ExecuTalks

Taylor was born & raised here in the PNW.  He received his undergraduate degree in accounting from the UW, then went to go work for Blue Origin, which is where he found his passion for space travel.  Even though his job was in accounting for the company, he felt passionate about the mission of the company.

After 3 years at Blue Origin, Taylor decided he would leave and join a startup in Texas that was working on building rocket-powered aircrafts to fly into space.  After the company had gone through financial struggles, which Taylor admits was one of the best experiences in his life, he decided he would move back to the PNW, and ended up at Systima Technologies. 

Today, Taylor is the CFO of Systima Technologies, a multi-million-dollar aerospace & defense company.

Tushar was born & raised in India to a stay-at-home mom and a father who was an engineer working for the government.  After high school, Tushar got his computer science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology.  During his time in college, he became fascinated with machine learning, so he started asking around his school to see if anyone was offering research-based internships in machine learning.  He got connected to a professor in Italy that was offering an internship.  After a while in Italy, his professor suggested he go to the U.S. and work for her twin sister who was also a professor at the University of Minnesota to pursue his PhD.  That's how Tushar landed in the U.S.

He then went on to move to the pacific northwest to work for Microsoft.  Eventually, he became Chief of Staff before leaving to go back and get an MBA from Northwestern.  One of his classmates and good friends, Steve Lane, suggested they start a business around helping homeowners save energy in their homes.  They conducted some research and realized that the reason people don’t make investments to save energy in their homes is because it takes too long to recoup the energy upgrades.  They did find another problem though, and that problem would be the beginning of Flyhomes.  The typical homebuyer doesn’t have much transparency and ease with buying a home, so Flyhomes gives homebuyers more transparency and helps people buy homes much more easily through machine learning and technology. 

Today, Flyhomes has over 200 employees and has raised over $140 million to disrupt the home-buying process.

Bridget’s career journey begins when she was 5 years old. When her father brought home this brand-new piece of technology called, an apple computer ("apple 2e")  She was fascinated with how it worked and her curiosity for computers would continuously grow as she grew older.

She went on to study computer science at Harvard University, and did her first job out of college was at this startup called Plumtree Software, where she would be given lots of responsibility early on in her career, and where she developed many meaningful relationships.  One of the people at Plumtree was Glenn Kelman, who was then Plumtree's co-founder, and now is Redfin's CEO (we've had him on the show before as well).

9 years after leaving Plumtree, Bridget joined Redfin after working several different jobs at different companies.  During her childhood, Bridget had moved around a lot growing up, so she has a strong connection to Redfin’s mission of helping regular people buy and sell homes.  Ever since she joined Redfin in 2011, she constantly feels like she’s working on new and exciting projects that she finds meaning in. 

Today, Bridget manages a team of more than 200 engineers at Redfin, serves on the board of Premera Blue Cross, has been awarded many awards, some of which include: 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech (National Diversity Council), Women of Valor 2018 (awarded by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell), Inman Real Estate Influencers of 2017, 40 under 40 (Puget Sound Business Journal), Leadership in Innovation and Technology: Innovator Award (Puget Sound Business Journal).

Nick was born & raised in Seattle, and after graduating from WSU, Nick had trouble finding a job that paid well, so he ended up working for a small company where he earned half of the average starting salary out of college at the time.  

He credits a lot of his success to what he learned while working for a small company, saying that because he had to wear so many different hats early in his career, he learned so much about business than the average person even though he was paid less. 

Eventually, Nick started his first company "Konnects, Inc." that ended up failing and as he was looking around for a job, his wife told him she was pregnant.  As he was decluttering his house, he struggled to find a way to get rid of all kinds of stuff.  Then one day, he pitched the idea to his wife, and she would be the first “believer” in OfferUp.  She would encourage Nick to start this idea up and even though he had a baby on the way and wasn’t secure financially, he took a leap of faith in 2010, and never looked back. 

Today, OfferUp has been dowloaded almost 100 million times, has raised almost $400 million, and according to Pitchbook, is valued at $1.4 billion.

Mike was born & raised in Seattle by two very young parents.  Growing up, he had a clear sense of what was right from wrong, and was never afraid to speak up about how he felt about something or to assert his opinion.  He remembers being profoundly depressed throughout his childhood.  Mike admits that he felt a pressure from society and his mother to do what he was 'supposed to do.'  Attend a college, get a job that pays well, and live a standard life.  Eventually his desire to just live in the moment and desire to become some sort of artist would begin to surface.

He left Seattle University after one semester, and decided to travel the world on credit cards.  Although it was one of the greatest experiences of his life, meeting different people and developing deep relationships with people across the world, he admits he came home dead broke and in debt.

When he came back, he attended the University of Washington and got his B.A. in English & Humanities. He then got a job at Boeing, which he admits he disliked so much that he eventually ended up self-terminating.

Mike would go on to pursue his passion of creating art through videos.  He worked for free several times, worked for a non-profit, and worked for a CBS show before landing a job at a studio where CUT would eventually rise from.

CUT was born in 2015 and has since acquired over 10 million YouTube subscribers, sharing videos and stories that go viral.

Gus was born & raised in the suburbs of Chicago. He was always the smallest kid in his class, which not only enabled his sense of competitiveness, but also taught him how to negotiate for his "survival."

