’re gonna deal with this. I know this is gonna happen.” That’s where being a specialist helps.

James McCormick on How Family Can Support Your Career and Life Decisions

In Chapter 1 of 21 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, legal search and consulting firm executive James McCormick answers "Where Has Your Family Been Most Supportive in Your Career Development?" McCormick notes that his parents have provided consistent support and it has always been about helping him find something that engages and challenges him and helping him make sure he has thought through the decision before making it. James McCormick is a Partner at Empire Search Partners in New York City. Previously, he practiced law as an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney for Proskauer Rose and Jones Day. He earned a JD at Tulane Law School and a BA in History at the University of Michigan. 

James McCormick on Learning Work Ethic From Two Inspirational Grandfathers

In Chapter 3 of 21 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, legal search and consulting firm executive James McCormick answers "Where Did You Learn Your Work Ethic?" McCormick learns his work ethic from both of his grandfathers. The first starts a small business making automotive parts and teaches his grandson the benefits of being engaged in your work. The other teaches James the importance of studying and how concentration in schoolwork can lead to positive attention at home. James McCormick is a Partner at Empire Search Partners in New York City. Previously, he practiced law as an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney for Proskauer Rose and Jones Day. He earned a JD at Tulane Law School and a BA in History at the University of Michigan. 

James McCormick on Why There is No One Right Way to Live Your Life

In Chapter 6 of 21 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, legal search and consulting firm executive James McCormick answers "How Are Your Personal Experiences Shaping Your Professional Aspirations?" McCormick shares what he has learned in his 20s and 30s, namely that there is no one right script to follow to life a full life. Moving from Detroit to Ann Arbor to San Francisco to New Orleans to New York City, getting married, becoming a father, and building a law career all teach him the importance of improvisation and flexibility. He channels what life has taught him into his work as an executive recruiter by learning to listen and treat every person he works with as an individual. James McCormick is a Partner at Empire Search Partners in New York City. Previously, he practiced law as an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney for Proskauer Rose and Jones Day. He earned a JD at Tulane Law School and a BA in History at the University of Michigan.