Neal Hansch

Neal Hansch

Partner, Rustic Canyon Partners
San Francsico, California, United States United states
Employee, Investor
Member since September 17, 2009
VEQ: MM-FR-NS
40 Splash Points
4730 followers
4 votes
1 thumb up
14 companies followed
6 competitions judged
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About Neal
Work/education
Activities
Company profile(s)
Following
Investor interests
Investments made Marketfish, MerchantCircle, Capella, Ohai, Archcom, Dipity, InSync Software
Categories of interest
Credentials Accredited Investor

I am a(n):

Investor

Companies I've founded or co-founded:

WebAssist.com

Startups I worked for:

Webassist.com, Financial Profiles, SnapBridge

If you are an entrepreneur, why?

I want to invent something cool.

My favorite startups:

MerchantCircle, Quora, Marketfish, Uber, Box.net

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

Endless opportunities, means endless directions and decisions to be made, which only time will tell whether the right ones were made and/or taken.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?

Blindly following a "build it and they will come" mentality and surrounding yourself with people who are entirely like-minded.

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

Pick your co-founders carefully. Validate your market before you invest your blood, sweat and tears building a product and launching a company into it. Listen to customers, but not completely.

Full bio

Neal Hansch brings over fifteen years of experience in venture capital, technology operations and investment banking. Before joining Rustic Canyon in 2005, Neal worked in the Corporate Development group at Macromedia, where he was responsible for executing worldwide M&A transactions and strategic equity investments. Prior to Macromedia, Neal was at Technology Crossover Ventures, where he focused on investments in the software, networking infrastructure and e-commerce industries. He has also worked in Product Marketing at webMethods (Nasdaq: WEBM), a leading enterprise application integration company, and co-founded WebAssist.com, a start-up that provides popular software extensions for Web development tools. Neal began his career as a financial analyst in the Software Group at Robertson Stephens, where he worked with clients such as BEA, BroadVision, HNC, Hyperion, Informatica and Intuit. Neal received his M.B.A. with distinction from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he was a Deutschman Venture Fellow. He also received bachelor degrees in Economics and Psychology from Duke University.

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