It's never too early to focus on revenue

Bambi Francisco Roizen · February 10, 2009 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/6a0

Watercooler CEO Kevin Chou on the virtues of team, taking baby steps and revenue

Few companies gain enough momentum and traction - Twitter comes to mind - that revenue can be an afterthought. The reality is that most companies achieve modest traction, making revenue generation a must have. 

"You can never start focusing on revenue too early," said Watercooler CEO and co-founder Kevin Chou, during his recent visit to the Vator studio in San Francisco. Even if you get some traction, you'll "flounder" unless you start creating revenue to sustain the business, he said.

Another piece of advice from Chou is to make sure that the right team is in place. This is something I've heard time and again from entrepreneurs, making this piece of advice all the more valuable. Don't hire or partner based on someone's resume, he said. It's not about the pedigree, but whether the potential founder has enough passion. During tough times, these are the people who can get you through - if you choose the right partners.

Chou also believes in taking baby steps. He believes that CEOs must have a 10-step game plan and a grand vision. But you'll never achieve step 10, if you can't get through steps one and two, he said. So, have a vision in place, but focus on getting through the first few steps.

Finally, Chou - formerly a venture capitalist at Canaan Partners before jumping to the entrepreneurial side - offers this advice to venture capitalists-turned-entrepreneurs or VCs thinking about becoming entrepreneurs. 

"Until you do it, you can never understand what it’s like.”

Great advice. And, as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg once said, if business fails, there's always Harvard.

If Chou fails - which we certainly don't believe he will - there's always venture capital. 

(Editor's note: Stay tuned for my interview with Chou)

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Bambi Francisco Roizen

Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.

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Kabam

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Description

Kabam is an interactive entertainment company leading the next wave in social gaming, developing and publishing massively multiplayer social games (MMSG’s), including the popular and critically praised title Kingdoms of Camelot and Dragons of Atlantis. Our studios focus on combining the best elements of traditional and social gaming to appeal to a growing audience of players looking for deeper, more engaging social games. The first wave of Kabam’s new games for Facebook and leading media sites have been widely recognized for their depth of play and social interaction.

Kabam started out as Watercooler, whose aim was to make connecting with your friends, family, and other fans of your favorite TV shows or Sports teams more compelling than ever before. By bringing fan communities into the context of your social network, Watercooler enables more engaging sports and TV fan experiences. Fans are able to access Watercooler's FanSection and TVLoop communities no matter where they are on the web: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, MyYahoo, and TVLoop.com.  Over 35 million sports and TV fans have joined Watercooler's fan applications  making it the largest online fan community.

Company History
Kabam was founded by a team of social networking and community software professionals in Mountain View, CA, in 2006. The company has raised a Series A round of financing from Canaan Partners of Menlo Park, CA.

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Kevin Chou

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