32/epubcfi/6/54[%3Bvnd.vst.idref%3Db01]!/4/4[cs01-sec-0001]/70[cs01-sec-0049]/2[head14]/1:31 [adR%2Cafa] Management, Canadian Case 14 BroadbandTV | ShahrzadRafati's "Rapid-Fire" Drive ... Edition At age 17, Shahrzad Rafati escaped the war in her home country of Iran to move John R. Schermerhorn Jr.; Daniel. to Vancouver. Living on her own in a studio apartment, she learned English, raised tuition money by teaching math to the local Persian community, and enrolled in a computer science program at the University of British Columbia. Rafati has since spent the last decade building BroadbandTV, a successful Canadian-based media company with close to 400 employees that draws more llapse than 200 billion video views across the more than 78,000 creators in its network that has 587 million unique viewers. This makes BroadbandTV the IVE: Leading 262 second largest video property after Google. Rafati comes from a family of entrepreneurial leaders. Her mother built her own textile company DIX: Operations and Services 366 and her father founded a real estate company. After completing her studies, she was invited to go ement into real estate but wanted something more exciting. In 2005, when YouTube was founded, she became aware of a huge legal battle between content owners and pirated content providers. Her idea was to get broadcasters to upload their official videos and connect them with advertisers tudies Management Cases for 379 directly so they could profit from their intellectual property. Success came quickly. "From day one, Thinking I wanted to work with the biggest clients," she says. And she did-landing the National Basketball Association in her first year of business. It has been an energetic career trajectory ever since. st Answers 403 Rafati offers insight for aspiring leaders. "Creating successful businesses isn't just about having a stand-out product, true success ultimately comes down to having a team of stellar people." She suggests that leaders need to get to know their people. "Building personal relationships with your es 411 employees is the best way to make sure they feel heard." Developing a strong culture helps to build a strong company, says Rafati, who also recommends that leaders "put an ear to the ground and 443 keep listening. zation Index Rafati also recognizes that every leader fails at some point in their career. Key, though, is what is learned from that mistake. "When I founded BroadbandTV we began our operations in the over- Activate Windows ndex 447 Go to Settings