Today's entrepreneur: Immad Akhund

Bambi Francisco Roizen · January 5, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/158b

No. 1 mistake: Giving up. Perseverance is an entrepreneur's best trait.

Entrepreneurs, and those who work at startups, are a special part of the workforce.

They embrace innovation and disruption.They live on the edge, and, at times, chase the latest shiny object. But their willingness to fail and try something new often enable them to make a big difference.

The Vator community is made up of these unique people. To that end, we've changed our user profiles to allow entrepreneurs to express their interests and lessons about entrepreneurship.

These profiles will allow us to highlight an entrepreneur every day.

Today's entrepreneur is Immad Akhund.

I am: An entrepreneur

Name companies you've founded or co-founded:

Heyzap.com, Clickpass.com and Revmap.com

Name startups you worked for:

All of the companies that I have founded.

If you are an entrepreneur, why?

I want to change the world.

List your favorite startups:

Dropbox, Quora, Facebook, Square, Airbnb, Cardpool, Zynga, Kik

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

The most frustrating things are that at times things don't go fast enough. As an entrepreneur you always want to have everything done yesterday. This can be particularly frustrating when recruiting the best team or dealing with accountancy :).

The most rewarding thing is building something from scratch and having something you built be used by real people. Knowing that something you made is touching millions of peoples lives is remarkable.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneur's make?

Giving up. Perseverance is an entrepreneurs best trait.

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

1. How you establish the company culture deserves a lot of thought. It is easy to overlook culture when you are starting but in a startup you will be spending 12 hours a day with the people you work with and you need the right atmosphere to foster innovation.

2. The idea is always evolving and the act of being involved in entrepreneurship brings forward far more ideas than looking on it from the outside. This is why executing is so important.

3. Market is the most important thing. Being in a growing market or knowing how to spot a market changing trend is what leads to building large companies.

(Note: If you want to be featured, please fill out your Vator profile, answer the questions in the basic information area, and be sure to add a big photo as wide as 400 pixels! Email newsroom@vator.tv with a link to your Vator profile so we can check it out!)

Bambi Francisco Roizen

Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.

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Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs

Heyzap

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on May 29, 2009

Heyzap allows any website or blog to take the most exciting flash games and put them into their website. This results in the website/blog having increased traffic, user time of site and engagement. When youtube got video out everywhere over the internet, it changed the entire experience of the internet.