Former HomeAway CTO on fear of failure as a first-time CEO and founder

Ross Buhrdorf, ZenBusiness, B2B, Failure, Legal

Joining me is the former CTO of HomeAway. He left that company and was going to take a year off but he could barely make it 10 months before jumping back to work.

Ross Buhrdorf is now the founder of ZenBusiness, a corporate entity creation and management company.

I invited him here to talk about that business, but also HomeAway.

Ross Buhrdorf

ZenBusiness

Ross Buhrdorf is the founder of ZenBusiness, a corporate entity creation and management company.

Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses, and I do it for an audience of real entrepreneurs. Joining me is the former Chief Technical Officer of HomeAway, the site where you can go and rent people’s homes when you’re on vacation. He left that company, was going to take some time off and it’s going to be a year, but Ross, you couldn’t even do it, right? You had to jump in even sooner.

Ross: Yeah, I couldn’t make it a year. I mean, at 10 months, you know, I started getting itchy and literally within two weeks of making the decision, I was, you know, in the middle of it already. I mean it goes from, I wouldn’t say day to day, but it goes from, “Oh shit, what did I get into?” to now, this is so very exciting. So I don’t resist it anymore. I just go with it. I’m having a ball.

Andrew:...

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