DJ Vlad recently joined Shawn Prez's PowerMove Makers podcast for a discussion highlighting the VladTV founder's career. During the interview, Vlad talked about how he's managed to reinvent himself throughout the years, as well as the wins and losses he's experienced along the way.
About 20:55 into the discussion, Vlad detailed his pre-music career and how an internship at Intel influenced him to become an entrepreneur. While interning at the technology company, Vlad was able to have a view of corporate life at its highest level and see the quality of life that middle management lived. Vlad noticed how hard the employees worked and how smart they were, but they not compensated very much.
"I just knew at that point that being at a big corporation like that, I wasn't going to accomplish my [life] goals," Vlad said.
After graduating from UC Berkely, Vlad was a 23-year-old with a $65,000 salary at a start-up company. During his first year with the company, he realized he wasn't a great employee and being part of a team with a boss. After his first year, he quit and embarked on his first attempt at entrepreneurship.
After working as a programmer, Vlad launched a staffing company for start-ups and technology companies. However, the dot-com crash occurred and all of the companies he worked with started going out of business or stopped hiring.
"I had this decision - do I stay with the recruiting during what's about to be a very rough time and I had just bought a half a million-dollar house in the Oakland hills and I had expenses and so forth, or do I say, 'f*** it, it was a nice run, I'm going pursue one of my real passions which is music,'" Vlad said.
Vlad went on to acknowledge he had friends who also worked in his industry and stuck it out during the dot-com to positive results. In addition to talking about building VladTV, Vlad also discussed the company's recent iHeart deal.
