Office Depot

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Rob Bernshteyn expected to be worth $74

The BBC, the weekly-in-chief-series-profiles of various executives from all over The World . This Week we talk with Rob Bernshteyn, chief of the US software company Coupa .

As Rob Bernshteyn and His Family finally escape the Soviet Union managed to found, first, That the US was even worse.

"We have ourselves in a pretty tough district of Brooklyn [New York , 1980]," to Rob a look. "You didn't want to walk around at night, unless they were carrying. I mean, this was a difficult neighbourhood, very rough. New York was a different place back then.

"The Apartment we stayed in, I remember the size of the cockroaches, an inch and a half of going over The Floor . The graffiti was everywhere, when you walked down The Street , and they heard the sirens of ambulances and police. It was all really scary for us. "

Rob was bullied a leader in the school in New York , when he came out of the Soviet Union

Now 44, and a successful US business, Rob was just six when he and his parents were able to swap in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg) in New York . A Jewish family, his parents wanted to get away from the anti-Semitism That you were exposed to in the Soviet Union , and also gain the economic opportunity in the United States.

at the risk of the wrath of the Soviet authorities, his father and mother - both engineers - applied to emigrate to. "It took four years to obtain for you the approval," says Rob .

"It was a real risk at the time of application, because if they were rejected, they were called "refusenik" - and often these people have lost their jobs. Many wound up on The Street , and some were sent To Siberia .

"But, fortunately, we were leaving on The List , That was allowed, and there is a [Jewish] Agency in the US was helped at the time. "

His Family arrived in the United States with only $ 1,000 (£765) and two suitcases, and Rob says That he can remember, his father took him "dumpster diving" to find to try, discarded furniture That he was able to patch and put in their small apartment.

New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a tough place

fortunately, his parents were both soon able to find work; his father, with the engineering giant Honeywell, and his mother, with the New York Department of Environmental Protection . But Rob initially had a much harder time in school.

"It was a really tough school in Brooklyn, and I got beat up pretty bad to be seen as, you know, the Communist, and All That ," he says.

Rob says That things will be improved, as he began to learn English, and he found That he was academically gifted, especially in math. The home Life is also much better if his parents saved up to move enough money from Brooklyn to suburban Long Island .

After high school, Rob has a degree in information systems from The State University of New York at Albany. He began his professional Life as a management consultant, first at Accenture And Then to McKinsey.

In the year 2000, at the age of 24, he took the time to do the celebrated master of Business Administration course at Harvard University , before he in the software industry. Moving to Silicon Valley , he spent A Number of years, with the first Oracle, and Sap .

A Number of Jewish organizations in the United States Jews were working to help, to escape the Soviet Union

But to be ultimately interested in, to be his own boss in the year 2009, at the age of just 32, he took The Top job at a small software company called Coupa . Three years earlier, Coupa cloud-based procurement systems, to allow companies easier to get all the supplies you need, such as laptops and office chairs - the cleaning or the companies That employ them to buy.

Rob had ambitious plans for the expansion of The Company , but with the global financial crisis still in full swing at the time, it was a struggle to secure financial return.

Additional features:

"I suggested to the investors three or four times A Day for weeks on end, and no one, believe me, That Coupa could be said to be a multi-billion-dollar company," he said. "About three dozen people who rejected me.

"And Then , just before we were going out of the Bar, I found a venture capitalist who decided That behind me, More Than The Company . We have $7m, which The Company valued at $15m. "

From this point on, the sales at Coupa continues to rise steadily, thanks primarily to the positive word-of-mouth. Today, thousands of customers are sportswear brand Adidas, bank Bnp Paribas , the drinks company .To, retailers, Office Depot and aerospace Rolls-Royce.

The Company , based in Silicon Valley , 20 miles South of San Francisco

With a quarterly revenue of More Than $100m and 2,000 employees, Coupa - which floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2016 - Now has a market capitalization or value of £10bn.

Stuart Lauchlan, co-founder of the technology news website Diginomica, says Coupa met, "genuine business need".

"Great technical Affairs, of course, but it is how the tech is used for the bottom-line benefits, which is really important," he adds. "Bernshteyn last year commented That Coupa had earned legitimacy among enterprise buyers in some of The World 's largest companies. There is a lot of hard work was done in this direction. "

Rob 's Life would be significantly different if His Family were made to stay in the Soviet Union

Looking Ahead , Rob says he has to slow down no plans to or to learn to relax more. "That 's not really working for me, it is a way of Life . I really enjoy it. "

Estimated to be worth over $74 million euros, he says his parents are proud of what he has achieved. So has he ever wondered how his Life would have been if she was forced to stay in the Soviet Union ?

"I don't really think about it, I spend my time thinking forward. But it would have been great, because I know of some relatives and others who had remained, That it turn not so good. "

soviet union, entrepreneurship, us immigration, software

Source of news: bbc.com