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Featured Lessons learned

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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 ...

Lessons Learned: Mozes CEO on not 'growing ahead of yourself.'

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, June 12, 2008 | Comments

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Mozes CEO Dorrian Porter founded his first company in 2000 and ran it for five years, eventually selling it for less than the $14 million of investment he raised.That experience gave him "a lot of battle scars," Porter says.He's putting that to use now at Mozes, which has built a platform that lets anyone conduct a mobile marketing campaign. Among the lessons he chalked up was the importance of making tough choices about which direction you want your company to go ...

Lessons Learned: Xobni's Matt Brezina

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 29, 2008 | Comments (1)

	Xobni co-founder Matt Brezina tells Vator.tv's Bambi Francisco that the lessons he's learned as a first-time entrepreneur have to do with choosing the right people -- from high-powered venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to the company's office manager -- and knowing how to delegate.
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From skeptic to evangelist on Keiretsu Forum

by David Saad, May 28, 2008 | Comments

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Unlike the majority of angel networks, Keiretsu Forum charges entrepreneurs to pitch once they are screened. On December 7th, 2007, Randy Williams - founder & CEO of Keiretsu was interviewed by John Shinal (Keiretsu Forum's Randy Williams is expanding the market for angel investing). The very next day I posted a comment on his interview. In my comment, I made the argument that Keiretsu should change its model by charging angels not entrepreneurs. I drew an analogy from the ...

Lessons Learned: Banister on business model redux

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 26, 2008 | Comments

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Willingness to change will determine whether you live or die as a startup

For entrepreneurs who feel they keep bumping up against the wall with the wrong business model, don't feel defeated. Scott Banister, co-founder of IronPort, which was sold to Cisco Systems for $830 million last year, and who was an early investor in PayPal, Facebook, Slide, Zappos and now Zivity (which he also co-founded with his wife, Cyan), says often the ...

Lessons Learned: Spotting 'warning' signals

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 23, 2008 | Comments (3)

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Entrepreneurs should be "flexible" and "adapt" to the environment, said coComment CEO Matt Colebourne. "Don't be afraid of making mistakes," Matt said. "The reality is that things will change." That's particularly the case with businesses on the Internet and with startups. In small companies, "you have to take risks, even when you're not 100% sure." To this end, one of the big lessons Matt learned was identifying the signals that indicate it's time to change strategy or products or target ...

Lessons Learned: Hawkins on laying off friends

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 15, 2008 | Comments

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Being an entrepreneur requires so much discipline that "sometimes it includes laying off your best friend," said Trip Hawkins, who founded Electronic Arts in 1982 and is a pioneer in video game publishing. EA become a leading game developer for computers, eventually went public and now has a market cap of $16.8 billion. In 2003, Trip founded Digital Chocolate - another video game publisher, but this time for mobile devices. He also founded The 3DO Company. Trip was commenting on ...

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