In Chapter 11 of 16 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, University of Pennsylvania graduate Slava Rubin answers "What Were Your Career Ambitions Entering the University of Pennsylvania and How Did They Change By the Time You Graduated?" Rubin highlights how his career goals changed while attending the undergraduate Wharton School business program. While studying abroad in Belgium, Rubin rethinks his values and finds he is less interested in Wall Street banking work. Leaving behind his high school ambition to be the next "Wall Street" Gordon Gekko Michael Douglas character, Rubin instead secures a management consulting job and begins his career.
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 your career ambitions entering The University of Pennsylvania and how did that change by the time you graduated?
Slava Rubin: When I was applying to colleges I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be pretty rich, pretty powerful. I wanted to be a banker and I kind of wanted to be in that Wall Street role, you know ``Wall Street`` the movie with Michael Douglas. And as I went to Penn I was surround, I think, by a lot of those characters. I actually went to Wharton Undergrad, which is a lot of cutthroat individuals and I actually figured out that I wasn't as cutthroat and desiring the money and the power as the people around me, which was kind of surprising. That, along with my Belgium experience just taught me maybe I don’t want to be doing exactly what all these other people want to be doing. Which, don`t get me wrong I didn't turn into a quote in quote a liberal arts fluffy job person, I became a strategy consultant, which is not so far away from being a banker. It was pretty important to figure out what my values were and I think college, I learned a lot about that.
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.
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.
In Chapter 7 of 16 of his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, web entrepreneur Joe Stump reflects on how growing up in a small, Midwestern Michigan town shaped his values and sense of loyalty to friends, family, and colleagues.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: You spent the majority of your childhood and college growing up in Michigan. How did that experience kind of contribute to the character and shape who you are today?
Joe Stump: In Michigan, as you know, lots of good people. Good, down home, regular folk. The way things are there, you are brought up in the community to look after each other, take care of each other, support each other, that kind of thing. Everyone is closely connected. The town where I grew up in was only 3,000 people.
Everyone knew everyone else. My parents went to school with everyone else’s parents. There is a lot of history in that community. Moving on from Michigan, the thing I notice about me that is different compared to friends that have grown up in the big city, there are core community values that maybe aren’t…
Erik Michielsen: That speaks to your loyalty. You are very loyal as a friend and also professionally.
In Chapter 3 of 13, musician and music writer Conrad Doucette learns to take responsibility for choosing a non-linear lifestyle and career. This provides Doucette, drummer for Takka Takka, Blender.com writer and Fuse TV online producer, to resist peer-pressure and focus on pursuing new opportunities in both music and the Internet.
In Chapter 2 of 11 of her 2009 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, author Rachel Lehmann-Haupt traces influences shaping her first book "In Her Own Sweet Time" back to her artistic, writing, and scholar roots. Erica Jong joked Rachel found writing by getting "the curse". Rachel's influences and experiences span her father, New York Times Book Critic, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviewing children's books at the family dinner table, through her mother's writing career, to a great-grandfather who spoke 26 languages, a Scottish grandfather knighted as a scholar to a poet great-grandmother, Theresa Haupt.
In Chapter 1 of 11, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt's mother encourages her to "Find your passion, find yourself." "In Her Own Sweet Time" author Rachel elaborates on how her mother's guidance and influence has guided and shaped her writing passion across high school, through Kenyon College and into a professional career.
Since 2009, Capture Your Flag has interviewed a cohort of rising leaders who share lessons from their journeys to help others plan, pursue and achieve life and career aspirations. The resulting 3000+ Near Peer Video Library can be licensed for commercial use.
