Today's Entrepreneur: Mara Lewis

No. 1 mistake: You can have the best startup in the world, but if people don't know about it...

Today's Entrepreneur is Mara Lewis, CEO and Co-Founder of stopped.at. stopped.at is a gamified sharing platform that lets users 'check in' to websites, earn points, and unlock deals from online locations. It's like Foursquare for the Web!

Mara will be speaking at our Vator Spark gamification conference: Get Game. Check out the agenda and register here.

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:
FAQtv, SpeedFeed, Stopped.at

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

My favorite startups:
Fab.com, Pinterest, Airbnb, Foursquare, Dropbox

What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?
The hardest thing about entrepreneurship is that it's HARD. There is no stability, no guarantee, and no reward for doing the best you can. The more disruptive your scope of vision, the fewer roadmaps there are to guide you, and you're likely to fail a few times before you succeed. However, when your resilience and relentless determination finally wins out, there is no greater reward! Success in this industry is earned by gambling on yourself.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?
You can have the best startup in the world, but if people don't know about it, it doesn't matter. Founders can get so wrapped up in product dev that they forget to think about how they're going to generate awareness and get users. Having sharable content or a viral gamification component woven into your product is key to getting above the market noise. There's nothing worse than building an awesome product that never takes off, because no one knows about it.

What are the top three lessons you've learned as an entrepreneur?
1. Waiting too long to launch
2. Focusing on raising money (before you have traction)
3. Worrying about what your competitors are doing

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