Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 1)

Concept financings are extremely rare in the industry these days, but here is a story of an entrepreneur who did raise $8 million on a concept from Andreessen Horowitz.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Andrew Rubin: I was born in Brooklyn, New York back in 1976. Most people hear New York City and they think of Manhattan right away, but Brooklyn is right next to Manhattan. That’s where my life began. I was born and raised in New York. I’ve lived in New York all the way up until I left at the end of high school. That’s where my journey begins.

Sramana Mitra: After high school, where did you go? Where did you do your college?

Andrew Rubin: I made an interesting and somewhat unusual decision at that time. I had applied to a number of schools up and down the East Coast. I somewhat randomly applied to one school in the Midwest called Washington University in St. Louis. Nowadays, that’s not such an unusual choice for a New Yorker but, back then, it was a very unusual thing.

I was fortunate to get into Washington University and I decided that I wanted to spend a few years in the Midwest. There’s a side story here, which is I fully expected to move back to New York after college and spend the rest of my life living where I was raised. I decided to go to the Midwest more for the interesting life experience than necessarily because of anything specific to Washington University.

Sramana Mitra: Then what? What’s the next move?

Andrew Rubin: The next move was actually to stay in a place that I never intended to live more than the four years I went to school. I was incredibly fortunate at Washington University. Not only did I end up being surprised by how much I enjoyed spending time at the school, but I also participated in a very early program in entrepreneurship that the school had at that time.

Despite the fact that I graduated with a degree in Finance and I had planned to move back to New York and probably work in the financial services industry, I found that I enjoyed blending together the financial conversation with the entrepreneurship conversation. When I finished school, I decided to stay in St. Louis and go to work in the tech industry. It was something I hadn’t planned on doing. My first job out of school was in St. Louis working for a telecom provider.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio
1 2 3 4 5 6 7