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Subbu Rama laughed heartedly as he explained his arrival in the U.S. He was traveling from India to Wisconsin. It was his first airplane ride. And he was told Wisconsin is cold, which is often true, especially compared to where he grew up.
So he maxed out his luggage and wore a big, warm coat. But it was September, and when he got to Madison, he felt a bit out of place with the winter jacket, not to mention way too warm.
After completing his master’s degree in Wisconsin, he had three job options. One would move him to Boston, another would send him to the San Francisco Bay Area and the third was in Austin. At the time, he considered Boston way too cold, and the Bay Area sounded chilly, too.
He had a good friend in Austin, and he knew it’d be warm. The choice became obvious.
“It was the best decision I made ever in my life,” he said.
Since then, Rama has lived in the Bay Area briefly, building startups and raising venture capital. But he calls Austin home, and built two of his three startups here. One was computing company Bitfusion, which raised about $8 million before being acquired by VMware in 2019. The other is BalkanID, which he recently launched with about $8.1 million in funding.
Rama, who is deeply embedded in Austin’s startup scene, is also an angel investor in several companies and founded Accio Ventures. We chatted about his journey recently over lunch at Thai Kun at The Domain.
Where did you grow up? I was born in New Delhi, India, and then moved to Gujarat, where my dad was working. And then a greater part of my life, I grew up in Madras, or Chennai, as it’s called now in South India. I stayed there until my undergrad, and I moved to the States in 2003.
What do you miss about India? My family is all here. My parents are here; my friends, my cousins, everybody’s here. So I don’t miss things that much now, because we’ve been here since 2003. So this is where I’ve been half my life now. But if I were to really think about it, the one thing I miss is … here, everybody has like a big house. India is like more like apartments, where people actually get together a lot more, and gather a lot more. And you go to your neighbor’s house across from your door in an apartment and hang out there.
What first got you interested in technology? I think I might have been a tinkerer as a kid. But I think my parents kind of actually planted the seed of this in my head. So when you grew up as an Indian kid, your parents basically give you two options, that you want to be a doctor or an engineer. So I didn’t want to be a doctor because there was no logical reasoning. At that time, engineering seemed to be the most logical thing I could do.
In India, there’s a stereotype when I was growing up. They tell you, you can make a lot of money if you’re a doctor or an engineer. I was also lazy and engineering is easier. And plus, if I write a buggy code, I know I won’t kill anybody.
Do you have a morning routine? Yes, the first thing I try to do is meditate and do my yoga. If I don’t have a lot of time, I do my yoga in five minutes.
How do you feel that changes your day? It makes my day very calm. If I only do it for like the five minutes, or sometimes I try to even shortcut that even shorter, I think my day is very jittery.
Do you have a favorite book? “Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity,” by Frank Slootman. It’s a phenomenal book. It kind of tells you how this guy, the CEO, who went to many companies and took them to $100 million business. Before that my favorite book that really got me into entrepreneurship was “iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business.”
What’s your favorite movie? “Pirates of Silicon Valley.”
What’s it like to have a big exit like Bitfusion? I think closure and success is very important for entrepreneurs as a feedback loop. If you do not have closure and exit, it never gives you the reason to do the next thing.
If I had not had an exit with Bitfusion, I wouldn’t have started BalkanID. So to me, the money, it changed my lifestyle. But I think all those are secondary. It’s really that it gave me the motivation to start the next company.
What type of advice do you give first-time founders? Be very clear about what you want to do. Ask the question, why do you want to do it? Do you want to do it for money? Do you want to do it for fame? Do you want to do it for changing the world? Do you want to do it because you just don’t like your job?
If you want to do it for money, there’s so many ways to make money. This is probably the hardest path to make money. If you want to do it for fame, there are also other paths. So I would really say just write it down. Why do you want to do it and work backward from that.
We actually wrote a PR FAQ before we actually started BalkanID. We literally wrote a press release of what we thought it is going to be one year from when we wrote it. We wrote about what is the one year plan, two year plan, three year plan, four year plan, five year plan. Maybe those things change, but write it down.
Who would be at your dream dinner party? My wife, Priti. I think she’s really my source of inspiration for everything. I almost call her my business coach because every single thing I talked to her about. She’s my therapist, she’s my coach and everything. So I’d definitely have her.
Title: Founder and CEO, BalkanID
Age: 40
Family: Wife, Priti Sundaram
Education: Master’s degree in computer engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Contact: [email protected]
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