In this segment, Bambi Francisco interviewed Lorenzo Carver, a five-time entrepreneur. Lorenzo’s latest startup is Liquid Scenarios, a company that makes software to help assess valuations of private companies.
The number one piece of advice is to be very careful about who you’re partnering and working with. “Trust that they’re motivated by things you’re motivated by,” he said. The other piece of advice is to give yourself a long runway – longer than what you anticipate. Many times there are unexpected challenges and with time, there’s more resources to achieve your goal. The third piece of advice is not to be afraid to be persistent.
“Sometimes things take a long time to get right,” he said. Short of telling someone to run into a brick wall, a person needs to at least try to get as close as possible, and possibly break through them. This last piece of advice is similar to what Vinod Khosla – founder of Khosla Ventures, former partner at Kleiner Perkins and co-founder of Sun Microsystems – who once said that entrepreneurs know how to crash through those brick walls. Khosla said in his “Lessons Learned’ interview that entrepreneurs need to have the “bullheadedness” to “crash through walls” when times are tough, which will be often and frequent.
