In Chapter 3 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, crowdfunding entrepreneur and IndieGoGo CEO Slava Rubin answers "What Makes Your Work Meaningful?" Rubin references how the crowdfunding projects his company has enabled give him meaning in their varied initiatives to solve problems and build solutions. Slava Rubin returns to CYF for his Year 3 interview. As CEO and Co-Founder, Rubin has helped transform cause and project fundraising by establishing his company IndieGoGo as a global leader in crowdfunding. He is also active in philanthropy, starting the Music Against Myeloma annual charity event to fight cancer. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What makes your work meaningful?
Slava Rubin: We could be focusing on strictly becoming a billion dollar company optimizing profits and along the way really upsetting customers and trying to take advantage of employees but for us it’s knowing that there’s an impact. Knowing that we’re doing good in the world and bringing good things to life. So, that’s what’s exciting for me.
It’s really about stories like a crowd funded baby that would have never existed unless Indiegogo was there. Knowing that there’s kids in third world countries who are reading because two incredible women on a campaign called Illuminate were able to create an inflatable solar light, knowing that some kids aren’t gonna be bullied because an amazing movie was created called The Bully Project and was funded on Indiegogo then picked up by the Weinstein Company for distribution, knowing that a church has new stained glass windows because their community came together to know that they want to improve the architecture there or just knowing that a liver transplant happened through for somebody in Congo because he was known as the Oskar Schindler of Congo but couldn’t afford a liver transplant so on CNN, people came together and funded his liver transplant.