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From skeptic to evangelist on Keiretsu Forum

by David Saad, May 28, 2008 | Comments

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

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)

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

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 ...

Lessons Learned: Being smart is a commodity

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 15, 2008 | Comments

Leonard Brody is a very smart guy. But many smart people smartly say that one should always hire people who are smarter than themselves. In fact, to Brody, founder and CEO of crowd-sourcing company NowPublic - thinks "smart is a commodity, something that you hire." He's got a point. Too many smart people often mean too many Chiefs, and not enough Indians. The best quality an entrepreneur can have is to have "drive and resiliency," he said. "The difference between ...

Lessons Learned: How to raise the initial VC round

by Ezra Roizen, May 13, 2008 | Comments

When it comes to consumer Internet sites, the best thing an entrepreneur can do is go out to friends and family and build a prototype, or proof of concept. That's exactly what online travel site Nile Guide did. And, it's paid off. In this segment of "Lessons for entrepreneurs," Nile Guide CEO and founder Josh Steinitz, who was a former marketing executive at Cendant and in business development at Away.com, laid out the steps he took to get his travel ...

How Vinod Khosla pitched Sun Microsystems

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 8, 2008 | Comments (1)

High-profile VC shares the virtues of a short and sweet business plan

We had highlighted Vinod Khosla's "lessons learned" in our newsroom last year, when he advised entrepreneurs to have "passionate conviction." This time, for his lessons to entrepreneurs, Vinod talks about how he pitched Sun Microsystem to investors about 25 years ago. Vinod started Sun with his cofounders Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Bil Joy. According to Vinod, a short and ...

Lessons Learned: Krugle CEO Steve Larsen

by John Shinal, May 6, 2008 | Comments

Steve Larsen, who was on the founding team of CitySearch and is on his fourth startup with Krugle, shares the lessons he's learned as an entrepreneur with Vator.tv's John Shinal. Larsen likes to be involved in getting a company off the ground, then moving on to another. There's a certain "lightning in the bottle aspect of early-stage startups" that attracts him to that challenge, Larsen says. Click here for our earlier interview with Larsen.

Lessons Learned: Wigix CEO James Chong

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 1, 2008 | Comments

	Wigix CEO James Chong shares his entrepreneurial advice with Vator.tv's Bambi Francisco. Earlier this week, the company launched an online trading platform for goods.
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Lessons Learned: Buzzd CEO Nihal Mehta

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 25, 2008 | Comments

Nihal Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Buzzd, the real-time mobile search service, says part of being passionate about your idea is being a user of the product or service you're trying to create. Buzzd is his third startup, but the first for which he's taken venture capital investment. The company just closed its Series A round, which he talked about in this earlier interview. Mehta says that since funding for good ideas is "a commodity" he chose his investors based on ...

Lessons Learned: Love and healthy balance sheets

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 24, 2008 | Comments

Chris MacAskill, co-founder of photo-sharing site SmugMug, says the No. 1 reason his company is doing well is because he and his son - who also co-founded SmugMug -- love what they're doing. "Find out what you love," said Chris, who's been an entrepreneur three times over. We first met when he brought one of his companies - Fatbrain.com - public back in the Internet heyday. Back then, MacAskill took VC funds and on their advice and encouragement brought the ...

Max Levchin's lessons from PayPal to Slide

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 22, 2008 | Comments

Change was the key to Slide's success as it moved from the desktop to the browser

Slide founder and CEO Max Levchin says "the trick to succeeding in a startup is to figure out what doesn't work... and change... The key thing for Slide was figuring out that the desktop was not outside the browser, but inside the browser."The company itself has to change, as well as the people within it, says Levchin, one of the ...

Lessons Learned: Brightroll's Tod Sacerdoti on hiring slowly

by John Shinal, April 17, 2008 | Comments

Fresh from his role in the debate over whether there is money to be made in video advertising outside of the dominant pre-roll format, which we spotted in its early days, Brightroll founder and CEO Tod Sacerdoti is back to share his lessons on being a first-time entrepreneur.The one that's served him best at Brightroll, says Sacerdoti, is to not hire until you find people who are the right strategic and cultural fit. "We've hired more slowly than some other companies," ...

Lessons Learned: Martino says 'Hire former co-workers'

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 15, 2008 | Comments

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Paul Martino, CEO and co-founder of Aggregate Knowledge, is a four-time entrepreneur who says he always makes mistakes but that the main goal is not to keep making the same ones. Some of the lessons he shares with Vator.tv's Bambi Francisco include hiring former co-workers, getting a good advisory board and "start a big company.""It's just as hard to start a small company as it is to start a big company," says Martino, whose previous startup, Tribe Network, was acquired ...

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