Saturday, March 3, 2018

The Final Guest: Shadrach White

Somehow... just somehow... I did not fall asleep this time around. Maybe it was the effects from the NAVSEA presentation that took place right before the talk, or maybe I happened to just not be drowsy coincidentally. Nonetheless, I managed to attentively listened to all of Shadrach's words at his visit. Shadrach White is the CEO and president of cloudPWR. His company's mission is "to simplify complex problems and help organizations adopt cloud based solutions" (from cloudpwr.com). 

The most memorable point of his to me was the idea of bootstrapping. A bootstrap is when an individual starts his or her own company with minimal capital. In my opinion, this seems extremely efficient for building a business, but also extremely hard. The business either needs to be very inexpensive to run, or there needs to be a great initial amount of funds from personal finances or the company's finances. I feel like Shadrach was only able to bootstrap cloudPWR because he had founded and run many companies in the past, and most likely built up his own money and tons of experience from them, which to me is quite admirable. He had mentioned that his first business, which had to do with sports stuff, came out to be a valuable lesson to him. He spent more money than he received from investments. Then and there, he had learned all about finance. The more he did, the more experience and funds he acquired.

I also remember a question someone had asked Shadrach; it had to do with his exit strategy. Without hesitation, he gave a straight up answer of "one hundred million". If he can exit with that much, it would be a done deal. However, he mentioned that some things could change, and might end up staying even if the company's value reaches that amount, and thus set a new, higher exit goal.

If I must do a look-alike thing again, I'd say he reminds me of Matt from Big Brother season 19.

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