Vator’s community is the home to entrepreneurs who embrace their passion and follow their dreams.
Our profiles allow members to express themselves by sharing their interests, lessons learned, as well as bits and pieces of their roller-coaster journey.
These profiles give entrepreneurs an opportunity to showcase themselves and tell their story. So if you are an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, or even an aspiring entrepreneur, we’d like to hear from you.
Today’s Entrepreneur is Jonathan Gael, co-founder of Ether2.
According to his VEQ (Vator entrepreneur assessment test), he is thought leader and is good at project development and networking.
You are a(n):
Entrepreneur
Name companies you’ve founded or co-founded:
Ether2
Name companies you’ve invested in:
Ether2, ATT, Bellsouth
Name startups you worked for:
Nextel, Teligent, Broadband Office, Panda Software
If you are an entrepreneur, why?
To kill switch routers so that we can enter a new age of computing.
List your favorite startups:
Ether2, Razient, Verabella Beverly Hills, Profunder, Sharemeister
What’s most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?
Frustrating: Seeing the big picture and having a credible plan to knock 3% of our national electric spend, but having all the proof points seem all too technical. Example: A partner at Rho who was on a panel that judged my pitch in the Bay Area. Bumped into him at Splash LA and he said, “Ether2…oh yeah…that complicated network thing.” Also, knowing that one has a solution that can solve global societal issues that are much bigger than any particular website, but being held to the same criteria as some SoMoLo play.
Rewarding: Having achieved proof of concept with no money down.
What’s the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?
For us, it was not questioning every assumption. We assumed that we needed to build a prototype after being told by VCs that we needed a prototype, and we spent our seed fund trying to bring that FPGA chip into being. Had we known then what we know now… 5 years later, based solely on marketing our intellectual property, we have been able to gain significant traction which has led to proof of concept, and we have been selected for wireless backhaul by a low power wireless sensor protocol stack.
What are the top three lessons you’ve learned as an entrepreneur?
1) The road is long for fundamental change.
2) Investors will never be satisfied with the state of the company’s progress until the company is at revenue.
3) Visionaries and founders may not be the best people to raise money or run the company. As long as the project gets wings…that’s okay.
