74 - Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral founder and CEO: A Multi-Billion-Dollar Midlife Crisis
Fortt Knox28 Apr 2018

74 - Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral founder and CEO: A Multi-Billion-Dollar Midlife Crisis

Vlad Shmunis just wasn't an enthusiastic employee. Didn't like following directions. And he had ideas – lots of ideas. Eventually, something had to give. So the entrepreneurial engineer took a leap, even though family members said he was nuts.

How'd that work out? Well today, Vlad Shmunis is the founder and CEO of RingCentral, a Silicon Valley company at the intersection of communication and cloud. The company went public just under five years ago. Today it's worth more than $5 billion.

If you're a long-time Fortt Knox listener, you're going to sense a pattern. Vlad is the third CEO I've had on who grew up in the former Soviet Union and eventually found his way to the U.S. There was Citrix CEO Kirill Tatarinov, Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn, and now Vlad. Their stories are all pretty different in key details, but similar in some important core ways, when it comes to education, values and … please listen for this one … the family's approach to risk.

If you or someone you know is thinking about taking a leap to start your own thing, but you're not quite sure, listen to Vlad's story.


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Episoder(147)

67 - Oren Jacob, PullString cofounder & CEO: Teaching Alexa to Be a Better Conversationalist

67 - Oren Jacob, PullString cofounder & CEO: Teaching Alexa to Be a Better Conversationalist

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66 - Matt Meeker, Bark co-founder: Super-Serving the Pet Economy

66 - Matt Meeker, Bark co-founder: Super-Serving the Pet Economy

Boutique treats and toys for dogs, it turns out, are a big business. Bark was co-founded by Matt Meeker, who's now its CEO. It's the seller of the subscription BarkBox. And it expects to do a quarter ...

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65 - Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa CEO: Saving Your Way to Success

65 - Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa CEO: Saving Your Way to Success

Frugality is baked into Rob Bernshteyn’s life experience. His family immigrated from Russia when he was a kid, and he used savings from a paper route to start a baseball card business … which helped p...

17 Feb 201833min

64 - Ron Shaich, Panera founder: Raise the Minimum Wage, Build for the Long Term, and Other Heresies

64 - Ron Shaich, Panera founder: Raise the Minimum Wage, Build for the Long Term, and Other Heresies

Who doesn't like to eat? Maybe my seven-year-old … he'd rather talk at the table … but the rest of us, when we're hungry, want something right now, and something that's not going to induce a lot of gu...

10 Feb 201853min

63 - Kaz Hirai, Sony CEO: Leading a Japanese Company With Global Challenges

63 - Kaz Hirai, Sony CEO: Leading a Japanese Company With Global Challenges

Kaz Hirai has been the CEO of Sony for six years, and the company just announced that he'll be stepping aside and taking the title of Chairman in April.  That means he's been the CEO at Sony for much ...

3 Feb 201817min

62 - Adena Friedman, Nasdaq CEO: Build A Career With Smart Adjustments

62 - Adena Friedman, Nasdaq CEO: Build A Career With Smart Adjustments

You don’t have to be playing the markets every day to know that stocks have been doing very well lately – and not just lately, for about nine years now.   That means you might be hearing a bit more ab...

27 Jan 201833min

61 - Al Kelly, Visa CEO: Career Shifts, Bitcoin, and the Future of Money

61 - Al Kelly, Visa CEO: Career Shifts, Bitcoin, and the Future of Money

Imagine you've worked 23 years at a company, up to the top. You're being groomed to be the next CEO. And then the current CEO tells you – actually, he's not leaving anytime soon.  That's the position ...

20 Jan 201828min

60 - Daymond John, investor & entrepreneur: From FUBU to Shark Tank

60 - Daymond John, investor & entrepreneur: From FUBU to Shark Tank

Daymond John grew up in Queens, New York. He wasn’t the best student – he would later be diagnosed with dyslexia – but he did have an eye for fashion and a talent for connecting with people.  Today, y...

13 Jan 201840min

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