Scott Banister's lessons and advice to startups

Your willingness to change will determine whether you live or die as a startup

Here's your lesson of the day! At VatorNews, we have thousands of sage advice from seasoned entrepreneurs. Many have asked if we could showcase one every day as a constant reminder of what it takes to build and scale a startup. Some are oldies, but goodies! So here you go! Today's lesson is from Scott Banister, founder of IronPort, which was sold to Cisco Systems for $830 million.

Banister was also an early investor in PayPal, Facebook, Slide and Zappos. Banister said that at both IronPort and PayPal, the original plan was thrown out the window, despite the number of employees at both companies. "PayPal had probably 40 people before the full transition from Palm Pilot payments onto eBay payments," he said.

At IronPort, there were 20 people before the company switched gears and started selling to marketing departments within enterprises, rather than IT departments. "We went back to the drawing board," he said.