📞😆 Why did the telecom exec become a sharpshooter? 🎯🔫 Because he knew how to dial in his focus and always hit his targets! And why did he become an entrepreneur? 📈 Because he figured out how to switch lines from following orders to calling the shots! 😂🚀 In ☕ #59 of my #99coffees, William Goldberg shares his eclectic mix of telecom triumphs and innovative ventures.
William's odyssey in the tech world began in Finland, working for telco startup named Cube under Ben Mellin, where he impressively managed 10% of Finland's international call traffic. In 2006, he ventured to New Zealand, joining Zintel, where he worked with Grant McGough, Lindsay Cowley, and Tabrez Ali. Here, William pioneered the introduction of hosted and multi tenant PBX to the NZ market as a product manager. Our paths first crossed in 2007 through Ben David, while I was also working on VoIP PBX with Vadacom Ltd.
His next move was to Spark New Zealand, where under Peter Meredith and alongside Nic Romaniuk and Olga Reutskiy he launched NZ's first mobile hosted PBX. This innovation proved crucial during the Christchurch earthquake, as William and his team provisioned phones overnight and personally delivered them in Christchurch, providing vital communication support. He also worked with Hugh McKellar, Andrew Alexander, and Leanne Buer
William's expertise caught the attention of BroadSoft (acquired by Cisco in 2017), where as a sales engineer, he worked with a stellar team including Kel Beadle, Michael Tessler, Iain Lockyer, Kuan Chew, Greg Everett, Rob Wyatt, Jonathan Reid, Dag Peak. His efforts led to Broadsoft in New Zealand achieving the world's most successful deployment of Broadcloud in terms of subscriptions-per-capita.
This year William embarked on a new entrepreneurial path, founding Toldy - an Emotional Assets Vault and innovative gifting platform. Toldy allows people to preserve and share precious memories and physical memorabilia with personalized messages and images. Like 30K+ pictures on Williams phone. Instant message will soon be forgotten. Toldy is a solution to the digital age's fleeting nature, ensuring that meaningful moments and keepsakes are shared at just the right time. William proudly said that one of his kids used Toldy to send a Christmas gift box to a friend in the US, adding a personal touch with an accompanying electronic message.
However, startups, William notes, are a tough challenge, demanding flexibility and resilience far beyond the structured world of corporate KPIs.
Outside the tech arena, William loves his family with 4 kids and sports. He played for the NZ national team in floorball in 2010 and has championed in pistol shooting, holding titles in the NRA action open division in 2022 and production optics division in 2023.
I hope William aims his sharpshooter skills at my coffee rating fast. He never misses a shot, especially when it's inside piccolo! ☕🎯👌
If you’re up for sharing your story over a cup I brewed at BizDojo, reach out.
Semi retired but still consulting
6moI have it installed. Had to fight my HOA but they can’t deny it due to FCC OTARD rules.