Janez Sterle: Bringing a Revolution in Telecommunications business
The Most Futuristic Business Leaders To Watch
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Life sometimes brings opportunities and
avenues along the way, the ones who embrace them get the taste of success
easily. Janez Sterle, Founder and CEO of INTERNET INSTITUTE Ltd., started his
career as a lecturer and researcher at a university. He got the opportunity to
work with trending technologies, however, to exploit its full potential, he
took the step of opening his own start-up.
While Telecommunications business was
not his dream job in childhood, he actively participated in different projects
during his university job and even solved numerous real-life problems.
Being a responsible student, he took care
of his expenses on his own. He shares, “Meeting interesting people and
interacting with them in different environments gave me a strong foundation for
the future, and I finally realized what it truly means “You need to be
passionate about what you do”. And with this important life lesson my
professional career naturally evolved in the direction where I am now.”
Conquering the Roadblocks along the way
Janez and his team have bravely initiated
their company without prior knowledge of marketing and accounting. They even
set up their selling and distribution channels that too without any venture
capitalist at their back. He adds, “Setbacks and challenges have always been a
part of our start-up journey and still are opening almost on a daily basis. But
if you truly believe in yourself and you have a solid trust in your team, there
is no mountain peak that you cannot climb. The invisible line between the success
and failure of a startup is in the team, everything else is replaceable!”
Services and Vision of INTERNET
INSTITUTE Ltd.
This startup has numerous product lines as
well as support services. At INTERNET INSTITUTE, there are different experts in
mobile performance and quality metrics development and validation, mobile
system testing, benchmarking, quality monitoring and SLA assurance. Not just
this, they are also experienced in handling design, deployment and operations
of reliable 5G infrastructures so as to ensure connectivity services in
critical communications sectors. He shares, “We address telco, corporate and
vertical industrial sectors with our portfolio for performance monitoring and
SLA assurance, benchmarking and end-to-end validation of communication
infrastructures and services. In addition, we provide on-site critical
communications, smart sensing and intervention monitoring services customized
for public safety and critical infrastructures.”
Owing to his R&I background, they are
always on the look-out for new disruptive concepts to help them find different
innovative solutions for businesses in telecommunications sector. As the old
adage says, “Today’s state-of the-art technologies are tomorrow’s obsolete
systems,” it is essential to ameliorate the existing solutions and expand the
portfolio into new businesses.
Janez expresses his vision for the company
is to continue to grow and develop strong and long-term foundations consisting
of advanced technological know-how and portfolios, putting them ahead of the
competition.
He believes that continued research and
innovations (R&I) in the sector allow them to stay ahead of the curve. It
continues to give them the needed advantage to build and improve their products
and services competitively and sustainably in the long run.
He adds, “We are very proud to have been
successful in establishing strong international partnerships in 2020 and 2021,
which will enable us to continue our steady growth in the next years. We will
keep our priorities on building a reliable and devoted team with high ethics
and moral values and a portfolio of innovative products and solutions
incorporating cutting-edge know-how, putting us ahead of the competition. It is
a very competitive world out there, but I strongly believe that fortune favors
the brave.”
Life as Founder and CEO of the company
After 15 years of pursuing an academic
career and all the invested energy and hard work in academia, Janez was able to
leave everything behind to start again from the beginning.
As the CEO of the company, he oversees
every aspect and keeps the team motivated in high spirits. He adds, “Most of
our current employees are also company owners, and hence the motivation is
always there. We all understand that we are stronger and more successful if we
are together. But to stay together as a strong and motivated team, we need to
reach beyond ourselves individually, and I strongly believe that we all have a
very deep understanding of that and the ethics and professional responsibility
of all team members are very high. The awareness that as co-owners we are
investing our time and energy for ourselves and thus creating our own jobs and
realities on a daily basis is also very important.”
Talking about his greatest achievement on
the professional front, he expresses, “I had the opportunity to have an active
role in setting up a motivated and skilled young team at the university and
that after all these years, we are still together building our story and
pushing it beyond the horizon.”
Thoughts on work-life integration
Janez found the love of his life during his
work at the university. He expresses that his private and professional lives
are very interconnected as his wife is one of the funding members of the
company.
He adds, “Knowing what we both do professionally
and what our business obligations are gives us more understanding and the
needed flexibility to fit everything into our daily schedules.”
He manages the work and spends some time in
his own activities. Having a better understanding of each other’s routine
allows them to grow and have fun with each other.
Future roadmap
Janez and his team take logistics, critical
infrastructures, ports, factories of the future and public safety systems as
the primary sectors to expand their services.
They feel that 5G, Cloud, IoT, and AI will
have the most significant impact in the next years on the development of
industries.
He adds, “We have been investing heavily in
the past few years into establishing strong international partnerships and a
development ecosystem to nurture an even bigger and stronger team and develop
ahead of time advanced know-how in these core technology fields.