Tom Szaky is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of TerraCycle, Inc., producer of the worlds first product made from and packaged in waste.
At 14, Szaky started his first business, a web design company called Flyte Design, which employed three associates and earned its young proprietor a five-figure income. Szaky then engaged in the start-up of three small dot.com companies: Werehome.com (an online home improvement site), piority.com (an online fundraising school), and studentmarks.com (an online grade tracking software).
In 2002, Szaky took a leave of absence from Princeton University to dedicate himself full-time to starting TerraCycle, Inc., beginning as a 2 man outfit in the crowded basement of an old office building in Princeton. Today TerraCycle occupies a 20,000 sq. ft. factory in an urban enterprise zone in Trenton, NJ, where it employs over 20 workers and makes and ships its unique consumer products to WalMart Canada, Whole Foods, Home Depot, and other major retail stores.
Cash flow is King. Absolutely. And I'll give you some examples of how we have dealt with that. We run our company on a very, very, very lean budget. Our top salary today is $30,000 a year. Our average executive took about a 90 percent pay cut to be with us. And so that is a part of it. Is how...(Full transcript available to logged in subscribers.).
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Tom Szaky States Investors Believe In Him Becauce He Fundamentally Believes in Company
Tom Szaky Discusses Parents Reaction To Fact That He Was Dropping Out of College To Start Company
Tom Szaky Discusses Turning Away From Funding Because It Didn't Fit With Core Idea of Business
Tom Szaky States Importance of Having an Individual Leader At the Top of an Organization
Tom Szaky States Ego Helps With Selling and Vision But Hurts With Team Building and Managing
Tom Szaky States Importance of Being Comfortable With Positive and Negative Impacts of a Business Deal
Tom Szaky States Importance of Picking Investors With Same Care As Picking New Employees
