Not Every Founder Is Made for Founder Mode
Moved by, many say, the iconic speech from Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky, one of YC […]
Our guest today is the software engineer and a pioneer in the software industry in Bulgaria Boris Simandoff. He’s the VP of Tech Innovations at Via, the on-demand transit tech company, born in the US. He’s also the leader of their engineering team in Bulgaria.
With more than 20 years of experience in the field of software design, code optimization, and distributed network systems, Boris Simandoff reflects on his career path in this episode of The Recursive podcast. In his conversation with Georgi Nenov, he tells the story of his first successful exit back in the days when the word startup didn’t even exist in Bulgaria. “We had no idea what to do to be successful. We invested our own money. We didn’t eat much. There were no VCs, no banks”, Simandoff remembers.
Later, he spent a decade managing big projects for the Oskar-winning rendering and 3D visualizations company Chaos Group which he describes as a family. Two years ago he accepted the offer of Via, the on-demand transit tech company, to become the general manager of their engineering office in Sofia. In the episode, Boris Simandoff shares his vision about the future of transportation and how Via is changing the way people are moving around the world.
“We are basically inventing the transit tech industry at the moment and I believe in the next 3 to 5 years so many things will change for the better”, Simandoff tells Georgi Nenov.
In the podcast, Boris Simandoff also talks about his leadership style, how he stays the top of his game as a software engineer and how he nurtures tech talents.
“Listen to your people. Define the framework and give them the freedom to create on their own”, is his go-to leadership advice.
“Young people are focused on mission and impact. They can get the same salaries everywhere. So it’s more important to know that their work will mean something huge in the future”, he concludes.
Watch the previous episode to learn how the co-founder of FindMeCure Maya Zlatanova is trying to solve the biggest bottleneck in the healthcare industry – data and the broken link between patients and companies.
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