Renaissance Man: IPO at 25, SWAT Team Operator, and AI Founder | Augie Fabela, FastForward.ai
Many Founders dream about taking their company public on the NYSE. For Augie Fabela, this became a reality at the age of 25.
What do you do after making enough money to retire at such a young age? Augie decided he’d turn his attention toward making an impact in the community. The son of Colombian and Mexican parents, he leveraged his diverse background to serve the community as a law enforcement officer.
Augie is the epitome of a Renaissance Man. You’ll certainly want to tune into this serial entrepreneur’s journey as he is on his 6th business, focused on leveraging AI to help small businesses better engage with customers via social platforms.
Founder Bio:
Augie Fabella is the Co-Founder and CEO of FastForward.ai, a Silicon Valley start-up, with a mission to bring digital services and mobile payments to the 5.5 billion customer mobile operator market by leveraging their vast $1 trillion payments infrastructure and increasing their digital market share.
Augie co-founded VEON at the age of 25, now the world’s 7th largest mobile network operator with 220 million subscribers—more than AT&T and Verizon. In 1996 he did an IPO of VEON and became the youngest Chairman on the NYSE, reaching a peak valuation of $44 billion, with 60,000 employees globally.
After graduating from Stanford University with a M.A. and B.A. in four years, Augie spent two years working in Tokyo for Japan’s largest media conglomerate, Fujisankei Group. He returned to the United States with a goal of starting his own business, ultimately founding six companies.
In 2010, as part of his contribution back to society, Augie became a police officer in Chicago, his birthplace, graduating from the police academy at the age of 44. He continues to contribute his time, talent and touch, actively serving at Chicago Cook County Sheriff’s Office, with the rank of Chief, serves as a SWAT Operator and is the author of DECIDE: Tactical Crisis Decision Making for Law Enforcement.
Augie is a civic contributor, philanthropist and business policy innovator. He served as a member of the World Economic Forum (Davos) for 15 years and a Founding Member of its Global Chairman Community. He and his wife founded the Fabela Family Foundation, that supports Christian initiatives, education and law enforcement programs. He also serves on the Zimin Foundation and Zimin Institute for Engineering Solutions Advancing Better Lives.
Timestamps:
3:30 Building a multi-billion dollar public company, in Russia
9:10 The value of local partnerships when starting a business in another country
11:06 Augie’s roots | Learning entrepreneurship for Father, moving all over the US, early career
13:30 Lessons learned from managing talent from different countries and different cultures
15:50 Joining the police academy, becoming a SWAT Commander and becoming a Chief
21:20 The origins for FastForward.ai and how it works
27:28 The decision to implement AI into the platform
31:09 Building the MVP with a remote outsourced team
35:26 Strategies for creating culture in a remote work environment
37:16 First steps in building an AI product
41:44 Deciding on a go-to-market strategy in the early days of the startup
43:54 Augie has authored 2 books: “Decide” and “The Impatience Economy”
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