Vator’s community is the home to entrepreneurs who embrace their passion and follow their dreams.
Our newly-designed 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 Eric LaVanchy, CEO of MindGames, Inc. one of the semi-finalists in the Splash SF competition.
According to his VEQ Eric is a thought leader and is good at project development and product management.
You are a(n):
Entrepreneur
Name companies you’ve founded or co-founded:
Bottle Rocket, MindGames
Name startups you worked for:
Bottle Rocket, MindGames
If you are an entrepreneur, why?
I want to invent something cool.
List your favorite startups:
Dropbox, Foursquare, FanVibe
What’s most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?
The most frustrating aspect is resistance to new forms or developing new audiences, or as often happens in entertainment/gaming, breaking away from copycat, me-too titles and formats. The most rewarding thing is having the opportunity to see ideas and models you have imagined become real.
What’s the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?
Lacking a sense of urgency at all points in the process.
What are the top three lessons you’ve learned as an entrepreneur?
The first is that starting a company is an education in business that I don’t think you can get at any school – from top down understanding everything that goes into running a viable entity. The second, to use a sports analogy, would be to say you have to think like a closer in baseball – if you blow it one day, if something goes wrong, drop it and move on to the next day and the next chance for glory. And the third would be that however long you think you need, and however much padding you give yourself, you’re going to need more time.
