“ When there is sort of instability in the market, and people are going one way—
how can you intelligently go the other way?”
— Rahim Fazal

Today’s guest is Rahim Fazal, Co-founder and CEO @SV Academy, a tech company focused on democratizing access to the tech industry through their 4-week (or 12-week) business development fellowship. Before founding SV Academy, Rahim was founder of several software companies with multiple acquisitions along the way— his first during his senior year exams!

In this podcast interview, Rahim takes us through his heart-warming, personal growth journey as a founder— from innovating his way into more opportunities, taking the road less traveled, and learning from some amazing mentors about business AND life!

You’ll enjoy this :)

“When you get fired from McDonald's it’s a very embarrassing experience socially. Also very difficult to get a job anywhere else when Ronald McDonald will not give you a reference...”
—Rahim Fazal

Key Themes

The two personal agreements every founder can use to empower themselves.
The catalyst for becoming an entrepreneur.
Choosing your own path despite cultural expectations.
Building and selling his first business while at school.
Democratizing access to opportunity in tech.
Accelerants to tech adoption and remote-based opportunities.

Transcript

Rahim Fazal

Yeah, well, first of all, it's great, great to see you, great to speak to you. It felt a little disconnected in the last few days. So it's awesome to get plugged back in and I am CEO and co-founder of SV Academy. Some great news— we were just named the number two, innovative education company by Fast Company, which we're really excited about

Essentially, we help job seekers who may not have the experience or the right internships or went to the right school, connect with skills and employment opportunities to start, as SD offers in SaaS, which as you know, is a massively growing industry worth $300 billion. And I think one of the beauties of our model is that it's entirely employer funded. So, job seekers who have that commitment and motivation and are looking for a new career don't pay a single dollar of tuition. We give them a tremendous amount of opportunity and, and help them all the way. Not just with the job but also through their first year and beyond and being successful and becoming the next leader for your company.

Jon Low

Sorry, I forgot to unmute myself, but we'll keep it real. And apparently in your role understand, you know, in recent mass events, it's been a bit of a, it's been a bit of a task to, you know, coordinate and kind of adjust in you economic climate. What are some of the things that excite you now, what are some of the key challenges you're working through? As we speak in this present moment?

Rahim Fazal

I think well, first of all, I've talked about the strength of the SAT of SAS as an industry and when I think about, you know, which companies are, which industries are going to benefit most from change. I think SaaS is incredibly well positioned. And in fact, I think it will accelerate some transformation of SaaS into more endemic industries that may have otherwise taken years to unfold.

So, I think broadly speaking, specifically SaaS, the world that we play in, is really positive. I think the other big exciting opportunity is the idea around working from home and having virtual workforces, which is something we've all had if we've had experience with it before or not, we are all now getting the experience with it. And whether you whether it's taking some time to sort of adjust or it feels, you know, very easy, I think it will become the new norm.

Perhaps not entirely, but I think in terms of its acceptance and adoption more broadly by employers, and that is really exciting for me because it's something we've wanted to support at SV Academy. Certainly our entire training, our entire mentoring coaching, all of the skill development, all the post-hire support, community building all of the employer engagement— all of that has always been virtual from the very beginning.

But one of the constraints for the impact that we're creating SV Academy has been employers have had a strong preference for their inside sales teams being in person in the office, and particularly in areas where, you know, higher cost areas within the country, which also has created, you know, constraint to adoption of our model because our jobseekers, while they take their training virtually ended up having to move to one of the big cities San Francisco or New York, for example, in order to get their job started.

And if we remove that barrier, the ability for us to find and support the highest quality sales talent with the highest quality company allows increased velocity in matches and ultimately productivity. And I think it's going to be incredibly exciting for the new normal. And I think we're really well positioned for it because we've been doing it now for three years across now 500 graduate our program.

Jon Low

Yeah, that's super exciting. Totally agree, and it's interesting how external shock events can kind accelerate, like, new cultural norms forming and it's really exciting to hear. So, SV Academy being early positioned to actually support that.

I'm gonna shift gears a bit because you have an interesting story yourself. Rahim, this is obviously not your first startup. I think you're a serial entrepreneur— you have a gene that can't help but create. And my understanding is yo7 also started a company and sold it during your college days. But maybe give us a bit of a backstory about, you know, like how you got into a tech company and became a founder really, and, and you could talk about a few catalysts, even challenges you went through in your early days as an entrepreneur.

Rahim Fazal

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, that’s what makes me so excited about SV Academy and the population of jobseekers we support is that I didn't even go to college. So that first tech experience I had actually happened between my junior and senior year of high school, and I grew up in government housing, you know, in a world that was very busy. Disconnected from business entrepreneurship, defect industry— definitely I saw the tech industry and people who were older but not that much older.

