Robin has built an excellent company with large, international clients in the healthcare domain and has used the bootstrapping using services technique that we espouse in 1M/1M.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances?

Robin Wiener: I’m from Connecticut. I was born in Bristol, the home of ESPN now. I went to the University of Connecticut for college. The back story for me was early on, I had a major speech problem. I couldn’t really pronounce things. Along with that, I had a major learning disability. I had two sisters and a brother. The teachers told my parents that I just wasn’t as smart as my brothers and sisters. Maybe I could get married and that would be a good thing for me to do.

I was lucky enough to have a mother who thought they were crazy. She had me tested and figured out that I had dyslexia. I had a smart cookie as a mother and father. They figured it out. They got me into different things and made me show my worth. I was in plays and musicals. To help me with my speech, they got me singing and improve diction that way. I have such a fantastic family. Everybody supported me all the way through.

I went to the University of Connecticut. I did all right in college but it wasn’t great because of my disabilities. I worked retail for many years. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I always thought about it. I felt like I could do it my way and use the skills that I have found.

Sramana Mitra: Can you give me reference for when you were coming out of college?

Robin Wiener: I went to college in 1982 and came out of college in 1987. The economy fell out. My best friend and I decided to come and move to Maryland. I’m never scared of trying something new. We came down to Maryland and got jobs down here and worked retail for a long time.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of retail?

Robin Wiener: I ran different retail stores inside the mall. That’s what I went to school for—Fashion Merchandising. Through that, I realized that one thing I enjoyed doing was hiring people. I transitioned out of retail to recruiting. Through recruiting, I found my passion of trying to find the right person for the right job. I got into recruiting for IT people. This is where I started to look at technology as something that is really cool. At one company, I hired 200 people in a year. That was during the dot-com world.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, Get Real Health