Steven Rothschild, Applied Interactive
Steven Rothschild
CEO
Applied Interactive
40 Jackson St., Suite 1000
Worcester, MA 01608
508–657–8600
www.appliedinteractive.com
What’s your biggest worry as a business executive?
Worries change depending on the life stage of a business.
Currently I am CEO of a start up where to date we have chosen to not taken funding. We are surviving on the funding the founders provided. My biggest worry is generating enough critical mass in the form of revenue and profit to cover overhead.
Once that is achieved, while there is still pressure to grow and thrive, at least we are beyond working to achieve sustainability.
What could your local city/town leaders do to help your business?
With customers located across the country, the only reason Applied Interactive is in Worcester is because we happen to live here. That doesn’t mean we haven’t discussed why we bother to stay.
City leaders need to help business by reducing costs and removing impediments to working in the city. Instead of viewing the relationship as “what can the city get from businesses,” city leaders need to view the relationship as “what can we do to keep business and encourage them to grow.”
A positive business environment means more jobs and tax revenue and stops overtaxing a withering business tax base.
What could state or federal leaders do to help your business?
State and federal government could help our business by getting out of the way.
Constant new mandates, regulations, expenses and interference sap the life out of growing businesses. Recently the state made us put up a fire door and then take the out the sprinkler system.
The required change was allegedly for fire safety. The cost was thousands and was a total waste of money. Time and money wasted is money not invested in jobs and growth.
What do you love about your work?
I love my job. Every day I participate in something akin to a team sport, an activity in which we train, strategize, build and compete.
As part and parcel we have to accumulate the right assets, recruit a team, build that team into a cohesive unit, and then work together to dominate our market(s). The game is physical, requiring stamina, as well as necessitating focus and intelligence. While we compete for the love of it, the points are accolades from our customers and money in the bank. It doesn’t get better than that.
What’s your outlook for 2010?
My outlook for 2010 is more of the same. While economists will claim the Great Recession is over — and technically it is because the economy is growing — the economy will still be plagued by high unemployment, declining wages, commercial and residential foreclosures, and overall weak demand. Deflation remains a risk.
The bright spot is most likely that there is not another issue of the banking collapse looming as it was at the end of 2008. Over the next couple of years, GDP should grow back to the level it was before the Great Recession. Applied Interactive will grow and thrive.
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