Hari Ravichandran is a successful entrepreneur, who built Endurance International Group, an international family of technology brands providing small business owners with digital tools from a start-up to a large multinational corporation. He is now the CEO of Jump Ventures, a scalability infusion firm that focuses on long-term collaboration and strategically investing in businesses with a focus on driving exponential growth. Jump’s goal is to ensure their portfolio companies succeed by creating exceptional scale potential.
Hari uses the lessons he learned at Endurance to invest in promising disruptive businesses and help them expand their products and services. He is also CEO of iSubscribed, a holding company committed to creating, scaling, investing and acquiring disruptive technology to simplify digital security for consumers.
How does Hari support new businesses?
Hari finds innovators with ideas and helps scale their businesses. He enlists the right partners and makes strategic introductions to create viable and tactical business outcomes. This combination of investment and practical support enables creators to watch their products take off all while driving revenue.
It’s very rare for people to have the right combination of knowledge, creativity, business acumen, funding ability and management skills to be able to grow a company based around their own idea, so Hari and his team help to take care of the business side of things and leave the founders with the ability to bring their ideas and products to life.
Hari has personally been through the process of growing a new business and was very successful. By the time he left Endurance, the company was a global brand with over 3,500 employees! Hari knows what it takes to succeed and knows the pitfalls along the way that can slow growth.
Hari’s expertise is managing a team and hiring people with skills and abilities that complement the existing members of the team – skills that people running a start-up may not think they need, but that becomes very important for the long-term success of the business.
How do the new companies work?
One of the biggest lessons in business that most successful people learn is that you cannot do it all yourself. You have to build a great team to be successful, which is why Hari has surrounded himself with top experts in all fields of business.
While Hari has proven that he’s capable of running a large enterprise, he most enjoys taking a new idea and growing small businesses. By creating holding companies he and his team are able to work with lots of start-up ideas and help them to grow.
Jump Venture and iSubscribed are always on the look-out for promising new concepts to fund and products or businesses to acquire, as well as building their own products. iSubscribed, for example, has built its own anti-virus called Intrusta which will scale to be a unified digital threat protection platform that makes security simple for everyone. Using adaptive technology and relentless focus on customer experience, Intrusta enables customers to manage disparate cybersecurity needs with ease.
The benefit of a holding company is that the parent can allow the team to manage the day-to-day needs of the businesses in their respective portfolio. Alphabet Inc., the owner of Google, has other businesses under its umbrella – obviously Google is the biggest one, but after a business has taken off, the parent company only needs to step in at certain times when necessary.
What has Hari learned from his career?
The main lesson that Hari takes from his experiences is when to not take risks. The owner of a new start-up will naturally want to chase every opportunity and even possible chances to gain new business, funding and exposure. However, this isn’t always the right move.
Building stable foundations and ensuring that the product is great will, in the long run, pay off for a new business a lot more than chasing short-term gains. With the financial support and practical advice that Jump offers, new businesses can afford to take the long view and prepare for growth.
Hari also believes that developing a strong company culture should be a priority for a start-up. Rather than thinking of culture as something that is nice but not essential, new businesses should make creating a culture that people want to work in one of their key tasks. This will help you to attract and retain talented, in-demand individuals who will add a lot of value to your business.
The lessons Hari has learned through his career are a huge help as he works with new start-ups. He and the rest of the Jump Ventures team are a valuable resource for any business that wants to develop an innovative idea, bring it to market and scale.
