Brian Rowe began coding at age 13, developing Internet-based applications programming. He took that love for data to a position at Cummins that won him an award from CIO Magazine for “50 Best Intranets.” Later, he founded a software company that was purchased by iGoDigital, which eventually sold to Salesforce for $21M. Today, Brian is using his life-long love for data and analytics to change the way students experience college with Perceivant, an education technology company that replaces traditional textbooks with cost-effective and interactive digital courseware.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I think all of the normal ones. You are not sure you are ready. I think I was always working towards being an entrepreneur. I think I always thought about it as being a business owner or starting my own business more than entrepreneur is a more in vogue term today. So I never really thought about in terms of wanting to be that. But I was always practising and prepping in those situations but the difficulties of course are your finances in order? How you going to afford this? Can you take the risk? When is the right opportunity to do this?”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Atlas Shrugged Book by Ayn Rand
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change Book by Stephen R. Covey
Favourite Quote:
“Do. Or do not. There is no try.” The Empire Strikes Back.” Yoda
Recommended Online Resources:
- Pipedrive – Sales CRM & Pipeline Management Software. Pipedrive is a cloud-based sales software company with offices in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia; New York City, New York; Lisbon, Portugal and London, United Kingdom. It is the maker of the web application and mobile app Pipedrive, a sales customer relationship management tool for salespeople in scaling companies.
- Asana – Easily organize and plan workflows, projects, and more, so you can keep your team s work on schedule
- Slack is where work flows It s where the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use come together to get things done
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“Try to go out and sell your solution before you start… You don’t have to lie about it, you don’t have to say it’s done. I think you can go out and find who you think your target customer is and say here’s my solution, here’s what I think it should look like, I want it to be like this. If I can offer it to you just like this with this much money would you be a customer for me? Would you sign up if I had it six months from now? Okay can you sign and LOI now. It’s just practice closing the deal even though there’s nothing that exists that you are talking about. And find out what’s it’s like to try to sell it, what feedback you get, can it be sold you are going to find nuggets of features or twists on how it should look and how it should work before you ever really hire anybody up to team together or raise money. You can get a lot sort of done in almost have hopefully with any luck a couple of beta customers that are going to be proponents of yours when you actually do get live”…[Listen for More]
More About Brian Rowe:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” Jeff Bezos, founder, and CEO of Amazon
Other Quotes From the Chat with Brian Rowe:
- “For somebody to be a role model I think they need to be close by. Someone you can talk to, watch work, see in crisis, is not someone that you would necessarily read a book about. At least not for me. I think those things are sanitised in some ways and that doesn’t give you a raw look at who they are and how they operate in all sorts of situations”
- “One day it was absolutely the right day. I went into work and I quit and I left and that was it. You can get caught up in the delay very easily and you can make excuses and you can have doubts. And those are going to be there and you just have to learn over time to push those back. Here it, look at it and say why am I doing this and then you have got to push it out of your mind”
- “you have got to do your homework, you have got to learn your trade”
- “we are all interested in shortcuts but the process is long”
- “it’s so hard but so simple and I think we overcomplicate it”
- “define a clear goal, building that plant to get to that clear goal, and then getting the best people around you to achieve that goal, and working it every day”
- “it so simple and yet so hard”
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