Raj Bhaskar, Cofounder and CEO of Hurdlr

Raj Bhaskar is the Cofounder and CEO of Hurdlr, developers of a mobile business management app for busy entrepreneurs. Previously, he was the Owner/CEO of VisualHOMES, a leading provider of property management software designed specifically for subsidized housing programs. Its customers included some of the largest and most well-run housing agencies in North America, managing over 1 million residents and hundreds of thousands of residential housing units.

In August 2010, VisualHOMES was acquired by Yardi Systems, a global leader in real estate software solutions. After selling his company, Raj joined Yardi’s management team as Vice President of Business Development until February 2012. Prior to VisualHOMES, he led business development for a startup focused on enterprise software for mobile communications. Raj earned his Bachelor of Business Administration, with honors, at The George Washington University.

About the Strategic Business Forum:

The purpose of the Strategic Business Forum is to educate and inspire business owners and other leaders to create remarkably successful enterprises. We do this through interviewing founders who have grown their businesses above at least $3M in revenue or CEOs of larger companies that have led their companies through growth periods. The forum is run at breakeven, there are no sales pitches, and there is nothing to join. The Strategic Business Forum is a pure lunch and learn, with some light networking thrown in, for the express purpose of enabling business owners to learn from the great successes of others.

Using an interview format, questions are typically along the lines of:

General background (where the speaker grew up, went to college, etc. Basically any interesting aspects of his/her formative years,etc.)
How he/she started or took over the business
How did he/she grow the business to where it is today (or where it was when he/she exited). Looking for events, strategies, key hires, key fires, etc. Whatever were the key building blocks to getting him/her there.
What were some of his/her most exciting victories (war stories)
What were some of his/her biggest failures? Things that if he/she had a chance to do over again, he/she would do it differently (common items here are waiting too long to fire someone, micromanaging, etc.). Again, looking for war stories.
What are the key takeaways that the speaker really wants the audience to know (ANYTHING that is important – lessons learned, processes, key advisers, hires, fires, leadership, marketing, tenacity, facing reality, etc., etc.)
Anything else the speaker wants to share with the group? Any words of wisdom? Who is/was his/her mentor? Where does he/she go for encouragement? What book is he/she reading? Etc.

We’ll then end with Q&A from the audience.