This interview with Shafqat Islam, chief executive of NewsCred, a content marketing platform, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. When you were a child, were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things?
A. My dad worked for the U.N., and I grew up in Thailand, India and Switzerland. I was always in student government and different clubs. It was never because I thought, “I need to show leadership.” It was more because my parents strongly encouraged it.
In terms of entrepreneurship, I started a website in high school about the band Hootie and the Blowfish. I had e-commerce running on it, and at its peak I was probably making a couple of thousand dollars a month in college. That was my first taste of, “This Web thing is pretty exciting.”
Q. What lessons did you learn from living in all those countries?
