“By being exposed to company founders early on in my career and learning what decision criteria they used to start a company, how they handled risk and how they made critical decisions, led me to the goal of wanting to run my own company. But what is the path to get there was the big question?”
Reflecting on the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey, Paul Shain, president and CEO of Singlewire, WAVE Advisory Board Member, and Chair of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association, (WFAA), traces his journey back to his experience at the Wisconsin School of Business (WSB). Graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Finance, Investment and Banking and Master of Business Administration degree in Applied Security Analysis, Paul took off into the investment business where he found himself aiding businesses where his interest in corporate entrepreneurship sparked.
“When I first got to work in the investment business, I was covering the tech industry and often I was meeting with people that were four to five years into building an organization — taking advantage of some new aspect of technology. And so, very quickly, I realized there is not much difference between them and me, and why can’t I go do that?”
In 2000, Paul seized the opportunity to join a good friend, Jim Berbee, on a venture that led to the establishment of Berbee Information Networks, an IP software network focused on voice over IP telephony. They were able to grow the company fairly significantly before selling the company in 2006. Undeterred, Paul and his team saw an opportunity to pivot, leveraging their software expertise to revolutionize the mass notification industry.
“Unfortunately, it was a time in our country’s history where we could see the beginning of school shootings and other workplace violence issues. Tools were needed to manage those events. We had a platform that could easily be expanded and adapted into a powerful tool to do that.”
Today, Singlewire helps over 5,000 users, 2,000 school districts, hospitals, higher education, and healthcare providers to navigate emergency and mass notification tools. As Singlewire is normally bought for the “high severity, low frequency events” it more often serves as a product that can be used for everyday things such as notifications about the weather, traffic, and schedule alerts. Singlewire stands to be for a product made for people- developing solutions with real-world impact.
Beyond his role at Singlewire, Paul is a driving force behind entrepreneurial growth at UW-Madison. As a chair of WFAA, Paul works to strengthen the bonds between current students and alumni while upholding the Wisconsin Idea. He emphasizes: “It’s interesting because we have 400,000 alumni of UW-Madison and so you get to talk to a lot of fun people, you get to meet some really interesting people. People have done some amazing things with their careers after graduating UW-Madison. We like to figure out ways to stay connected and hopefully help them reinvest back into the university through philanthropy.”
His dedication to the UW, WSB, and encouraging and inspiring students to be innovative and entrepreneurial is further evident through his induction into the Weinert Center Hall of Fame in 2018.
“The opportunity to study companies and see what made them successful… Learning how to interview, manage teams, read financial statements, and all the things that go into a broad-based approach to running a business, I attribute it back to the experience I had at UW-Madison.”
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