Funny enough, you know pursuing their dreams and advising their dreams you know by building websites and so on you know starting with nothing etc really inspired me to think I do the same thing and so crazy thing is getting from McDonald's. When I said that was a catalyst for me when you get fired from McDonald's it’s a very embarrassing experience socially. Also very difficult to get a job anywhere else when Ronald McDonald will not give you a reference.

And so you know, get on the next day you know, my best friend Hussein and I started talking about, well, what do we do in order to get some pocket money. And we had a lot of uncles and aunts and so on who, you know, had small businesses and wanted to get websites up online, we started to build websites for them. And that eventually turned into like this automated platform. And that automated platform turned into about 25,000 small businesses using this site that we had built to get online, you know, domains, email addresses, that kind of stuff. And we did this all the while while at school.

So, not telling our parents that we were doing this at all until we're completely in the dark until we ended up selling the company actually, which was a pretty incredible experience because we end up telling our parents, okay, so we've been up to the last couple of years and we just sold our company. It's going to be nice. And by the way, we split for a couple million bucks and you know, we can get out of you know, we can stop using coupons at the sizzler.

And, you know, from there, it just was it was like this fear of continuing to take the confidence now to pursue my own path in my art and ended up turning a couple other companies that didn't go so well some that did well and sold my last company to Oracle, which is really not easy feat, and in particular enterprise go to a very kind of global and world class level execution and that led to, “All right, well, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? And how could I take all of those experiences I've had both in terms of building software B2B software companies and sales teams as well as you know, being an individual who's come from the under resourced background and, and kind of put the two together to really make the world a better place?”

Jon Low

Thank you. Nice. Obviously you know, Like those, those are sub headers of what happened, but there's a lot of details missing along the way. Tell me about it, you know, like, tell me in hindsight, what were some of the most challenging moments you've had, probably personally and in business and how you navigated that territory. And, you know, obviously, it's hard to separate life from business if you're a full time entrepreneur, but looking back, what are some of those memorable challenges that really catalyzed a lot of growth for you?

Rahim Fazal

Well, it's sort of, it's similar to like the present situation we're in right now where, you know, when there is sort of instability in the market, and people are going one way, you know, how can you how could, how can you sort of intelligently go the other way, and it's, I think that's a really interesting frame for me for my entire life. Great reflection when I think about it.

Looking at opportunity, I often will look in the face of, you know, sort of more of a macro challenge, I will look at ways of taking a path that other people aren't necessarily taking and be a little bit unconventional. I'll give you one specific example which is, you know, very early in my career when I made the decision to not go to college, when most of my peers were either willing to work for like, let's say that a family business or they were going to work in trades or they were going to community college, some of them even went to a four year college program.

And you know, culturally, it was expected that I would continue with post secondary education and to me felt like there was a market opportunity within the tech industry where you know, in the early 2000s it was sort of an ice storm. And I think most people were kind of going more conventional paths. And I'd said, actually, this is probably the best time for me to go and build the tech companies because it'll be easier, cheaper, I'll be able to attract better talent, have more meaningful conversations with customers who may not, you know, be as well as in a need and, and, you know, to find opportunity, ultimately, where others aren't looking.

And I think that's like that's a constant challenge that we face in our lives, you know, with all of the major life decisions we make as well as how we think professionally. In my case, starting companies, I'm kind of constantly looking at where, you know, what are the questions? I'm not asking myself, right, where are the places that others are not looking that I can look and I actually invest time to start companies is, is in a time when there is a lot of uncertainty. And that's what makes me so excited and optimistic about you know, the coming months, quarters, years.

Jon Low

Nice, he said thanks for sharing that. And, you know, you mentioned that you asked yourself, you know, what questions are you asking? And along the journey? Did you have any specific mentors that provided a bit of a guiding light along your journey? And if so, can you share a bit about what they helped you realize?

Rahim Fazal

Yeah, I had, I've had a handful of mentors. I'll share three of them with you. The first was when I was just leaving high school and kind of entering kind of late teens, there was a journalist that had covered the sale of my first company. His name is Tony Wanless. And what he really helped me with was he was like the first sort of adult figure I had in my life that I could really relate to as as sort of a peer. He played a Sherpa role with me around kind of joining adulthood on my own terms in a way that I sort of didn't have that role being filled either, you know, by my parents, where there's some natural hierarchy or family members or let's say, you know, school teachers etc. So, you know, I think with Tony he helped me figure out how to join the world in a way that felt very much like I belonged.

The second one was with my last company, I had an independent board member, Steve Wolski. He was the CEO of parametric technologies public company that has been known within enterprise to have, like the very, very best world class best in class enterprise go to market. And he really helped me through some challenging times on my board and as a CEO, as a leader, but also helped me really appreciate enterprise sales as a discipline. And why that is so, so important in SaaS, the industry that I've chosen to make my career In, when at that time, I think a lot of us were just thinking about, like, engineering and product.

