Meet Bharath Rao, Founder and CEO of Coinpit Inc, a pure Bitcoin in/out exchange, a futures exchange which offers futures contracts denominated in Bitcoin. Bharath Rao, born and brought up in Mangalore, India, pursued his B.Sc (Bachelor of Science) in Mysore University and then moved to the United States to pursue Master of Science at the Syracuse University. His career began with his own start-up immediately after college which had to stop when he had to shift to the US. Eventually, after his masters, he began to work with various Wall street companies, starting as a software engineer at Lehman Brothers, then as a senior software engineer at Goldmann Sachs, continuously moved up the ladder playing different roles as a lead software engineer, software development manager, technical product manager, senior technical product manager and many other roles at both medium scale and larger organizations. It was in the year 2015 that his career took a different direction when he cofounded Coinpit Inc.

“With more than 20 years experience in the industry, I was enjoying a joyful and a pleasant life. During the first few years, although my designations changed as I got higher roles, majority of  my work was still on technology. After a few years, my roles slowly changed to people management. Machines were easier to deal with, but people - everyone is unique. It was not easy to work on leadership roles, coaching leadership to others. But, these were the best roles of my career. I began to understand what it means to first be a leader myself and help people grow. Earlier, I always used to be at the front and just complete the work I was supposed to do, but later it was getting the work done, which is not easy. People in team have different problems, different strengths. Helping them attain their maximum potentials, gave humungous learning in my journey. I realized that the key to leadership is credibility. People would not just follow anyone. They listen to you only if you have had enough credibility to help them and are continuously growing.” he says.

Having worked with different organizations, he believes that working with start-ups can make an individual grow faster, than working in companies that has a bigger crowd in it, considering the different roles one will be able to take up in a start-up compared to a more structured process in larger companies. He states, “If you want to learn more and grow faster, or if you want experience to become an entrepreneur yourself, start-up is the best place to work. That is where the space is more open, every person is open to share his lessons; you get an opportunity to understand other departments’ working. When you work with bigger companies, the process is strictly defined, you get to do only what is told and not what you might excel at; You would not even know how the other departments work. It is really important to have knowledge about various work that happens in an organization. This does not only help understand how a company works, but also prepares you to bigger challenges as you grow.

Challenges are bound to be faced when one wants to take a journey of success, especially of entrepreneurship. For someone like Bharath, who had years of experience living a peaceful life, with a comforting pay package, it was not easy to come out of comfort zone when he knew that a lot of money had to be spent on forming a company and growing it. To be able to still believe that the business will turn out to be successful was not easy either. His experiences in having dealt with problems in organizations certainly helped him face the hurdles when he started his own business. Another challenge in building a company is “having a co-founder or the support system that knows the person” he says, “Co-founding is like marriages; it becomes very hard to divorce. It is really important to have people who have worked with you before or at least know you as a person, especially the members in the core team of the company. I had worked with my co-founder earlier and hence it was easy for us to work together, and work on our strengths to be able to grow the organization. It is also hard to raise funds, especially business models on bitcoin. One of our advisors suggested we start the company bootstrapped so that eventually we could prove through results and then look or funding, which would be much easier when we have our numbers. So we decided to bootstrap the initial investment from our savings. For any person, even if you are unable to invest money from your saving, get it invested from your close support system - the family and the relatives. Another challenge as a start-up, is to attain work and life balance. To get the family to agree to decision. A lot of people feel that they would still start if the family does not affirm to their decisions. I really believe that it is important to make them understand what you wish to do, show them how passionate you are about building the company, letting them know how big you dream to make the business grow. When they realize your seriousness, they are sure to agree to it. More than all of it, your belief and readiness to work with all your efforts  in seeing the successful outcome, your ability to consider the challenges in a positive way, your faith in the vision will clear all the path for you. To share about his years of experiences of trading on Wall Street, the knowledge obtained at the executive positions and to share his lessons about the technical aspects and details of Bitcoin, he was invited to speak at the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Prague 2016. “Such conferences definitely provide a platform for people to exchange knowledge and opinions” he states. With all the encounters of life that led him to being what he is today, Bharath also adjoins a special message to the youngsters who dream to build a successful career, “Irrespective of you wanting to be an entrepreneur or not, it is truly important to absorb other people’s strength to be able to grow in your career. Look for the positive aspects, in every person you meet and just learn them, ignoring the negatives in him/her. I would suggest to learn from others’ mistakes. To excel in your career, it is very important to stay updated about the technical details of the domain you are working in. More than everything, focusing on your strengths, having a clear goal and being able to say ‘yes’ to every opportunity will take anyone higher. Only when you work on something will you understand if you have the potential to actually do it”

Feel free to connect with Bharath Rao via LinkedIn, for any discussions or associations.