The Hustler’s Digest:
Sometimes things you want, eventually find their way into your life if you are willing to go for them when the time comes. Jeff Eiben always wanted to pursue his career in the business world but in the end, he chose engineering school at West Virginia University and made a remarkable career in the field of technology. When he reached the highest level of his career, he fulfilled his childhood dream of starting a business by leaving the corporate world and laying the foundation stone of River Point Technology, a company that emerged to be a pioneer in cloud computing.
It, of course, didn’t happen overnight. During his graduation, Jeff remained a sharp-minded student with a unique and smart approach to studies. He would consistently score higher on tests than his peers who used to attend all the classes, unlike Jeff, who was merely attending a fifth of his classes each semester. And at the end of every semester, he would leave his peers baffled by securing the same GPA as his peers, in spite of limited classroom attendance.
“The difference, as I understood it, was that my peers were getting caught in the minutia of the concepts rather than using their brains for critical thinking. The only approach they knew to grasp the concepts was to grind through textbooks and sample problems to prepare for exams. Given that I didn’t invest the time into preparation that my peers did, I concentrated on the big pictures as a defense mechanism,” shares Jeff.
After graduating with flying colors, Jeff was instantly offered a hybrid role at Westinghouse Electric. During his time at the company, Jeff got to see the business of distribution and controls from multiple roles in engineering, manufacturing, support, and sales. He traveled a lot too, as most salespeople do, but what he found most interesting was the technology and its role in supporting and driving a business.
Having spent five years at the company, Jeff moved into software engineering, specifically simulation software, and spent the next eight years working on it with Mallet and Ansoft.
“My jobs in Mallet and Ansoft were in inside sales, but as I was selling engineering software, I needed to know enough about the technology to speak with engineers and engineering managers. I needed to understand the “why” behind their desire to use our software,” he shared while recalling his time when he was introduced to software technology as a salesperson.
His next job in sales at VMware was more successful than the previous ones. However, when he got to know about cloud computing and its potential to revolutionize businesses, he left VMware and started his own company, River Point Technology, to guide other businesses into the ‘cloud era’.
Because of his past experiences in selling software, he knew what impact the cloud can have, but due to having no experience in running a business, he struggled for one or two years initially. However, with patience and persistence, Jeff strategized everything, and then within the next few years, he got many clients and eventually emerged as a trendsetter in the cloud computing industry.
This salesman-turned-entrepreneur, with his out-of-the-box approach and shrewdness, single-handedly made the cloud a sole system for many accomplished businesses.
Read the full article here.