Ellen Rubin

This week I spoke to a woman named Ellen Rubin. She is the CEO of a company called Clearsky. Clearsky is a business that is still in stealth mode, meaning there is a limited amount of information about the company that can be shared to the public. What I do know, is that it is a company that creates the technology for big businesses (retailers, manufacturers, banks, etc.) to manage their data storage. Ellen has informed me that their group of twenty-five plan to leave stealth mode by the second half of 2015.

Ellen’s interest in entrepreneurship came to be in college. When she was younger, she never had anything to do with things related to technology or starting companies. She began to meet people she liked who were in the entrepreneurial world, which peaked her interest to get a part time job at a startup in college. From this, she decided to go to business school and did another project with a startup, which she enjoyed very much.

Ellen graduated from business school in the 1990’s. This was before the entrepreneur craze came to be, and therefore business schools did not teach anything about being one. Business school mostly revolved around finance and corporate America. Ellen believes that her experience in business school only really helped her with her exploration of the options, and how to manage a large group of people. She believes that leadership is difficult to learn in school, and that people who build start ups lead based on their personalities.

The key piece of advice that Ellen shared with me was to think about developing advisors and mentors for yourself early, and to take advantage of this as much as possible during all different stages of needing help. Younger people often don’t admit they need assistance or guidance, but making an active effort to develop relationships with people and asking questions helps you both learn from them, and build a relationship that will incline them to want to help you in the future.

I'd like to thank Ellen for taking the time to speak with me, and offer her advice!