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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Avsnitt(147)

51 - Aaron Levie, Box CEO: A College Dropout Builds a Billion-Dollar Cloud

51 - Aaron Levie, Box CEO: A College Dropout Builds a Billion-Dollar Cloud

It’s a familiar story in tech history: college friends stumble onto a big idea, drop out to pursue it, build a company, make mistakes, and eventually take that company public and make millions of doll...

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50 - Troy Carter, Atom Factory founder and Spotify exec: The Man Who Helped Shape Gaga, Trainor, Legend

50 - Troy Carter, Atom Factory founder and Spotify exec: The Man Who Helped Shape Gaga, Trainor, Legend

When he was 14 years old growing up in West Philadelphia, Troy Carter started promoting parties at a neighbor's house and charging for entry. He did the DJing himself to save money.  Today he's one of...

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49 - Rachel Carlson, Guild Education CEO: A Startup Betting on Human Intelligence

49 - Rachel Carlson, Guild Education CEO: A Startup Betting on Human Intelligence

In case you haven't noticed, there are some big challenges facing the American worker. Unless you're in the top 20 percent salary-wise, if you've kept the same job, chances are you haven't gotten a bi...

21 Okt 201739min

48 - Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital CEO: The Beauty of a Calculated Risk

48 - Chamath Palihapitiya, Social Capital CEO: The Beauty of a Calculated Risk

Chamath Palihapitiya is one of the most sought-after investors in Silicon Valley. It's because he has a knack for figuring out how things work. At Facebook, he led the team that studied our online beh...

14 Okt 201745min

47 - Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Publishing founder: Tech's Explainer-In-Chief Tackles the Future

47 - Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Publishing founder: Tech's Explainer-In-Chief Tackles the Future

Tim O'Reilly had never come in contact with a computer until after college, when a friend asked him to help write a technical manual.   It's quite a turn, then, that he has become a promethean figure ...

7 Okt 201727min

46 - Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO: Hit Refresh with the Power of Empathy

46 - Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO: Hit Refresh with the Power of Empathy

Satya Nadella is the third CEO of Microsoft. He's also a husband and a father of special-needs kids. He's an immigrant. And he's pretty close to doing something that, until he took the job just over t...

30 Sep 201737min

45 - Louis Hernandez, Jr., Avid CEO: The Storyteller's Dilemma

45 - Louis Hernandez, Jr., Avid CEO: The Storyteller's Dilemma

Louis Hernandez Jr. is the CEO of Avid Technology, a company that makes tools for editing video and audio, and writing music.  Avid is facing hard times as rival Adobe grows stronger with Premiere and...

23 Sep 201733min

44 - Rachel Drori, Daily Harvest founder & CEO: Never An Easy Time to Do A Hard Thing

44 - Rachel Drori, Daily Harvest founder & CEO: Never An Easy Time to Do A Hard Thing

Rachel Drori comes from from a long line of entrepreneurs – her immigrant grandparents started a business when they got to the United States. Even more unique: Her mother started a business too, so sh...

16 Sep 201730min

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