Apr 14th, 2007
#24 Serial Entrepreneur
This is an interview with Paul Rudnick, a serial entrepreneur that is currently working on his 7th company. During our conversation we talk about his successes, failures and lessons learned. We also touch on the decision students face when graduating of joining a large corporation or starting their own businesses. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Paul was the manager for the core engineering team at 3Com and he is also part of the Advisory Board for the Comm Tech Mgmt program at USF.
Rudnick.mp3 (9MB / 19m)
Insanely great interview, Tiago. I’m also portuguese and I’m delighted with the great podcast you have. Paul Rudnich is actually a smart guy, specially because he has the capability of recognizing that to be successful in businesses we must focus in something that is really meaningful for customers, not how to take as much as possible from them and from employees. About cutting cost, in the short term sometimes they are inevitable, if we want to survive. But finding the right positioning and concentrate our resources in order to provide superior value for our costumers, is the key point.
About the last part of the interview, there’s something very important to launch a start up, in my view. Having the right resources in order to be successful, in order to provide custumer with superior value. Indeed, the hardest part of being a recent graduate is that in most cases we do not even have means to get all the required information, in order to use great tools as SWOT Analysis. As a result, many startups fail because they aren’t connected with reality. Besides all the points focused by Paul Rudnick in this interview, of course.
Hi Teófilo, I’m glad you like the podcast.
I agree, Paul is a smart guy and gave some great tips. He had a lot more to say but I wanted to keep the interview under 20m. Maybe one day I’ll do a follow-up with him.
I’m excited to have a Portuguese listener!
Cheers, Tiago