HHCIB 010 Dino Di Palma & Expanding Internationally

How Hard Can It Be?

This week my guest is G20 member Dino Di Palma, who most recently served as the Chief Executive Officer of Benu Networks, a provider enterprise technology that allows network operators to dynamically and exponentially scale existing networks for better service agility and increased stickiness in the home and business. Prior to that he was the Chief Operating Officer at Acme Packet, a company he helped take public and eventually sell to Oracle in a transaction valued well over $2 Billion. Dino also served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development at Acme Packet, and as Vice President of Sales and Business Development prior to that. Before Acme Packet Dino was the Vice President of International Business Development of SEMA/Priority Call, where he spent six years in systems engineering, sales, and business development. He holds a BA degree in Economics and Political Science and an MBA from McGill University and an MA degree in Public Policy and Public Administration from Concordia University. Dino’s twice been the first guy on the ground to open up a new international territory, and we spent the second part of our conversation talking about what it takes to do so effectively. Our conversation included his single most important piece of advice when it comes to doing that right, thoughts on how to pick the right time and place to begin, and another 20 minutes of hands-on, practical thinking on the right way to take your business from the country it happens to be born in to those that might end up being critical to its growth, shaping both your product vision and the scale of your success. This is a topic I’m also passionate and have also learned a lot about during my time at Actifio, and I really hope anyone considering doing the same will listen in on what a couple of guys who’ve made all the big mistakes have to say about doing it right. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ?of the Northeast's most accomplished ?entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.?..?? ?People first. How Hard Can It Be is ?also ?sponsored by Actifio?. Actifio? virtualizes?? data ?the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ?to ?help customers enable the? ?hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.? ?Actifio?... ?Radically Simple.?