Today's Entrepreneur: Howard Lerman

Kristin Karaoglu · January 30, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/23f0

No. 1 mistake: Unwillingness to change

Today's Entrepreneur is Howard Lerman, Co-founder and CEO of Yext. According to his VEQ, Ilan is thought leader and is good at product management and technology design.

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.

I am a(n):
Entrepreneur

Companies I've founded or co-founded:
JustaTip.com, Intwine, Yext

Startups I worked for:
Datran Media

If you are an entrepreneur, why?
I want to invent something cool.

My favorite startups:
Yext, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Yelp, FoundationDB

What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?
The most frustrating part about innovation is constantly re-explainging to everyone what you do as you iterate to make something great. I can generally see a few steps out ahead, but I'm wrong just as often as I'm right. I'm lucky to have a team that puts up with this.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?
Unwillingness to change. To do something big requires a continuous refinement and reassessment. We wouldn't be anywhere at Yext today if we didn't re-evaluate everything we're doing all the time and focus in on the key use cases that really matter.

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

Three lessons:

Build an amazing, resilient team
Pick a huge market
Have a serious sales and revenue strategy out of the gate

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Kristin Karaoglu

Woman of many skills: Database System Engineer; SplashX event producer; Author of Startup Teams

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Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs

Yext

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 20, 2012

Founded in 2006, Yext is the next Yellow Pages, offering superior local services to users, advertisers and publishers. Nearly 20,000 customers are now connected to Yext Calls, the company's flagship advertising service that sends local businesses pay-per-action phone calls. Dozens of leading publishers have installed Yext Numbers, the company's local search monetization system. Yext is fanatically focused on perfecting the local advertising experience, an enormous unsolved problem with incredible potential.

Our Mission

Our mission is to produce the best local search results everywhere.

"The Local Search Problem"

Today, people use hundreds of different sources for local information. If you wanted to find a spa, you might check Google, Yahoo!, Bing, SpaFinder.com, Yelp, MapQuest, TomTom Navigation, Foursquare and that's just the beginning. To provide you with this information, each of these local search tools has its own database that stores basic listing data like business name, address, and phone number, and enhanced information like pictures, descriptions, promotions and more. Since each source has its own database, there are 100s of databases of local information out there. But the problem is, they are totally disconnected, and whenever data changes, they quickly fall out of sync. In fact, on average, 6% of listings change each month, and the end result is that more than 20% of local search return factually incomplete information to end users. The end result is very frustrating for businesses and users.

Everybody Wins with Yext PowerListings

Yext PowerListings solves this huge problem by centralizing local search results across all those different sites with one system. It lets large and small businesses centrally control information across platforms, producing the best local search results for users everywhere. PowerListings helps businesses appear in the most possible local searches withguaranteed presence, stand out and look great with enhanced content like photos, descriptions, and real-time promotions in their listings, and track it all with full analytics. PowerListings is the only system with any of these features, and the results are awesome.

The PowerListings model is a "triple win" for businesses, publishers and users. Businesses get the most out of local search, publishers get compensated to accept great content, and users get the best information. Everybody wins.

Over 30,000 businesses use PowerListings to get the most out of local search every day.

Learn about our PowerListings Network, our state-of-the art network that updates information at blazing speeds.
Learn more about how PowerListings can help your small business get the most out of local search.
Learn more about how PowerListings can help your brand get the most out of local search.

Our Values

We think big, we learn fast – and we get stuff done. We are powered by an incredibly talented group of employees who work to produce the best local search information everywhere.

We are hiring the best and brightest to come join us on our mission. Check out our open positions.

We are fortunate to be backed by some of the best investors in the world – Sutter Hill Ventures (Palo Alto, CA),Institutional Venture Partners (Menlo Park, CA), and WGI investments (New York, NY). Yext was founded in 2006 by Howard Lerman, Brian Distelburger and Brent Metz, and is located in New York, NY.