And I think we fantasize a lot about that. We herald that a lot especially in Silicon Valley, but broadly, I would say, in the tech industry, and I came out of that experience with a completely different view, and appreciation for the importance of sales.

And then the third one was while I was at Oracle, my former competitor and then sort of my new boss, let's call it Reggie Bradford, who is CEO of Vitriol, who also got acquired by Oracle, we ended up being combined into the same group, kind of the beginnings of the Oracle Marketing Cloud and he really pushed me to, to be bold in all of my thinking.

And so when we started SV Academy, he pushed me really, really hard to think 10 times bigger in terms of how you know what I could achieve in terms of potential impact population. You know, he wrote like a big 6=figure check. Without even knowing what we were, what what exactly the business was going to look like, but believed in me and believed in, in this vision so much that some of those early relationships he helped us build with employers who still are big hiring partners or have become big hiring partners for SV Academy are ones that, you know, I'll be forever grateful for. And sadly, Reggie passed away. His contribution and his role as a mentor in my life was substantial during the period of his life, but like, carries on with me, like I keep looking back to the lessons that he taught me through the years that we competed as competitors— five, six years along with, you know, being, you know, in the same group and him kind of being my boss over at Oracle to him being kind of like an executive chairman, first angel investor in SV Academy.

Jon Low

Wow, thanks for sharing that. I thought this would be a good move to ask the next question for him, like, you know, as you mature even more in your journey as an entrepreneur, and as a leader, like, I'm sure you've thought about being that same person for other people, right? Maybe other entrepreneurs, other entrepreneurs or other rising talent. And, you know, for other aspiring entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who are early in their journey are out there. Uh, what? What are some things that you wish you knew earlier that you potentially would like to share? Now? If you're watching this video,

Rahim Fazal

yeah, yeah, I think I, you know, if you think about my journey, I started very much with the idea that I needed like I was an outsider and as an outsider, the way for me to be successful was to go out there and like change the world, like really focus on all of the inequalities and the gaps and and figure out how just through like brute force, I could go out there and smile act through it all.

And what I, what I now appreciate having gone through those experiences, is that if the very best place to start is actually with you, like focusing on self and focusing on within and talking about Reggie— one of the one of the very practical lessons he shared with me was, every year he used to write two or three pair a two or three pairs graph vision statement, not for his business, which is something we talk often about, but about himself as a human being as a father as a leader in his community as a CEO of his startup, and he shared, he shared his last one with me before his passing and, of course, like very touching to me to have that experience that intimate experience with seeing how he kind of the level at which he held himself to but also very instructive for me in terms of Okay, like, I'm always looking for advice on how I can make my business better, what how can I make my business better, and I forget that one of the strongest agents for changes actually, in terms of agents of change for my business is actually focusing on making myself like a better human and a better father now, and and a better leader, and then a better CEO.

But it has to sort of start at the like, start within start at that core and then kind of work your way out. Basically, I can't be a great CEO If I'm not a great father, and I can't probably be a great father, if I'm not, you know, if I don't fully love myself, and I haven't fully sort of understood and appreciated myself as a whole human being. So, I think that's the biggest thing I could share and they're very two very specific, let's say agreements that I have made with myself in the last couple of years that I want to share with you.

Number one is an agreement to take 100% responsibility for my experience. And so, even in light of what is happening in the macro environment is easy. or finger at vendors or partners or customers or markets or investors. But the reality is that these are all byproducts of a set of choices that I have made and I continue to make on a day to day basis that I have control over I may not be able to control what is going out and what's going on out there. Like You know, the rapid rate of, you know, proliferates of the pandemic, for example, but I can, but I am actively making choices every day that either sort of open or close opportunities for me.

And the second one is the second agreement I've made with myself is to be detached from always wanting to be right. And the corollary to that or the mechanism for me to get there is around having, like a strong sense of curiosity about everything that I'm experiencing, and including the present climate. And I think, by combining these two agreements, together, I'm able to, to be my very, very best self, and it's allowing me to see, you know, markets like vision into markets and the evolution of markets, for our business and for the businesses that I support and invest in that I think will be allow those individuals and for those end those businesses to achieve like the greatest levels of impact they can and to be their full selves and full organizations and also add on a de micro micro level keeps my well being intact and keeps me sane and keeps me feeling just really excited about every moment. But I don't think I would have understood that. Two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago had I not made the mistakes that that I made along the way and hopefully, I can help others who would would otherwise repeat some of those mistakes avoid those mistakes through those learnings then That to me is like a you know, like a job well done a life well lived.