He always had a fascination with nature so went on to get his B.S. in Environmental Science after high school at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. After spending time in Washington, living in the suburbs of Seattle became Gus’s dream.  After college, Gus had a hard time finding a job. His father encouraged him to apply for sales jobs, so he landed a job in sales for an elevator company in Chicago.  After realizing that how much he loved the outdoors (hiking, skiing, fishing, boating, etc.), he decided he needed to move to Seattle, regardless of what job he landed.

Gus ended up at MacDonald-Miller as a sales person, and the rest is history.  He would work his way up the ladder, eventually becoming the President & CEO, take the company through the 2008 recession, and make his life dreams a reality. 

Today, MacDonald-Miller is the top-choice mechanical contractor in the Pacific Northwest, employs about 1,000 people, and brings in revenues exceeding $350 million per year.

Ash was born in the West Bank (Palestine).  Due to the constant conflicts & oppression many Palestinians faced during the 1970s, Ash's father moved his family including Ash, Ash's sister and mother to Fitchburg, MA when he was just 5-years-old.  He remembers his father working a variety of custodial jobs and other minimum wage jobs just to be able to afford rent & food.

As Ash began to grow older, he began realizing his curiosity for how things worked, mechanically.  He became fascinated with the sun and how the sun could provide heat & energy.  After high school, he went on to get his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

During college, Ash would work a variety of jobs including a McDonald's cook, stocking retail stores, and receptionist at the University's Dean's office.

After college, he worked a job in Aerospace, but quickly realized his true passion was in developing solutions for green energy and solving the climate change crisis.  He went on a quick stint at the University of Washington to get his Masters degree with a focus in Energy Efficiency.

Since then, Ash has never looked back.

Today, he is a partner & CMO at McKinstry - a national leader in designing, constructing, operating and maintaining high-performing buildings. 

McKinstry has about 1,600 employees nationwide, and is a leader in the development of net-zero energy buildings.

Raja was born & raised in the southern part of India, where resources were very scarce.  His beginnings were so humble that he remembers sharing a 1,000 sq.-ft. home with his entire family.  From an early age, Raja admits that he wasn't the brightest student technically, but was great with people; understanding how to navigate situations to get himself out of trouble.

He didn't have much of a choice when it came to choosing a major after high school; the goal was to get a degree that was good enough to land a job that could buy him food, so he studied Industrial Production (engineering).  Since he wasn't able to land a traditional job, at the time he settled for a door-to-door sales job selling educational courses, where he remembers his salary being approximately $100/month (adjusted for inflation).  Even for India's living standards, this was a very low salary.

Fueled with motivation to succeed, Raja became a great salesman, and was eventually recruited by a recruiting firm in India (JK Consultants) to sell their services.  After 3 years, he was recruited by Aditi, a technology recruiting firm that helps businesses recruit talent for technical roles effectively.  He performed so well, that they asked him to work in the United States, and he landed in Seattle, WA with a short-term Visa.  After exceeding consistently exceeding expectations, Raja was granted a long-term Visa and is now the President & CEO of Aditi Consulting.

Aditi Consulting has almost 600 employees and was voted one of the best companies to work for in Washington by Glassdoor.

Listen to Raja's full story now!

Eric was born & raised in Vancouver, WA, a blue-collar town on the border of Washington & Oregon.  He grew up in a typical middle-class family, was an avid basketball player, and always had an affinity for business & personal finance.  There is a story he shares in the podcast where he "leases" a chunk of his sidewalk as a kid, to his friend selling lemonade.

After graduating high school, he was accepted into West Point, The United States Military Academy.  About three weeks after being in the program, Eric felt like he had hit a low point in his life emotionally.  He made a bold decision to quit and move back home to decide what he was going to do next.

He saved up some money from working a minimum wage job and paid for his first year of college at Portland State University to get his career in Finance kick-started.  Through working hard to be a great student, and building great relationships with professors at the school, Eric was able to land an internship at Sequent Computer Systems (acquired by IBM).  From there, Eric's career would move quickly as he not only worked hard, but he was able to build genuine relationships that paid off.

Today, Eric is the CEO of Nintex, a company that helps people digitize their business processes, with over 600 employees and has raised a total of about $150 million.

Make sure to listen to the entire episode to really get into Eric's mind and extract valuable wisdom from one of today's top executives!

Bob was born & raised in Dumont, NJ as the youngest of four siblings.  He grew up in a typical, middle-class family where his father worked as a policeman and his mother was a stay-at-home mom.  Bob worked as a janitor during his time in high school while playing several sports throughout the year.

After getting his B.A. in Economics & Religious Studies, he worked as an assistant trader on wall-street for some time before realizing he wanted to do something else.  Bob took a job selling pharmaceuticals to doctors for two years before making a significant career move. He then was admitted into the Harvard Business School to pursue an MBA, and he would become one of the top leaders in biotechnology/pharmaceuticals.

Throughout his career, Bob made several risky career moves that ended up paying off.  At one point, he was managing a $6 billion business at Amgen, a large pharmaceutical corporation, but decided to take a leap of faith and leave to join a smaller company called Juno Therapeutics.

In the full podcast, Bob shares career setbacks, temporary failures, and most importantly shares key advice for how you can better prepare yourself to reach your career ambitions.