Would you be bold enough to leave a small suburb north of Wellington, New Zealand, borrow some money from your mum to fly to San Francisco and then contact VPs of leading software companies to introduce yourself over a coffee?!
This is the bold (and successful) move Evan Cummack made at the end of 2010. He moved from a small team at NEC creating fingerprint identification technology for the New Zealand police department to then join Twilio as one of their early employees in 2011. Evan is now the CEO of Fin, a company shaping the future of work which was founded by former Facebook VP Sam Lessin and Venmo Co-Founder Andrew Kortina.
In this latest episode of “The Spotlight Series – Don’t Just Survive, Thrive” podcast, Evan and I discuss a variety of topics including:
⭐ Transitioning from NEC Corporation to a tech start-up, Twilio, as one of their early employees
⭐ His recent experience of raising US $20 million capital for Fin in San Francisco
⭐ Evan’s thoughts on the future of work
⭐ His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs
We finish by talking about the secrets behind his success. Evan explains that he was very attracted to the software industry when he was young and the tech industry has had unbelievable growth since then. He didn’t have to go and teach himself the fundamentals as an adult. Basically, he believes that it is really hard to have influence inside technology companies if you don’t understand technology at a fundamental level.