Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 1143: The Long View Investor

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“Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you”

I’ve been having lots of conversations over the past few weeks about the current state of venture and angel investing and how those companies that are good, profitable and viable, but because they will never grow to be $100MM in revenue or beyond, can’t find investment money.  It’s bothered me because it might well be that these small tech companies (profitable and with $5MM – $20MM in revenue) may well be the small businesses of tomorrow, like local hardware stores, restaurants, dry cleaners were the small businesses of yesterday.  I find this exciting as it means that every Main Street in America could have their own Silicon Alley.  But, we have to find a way to value and find investments for these smaller ventures that will never go public or get bought out by the larger company that is looking for big acquisitions. There has to be a model that values the long term, small and steady growth companies if we want to create lots of long-lasting jobs and support small private business owners.  If you are a venture investor, angel investor, or small business owner reading this, I’d be interested in your thoughts on how to solve the problem.

As believers, we can think of our own spiritual lives as individual, long-lasting, growth oriented spiritual ventures.  Our ministries are likely with those we work with daily as we work in the secular world.  We may wonder at times if our contributions to kingdom expansion are significant enough for God to care or take notice.  That is one thing we should never be concerned with, as God values us each individually and tells us that in Romans as we are to measure ourselves by our amount of faith.  God is the greatest of all people investors.  He accepts us where we are and values us way beyond what we are truly worth!  And, he takes an eternal view for us.  As we go into this day, let’s think about how we can lift Him up through our example and giving glory to Him for what we have and what we do.  That is, after all, our purposed worKING!

Reference:  Romans 12:3 (New Living Translation)