Ross Buhrdorf

About Ross Buhrdorf

Ross Buhrdorf is the CEO and co-founder of ZenBusiness, a public benefit corporation on a mission to make entrepreneurship accessible to anyone with a dream and the courage to pursue it. He believes small business ownership remains one of the last genuine paths to self-determination in an increasingly stratified economy — a conviction backed by the numbers: small businesses employ 46% of Americans and generate 44% of U.S. GDP.Ross brings that belief to work with the authority of someone who has built at scale. As the founding CTO of HomeAway (NASDAQ: AWAY), he took the company from a startup through its IPO and ultimately to a $3.9 billion acquisition by Expedia — overseeing more than 25 acquisitions along the way and helping define the vacation rental category from scratch. He was named CTO of the Year by the Austin Technology Council in 2011, and EY Entrepreneur of the Year (Gulf South) in 2023.Informing his perspective on leadership, Ross has navigated companies through the 2008 financial crisis, when a $250 million funding round closed as banks were failing and credit lines were being called. He managed a global team through COVID. His view: it\'s always something, and the leaders who survive it are the ones with a long enough horizon and enough honesty with themselves to see clearly under pressure. That conviction drives his forthcoming book, Fear Is a Liar, which argues that fear — not capital, not competition, not timing — is the primary obstacle standing between most people and the business they could build.Outside of work, Ross is an active visual artist, a serious reader, and a trustee of the Santa Fe Institute, where some of the world\'s leading scientists tackle humanity\'s most complex problems. He has been married for 40 years and has three children and one grandson.

Experience

1. Partner Mentor Investor

   Capital Factory

   Jan 2012 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   Capital Factory’s mission is to be Austin’s center of gravity for entrepreneurs.Last year entrepreneurs, programmers and designers gathered day and night for meetups, classes and coworking.You should come to Capital Factory to- Hone your skills at meetups and hackathons - Find your co-founder - Build a Minimum Viable Product - Meet your first angel investors and VCs - Find lighthouse customers - Keep your costs low - Grow your team - Quit your job and become an entrepreneur.

Education

• The University of Texas at Austin

  Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science

  1985 — 1988

Skills

• Technical Leadership
• Team Building
• Agile Methodologies
• Enterprise Software
• Web Applications
• Software Development
• Start-Ups
• E-Commerce
• Product Management
• Rest
• Software Engineering
• Scalability
• Cloud Computing
• Web Development
• Team Leadership
• Integration
• Architectures
• Crm
• Saas
• Architecture
• Linux
• Enterprise Architecture
• Subversion
• Software Design
• Apache
• Management
• Network Security
• Software Project Management
• Entrepreneurship
• Software as a Service (Saas)
• Strategic Partnerships