From Ham Radio to Cloud AI CEO: Leadership Lessons with Pradeep Pulipati | Ep023

Episode Information Show Notes In this episode of Career Downloads, Manuel Martinez sits down with Pradeep Pulipati, founder and CEO of Tropoleap, a cloud AI and cybersecurity company. Pradeep shares his remarkable journey from discovering ham radio in ninth grade to becoming a technology leader and entrepreneur. Key Discussion Points: Pradeep’s introduction to technology through ham radio and how it sparked his passion for wireless communication His educational path through electronics engineering and the transition to virtualization technology Experience as an early VMware expert when virtualization was still a novel concept Leadership philosophy developed through managing multiple engineering teams The importance of encouraging continuous learning and skill development in tech team Why solving business problems should be the focus of technology implementation His “T.O.P.” framework: aligning Talent, Organizational needs, and Passion The significance of transparency in leadership and team management Journey to entrepreneurship and founding Tropoleap Insights on career development and professional growth in technology Notable Quotes: “Their resume should always be up to date, as in not just updating the dates, but updating your skillset. Because you could very well be an administrator of something for 10 years, you wake up one day, and the technology might not exist that day.” “Art of the possible and fail fast, recover fast – those are the two cornerstones for how I go about my life today.” Connect with Pradeep: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pradeeppulipati/ Connect with Career Downloads: Website: https://careerdownloads.com YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@careerdownloads X/Twitter https://twitter.com/@careerdownloads TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdownloads LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/career-downloads Instagram https://www.instagram.com/careerdownloads FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/people/Career-Downloads/61561144531249 #CareerDownloads #TechCareers #Leadership #CloudComputing #AITechnology Transcript Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads, where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their career, and just the different things that they’ve done to kind of navigate their career over time to really be able to pull out actionable advice for you to go through and use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me Pradeep Pulapati and he has a very interesting background. We have crossed paths through a VMware User Group. I’ve kind of seen some of the different areas that he’s been involved with and, you know, we’ll get into kind of what he’s doing now. He’s ventured on into his own business. So I think these are all things that are really interesting and, you know, will be valuable to people. So with that, I’ll introduce Pradeep. So hey Pradeep. Pradeep: Hey, hey Manny. Manuel: Appreciate you coming on. Pradeep: Yeah, thanks for having me. Manuel: Of course. And really, so what I’ve been doing with all of my guests is if you can just to start off, give us your current role and some of the, you know, just a summary of the responsibilities and then eventually we’ll kind of lead into how you got there. Pradeep: Yeah, absolutely. I’m founder and CEO at Tropoleap. We are a cloud AI and cybersecurity company. It’s been about close to 18 months since I started this company and have been working in the gaming industry, have been helping clients outside of the gaming industry, both in healthcare, financial services, so on and so forth. Manuel: So now let’s kind of go back and we’ll kind of lead into what eventually led you to kind of, you know, opening your own business, but really give me an understanding of kind of some of your background,