Engineering excellence is rarely built through technical knowledge alone—it also demands leadership, business awareness, and the courage to embrace uncertainty. Raúl Bartolomé, Director of Hardware Engineering Excellence at HARMAN, has spent around 25 years navigating the fast-moving automotive industry.

His experience spans hardware, software, systems engineering, project management, and the challenge of leading people through complex projects. During his eight years at HARMAN Automotive, Raúl has held several influential roles that shaped his broad understanding of engineering organizations. Yet his professional journey extends far beyond the corporate world, as he also co-founded two startups and experienced entrepreneurship from the ground up.

Building an engineering services company in the Philippines taught him that delivering excellent technical work was only one part of running a successful business. Finding customers, earning their trust, and continuously securing new projects proved to be some of the toughest—and most valuable—lessons of his career. In this Bright Founders Talk interview, Raúl shares how curiosity, family influence, global experience, and a constant desire for improvement shaped his approach to engineering, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

When Engineering Meets Entrepreneurship

Raúl’s entrepreneurial journey began with plenty of energy, a strong technical foundation, and the confidence to build something from scratch. With years of experience across hardware, software, systems engineering, project management, and team leadership, he knew how to deliver complex engineering work. But once he co-founded an engineering services company in the Philippines, he quickly discovered that technical excellence was only one side of the business. Building the solution was familiar territory; finding the people willing to buy it was a completely different challenge.

The hardest part was not managing engineers or delivering projects—it was sales. Raúl and his team had to search constantly for new clients, earn their trust, keep them satisfied, and then begin the process all over again. That pressure taught him a lesson many technical founders learn the hard way: even the best service cannot grow without a steady flow of customers. As Raúl puts it, “The hardest part was finding customers.”

Entrepreneurship did not appear out of nowhere for Raúl. Several members of his family had built businesses, so he had seen that mindset up close from an early age. Still, it took around ten years of professional experience before he felt ready to take the leap himself. While working as an expatriate in the Philippines, he saw major automotive companies building cost-effective engineering operations there and asked a simple question: why not create an independent company around the same opportunity? That mix of family influence, industry insight, and curiosity turned an idea into a real business—and gave Raúl lessons that continue to shape how he leads today.

Great Ideas Need Great Connections

Raúl learned that strong engineering alone cannot carry a business. A company may have an outstanding team and offer the best services in its field, but none of that matters if potential customers never hear about it. Looking back, he sees networking and sales as two essential pillars of entrepreneurship—and also as areas his startup underestimated. The team was deeply focused on engineering, while the commercial side received far less attention. As Raúl puts it, “If nobody knows your work, it stays in the garage.”

That lesson also explains why Raúl does not believe entrepreneurship is for everyone. Founders live with uncertainty, invest enormous amounts of time and energy, and accept that their idea may never succeed. It takes a particular kind of person to remain comfortable while the outcome is unclear and personal money is at risk. For some people, the structure and stability of a corporate career will simply be a better fit—and Raúl sees nothing wrong with that. Entrepreneurship should be a deliberate choice, not something people pursue because it sounds exciting from the outside.

Knowing when to stop can be just as difficult as knowing when to begin. Raúl became most excited when his company moved beyond traditional engineering services and explored products such as wearable technology and early electronic cigarette concepts. Those ideas felt more distinctive, but they also demanded significantly more capital and resources. Eventually, he had to decide whether to invest everything and push forward at full speed or step back into the corporate world. He chose the second path—not because the experience had failed, but because the balance between risk and reward no longer felt right. The startup still gave him something lasting: sharper business instincts, a deeper understanding of customers, and leadership lessons he continues to use today.

Dream Big, Operate Lean

Leading engineers in a startup and managing teams inside a global corporation require many of the same foundations: clear communication, trust, and the ability to set expectations. The biggest difference is what leaders have available to them. In a corporate environment, there are established processes, specialized teams, and significantly more resources. In a startup, leaders have to solve the same problems with a fraction of the budget and often step into several roles at once. As Raúl explains, “You have to achieve more with 10% of the resources.”

That pressure rarely disappears. Raúl remembers entrepreneurship as a constant effort to keep every moving part under control: finding customers, delivering projects, paying employees, purchasing equipment, and investing in the next opportunity. There was never a clear moment when the team could relax and say they had finally made it. The work was mentally and physically demanding, but it also forced him to develop an important balance between ambition and practicality. He could dream about breakthrough products and global growth while still keeping a close eye on the projects that generated the cash needed to survive.

Building the right team required the same practical mindset. Raúl’s startup could not afford a workforce filled with senior engineers, so he recruited talented graduates and invested heavily in training them. He wanted people who were curious, capable, and even smarter than he was. The difficult part came when those engineers gained experience and moved to larger companies offering more stability and opportunity. Losing people he had personally mentored was painful, but it also revealed the strength of the environment he had created: young engineers entered with potential, developed real expertise, and left prepared to build successful careers of their own.

The Real-Life MBA

Raúl never saw himself as someone who had to choose between being a specialist and a generalist. He could move from software and hardware engineering to finance, customer conversations, and business planning, then dive deep enough to discuss the smallest technical details. That flexibility became essential in a startup, where job titles quickly lose their meaning. Some days meant meeting customers; others meant handling electrical work, fixing practical problems, or finding another way to save money. When the company’s survival is on the line, founders simply do whatever needs to be done.

The bigger puzzle was making sure growth did not become a burden. Hiring more engineers created the capacity to take on more work, but it also brought higher salaries, larger offices, better equipment, and growing operating costs. Raúl had to balance ambition with the reality that every expense eventually needed to be covered by customers. Growth only made sense when revenue increased faster than costs, which made sustainable expansion far more important than chasing impressive numbers. The goal was not to build the biggest company overnight, but to create one that could keep moving forward without collapsing under its own weight.

Despite the pressure, Raúl would not trade the experience. Entrepreneurship changed the way he approached responsibility, decisions, and leadership, while also opening doors later in his corporate career. The lessons came from real customers, real risks, and real consequences—things that cannot be fully recreated inside a classroom. As he puts it, “Entrepreneurship is a real-life MBA.” His final advice is equally direct: consider building alone when possible, make networking and sales a priority, and be completely clear about the value your business offers.