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by Steven Loeb - February 19, 2013
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Featured Lessons learned

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Success is a terrible teacher

by Don Dodge, July 19, 2008 | Comments (4)

The 7 deadly sins and 10 lessons of a failed startup

Failure is part of the maturing process in the startup world. If you haven't failed, you aren't trying hard enough, or you aren't "pushing the envelope" far enough. I have always said "Success is a terrible teacher. Success masks over flaws that may hurt you later." Roger Ehrenberg - the co-founder of Monitor 110, wrote a story on the lessons ...

Leveraging chip designing to make wine

by John Shinal, July 18, 2008 | Comments

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And, how a blogger saved this company's business

Greg Snell, CEO of Provina, had been designing chips for 15 years. One day, he decided to parlay his chip-designing skills into a product that created wine. Greg was reading about "specifications on what a customer was looking for for a chip plant," he said, realizing that the "PH density and acid" specifications were very similar to wine specifications. Then ...

Be flexible - what you expected will change

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 18, 2008 | Comments (1)

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Startups need people who work beyond 9 to 5, and who can change their expectations on a dime

Visible Technologies CEO Adam Selig grew his online reputation monitoring company from a 7-person team to one that is over 50-people strong. To this end, it's good to hear his thoughts on how to manage and build a team. The first piece of advice he had to entrepreneurs is to be "flexible" because the expectations of what they're in for ...

Fark founder Drew Curtis says, 'Don't quit'

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 18, 2008 | Comments

	Advice for new, digital media startups Drew Curtis founded Fark.com in 1999 and has grown the property to 60-plus million pageviews, basically on his own. His site - a social media site for odd, satirical news, or not news - has largely been driven by millions of contributors seeking to participate in his community. In this "Lessons learned" video, Drew says not to quit - something ...
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Being in a startup is your life, not a job

by Eze Vidra, July 17, 2008 | Comments

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Nuconomy CEO on virtues of endless work, simplicity and speed

If you're thinking about starting a company, keep in mind that it's not a 9 to 5 endeavor. "It's your life," said Shahar Nechmad, CEO and founder of Nuconomy. Additionally, if there is one lesson every entrepreneur learns, it's get your product out quickly. "We wanted to write the best code," said Shahar. "We should have written damn bad code, ...

Get people to buy into your dream

by Ezra Roizen, July 16, 2008 | Comments (1)

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Customers, vendors can help finance your company

Entrepreneurs should think of OPM - other people's money, said Intense Debate CEO Tom Keller, who shared his lessons and advice to entrepreneurs in this interview. "It's important to get other people to buy into the dream," he said. Importantly, Tom isn't just referring to investors. He's referring to customers and vendors. Paying customers are a form of non-diluted financing. ...

Keiretsu Forum revisited

by David Saad, July 14, 2008 | Comments (3)

	Fee, if any, must be contingent on funding A couple of months ago, I wrote a story entitled "From Skeptic to Evangelist on Keiretsu Forum". As promised, I am now reporting back to you the result of my experience with Keiretsu. Unfortunately, I am back to being skeptic. After having been screened (no fee at this stage), the officials at Keiretsu gave me the good news that ...
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Richard Rosenblatt on not giving up

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 14, 2008 | Comments (1)

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Feeling like you're on the brink of greatness, and the brink of failure

The beauty of Vator's "Lessons Learned" series is that the advice entrepreneurs share never gets old. Here's a video of Richard Rosenblatt that I never published in the newsroom. But it's still relevant today, even though I took this back in Halloween of last year. In this video, Richard, who started his first company - an online shopping mall - ...

Lessons Learned: Hubdub CEO on why being stealth isn't smart

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 8, 2008 | Comments

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We've been doing this "Lessons Learned" series for a year, and one lesson that entrepreneurs mention often is the one about staying stealth vs. being open. Many entrepreneurs realize that keeping an idea to themselves actually hurts them more than it protects them. "Every new entrepreneur fears that they have such a great idea, and if they tell somebody than that person is highly likely going to take it and launch it in a weekend," said Nigel Eccles, CEO and ...

Xoopit CEO on valuing transparency

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 3, 2008 | Comments (1)

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If there are two takeaways from this interview, these are it: Stealth mode is overrated and take small steps in building a product. Those are just a couple pieces of wise advice from Bijan Marashi. As the first product manager at Inktomi (search engine bought by Yahoo years ago), and now co-founder and CEO of Xoopit, which raised $5 million in Series A funding in the past year, Bijan has a lot of experience in the startup world. Xoopit supplements ...

Lessons Learned: The art of the job offer - encourage people to say no

by Auren Hoffman, June 27, 2008 | Comments (3)

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Build the best team by lowering your job offer acceptance rate. Most people go about giving a job offer in the wrong way. They try to sell the candidate and win them over. There's a better strategy. As a hiring manager, your objective is to get great employees who are always thinking about the challenges ahead, love their job, and are a good fit with the company culture. It is possible, with the right interview, to determine if someone ...

Lessons Learned: RockYou! on rapid-technology development

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, June 24, 2008 | Comments

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If there is one thing you notice from speaking to RockYou CTO and co-founder Jia Shen, there's no downtime when it comes to technology output. At RockYou, one of the leading applications makers on social networks that he co-founded at the start of 2006, the culture is one of swiftness. "We promote a rapid-development methodology," he said. "Don't go out and design a full-featured product with all the bells and whistles. Start with a very basic product and make sure ...

Lessons Learned: Hire people who roll up their sleeves

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, June 19, 2008 | Comments (2)

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In the startup world, people are expected to work around the clock. To that end, it's important to hire people who get the job done, said Matt Greeley, CEO of Brightidea. "The biggest error I made was thinking that someone with a big fluffy resume was the best thing for our company," he said. "I tend to gravitate to people who can roll up their sleeves and get something done instead of coming from Big Company X or Big School ...

Lessons Learned: Spend little to go as long as possible

by Ezra Roizen, June 17, 2008 | Comments (1)

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Yardbarker started out as a Digg for sports. It's iterated a lot since its early days, and it's found a business model to boot - to be an ad network for blogs/publishers targeting males. It's no wonder, Pete Vlastelica, co-founder and CEO is very cognizant of money that's being spent. “Spend as little money as possible to prove as much as possible to go as long as possible," he said. "We bootstrapped the company for 12 months and paid ourselves ...

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