Andy Kurtzig
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Andy Kurtzig

CEO, JustAnswer
San Francisco, California, United States United states
Business owner
Member since July 28, 2009
About Andy
Work/education
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Company profile(s)
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I am a(n):

Entrepreneur

Companies I've founded or co-founded:

ANSER Corp, eBenefits, JustAnswer

Companies I've invested in:

StubHub (acq'd by eBay), Viagogo, iLike (acq'd by MySpace), ClearContext, Vator, etc...

If you are an entrepreneur, why?

I want to change the world.

My favorite startups:

Viagogo, ClearContext & Vator!

What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?

Doing everything. It's one of my favorite parts (I get to be involved in lots of things and learn a broad set of skills) and my least favorite (I can't always do my favorite things and/or the things I'm best at.)

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?

Aggressively publicizing (PR) their business before the business is ready to deliver.

What are the top three lessons you've learned as an entrepreneur?

1. Focus (mostly on the customer)
2. Execution
3. Recruiting/Management

Full bio

Andy Kurtzig founded JustAnswer in 2003 and has built it into the number one Expert answer site, where millions of people get answers from Doctors, Lawyers, Mechanics or one of thousands of other verified Experts one-on-one. Andy spent the first two and a half years programming and listening to users, before handing over the engineering reigns to focus on JustAnswer's other business aspects.

Prior to JustAnswer, Andy was Founder and CEO of eBenefits, where he partnered with Fortune 500 companies including Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Marsh & McLennan, raised $8 million of venture capital financing (from NEA, Draper Fisher, WR Hambrecht) and sold the business to an Inc 500 Company. Earlier in his career, he founded Anser which developed software for the newspaper industry. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Andy is also an angel investor (Past successful investments: StubHub - acquired by eBay; and iLike - acquired by MySpace), active philanthropist (Co-Founded annual Royal Ball with wife Sara to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) and has appeared on CBS and been quoted in BusinessWeek, CNN and many other tech and consumer media.