Today's Entrepreneur: Otto Hilska

Kristin Karaoglu · March 14, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/24c0

No. 1 mistake: Taking too long to validate crucial parts of the business model

Today's Entrepreneur is Otto Hilska, CEO and founder of Flowdock. Flowdock is a collaboration tool for technical teams - Team Inbox with Chat. Flowdock was also the winner of our Vator Splash SF competition in February.

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:
Nodeta, Flowdock

If you are an entrepreneur, why?
I want to change the world.

My favorite startups:
Facebook, GitHub, Zendesk, 10gen, Ovelin

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?
Taking too long to validate crucial parts of the business model.

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

- Your initial assumptions are wrong, validate them.
- Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
- Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

(Want to be profiled? Just fill out your Vator profile and we'll find you! Or you can email newsroom@vator.tv)

Kristin Karaoglu

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

All author posts

Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs

Flowdock

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 10, 2012

Flowdock is a beautiful group chat. You can upload files, paste blocks of text, use #hashtags to make notes or create lists and mention others’ names to get their attention.

Flowdock is also a highly efficient shared inbox. You get notifications from all the different web tools, apps and services you use, be it project management, version control, wiki etc.

The two put together means you are always on top of your game talking about the things that matter. Working together does not require you to be in the same room. And even if you are, Flowdock still makes things easier and more fun.

Otto Hilska

Joined Vator on December 29, 2011

Founder of Nodeta Consulting, Nodeta Hosting, APIdock and now Flowdock. 8+ years of software entrepreneurship, agile methods, huge Ruby on Rails projects, real-time web and scalable architectures.