Today's Entrepreneur: Richard Blackham

No. 1 mistake: Too many Me-toos and not enough Me-firsts

Vator’s community is the home to entrepreneurs who embrace their passion and follow their dreams.

Our newly-designed 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.

Today’s entrepreneur is Richard Blackham, CEO/Founder of Metaconomy.

According to his VEQ (Vator entrepreneur assessment test), Richard is a thought leader, and is good at networking and technology design.

I am:  An Entrepreneur

Name companies you've founded or co-founded:

Metaconomy, FastPassCorp, ivalidate

Name companies you've invested in:

Metaconomy, FastPassCorp

Name startups you worked for:

Metaconomy, FastPassCorp

If you are an entrepreneur, why?

I'm bursting with ideas!

List your favorite startups:

Metaconomy, WuFoo, skype, angellist

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

Biggest frustration: No-one believes you until you're a success.
Biggest reward: To see you're creation being used.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?

Too many Me-toos and not enough Me-firsts. Me-too is not entrepreneurship.

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

Collaboration pays because we can't own every step of the process.
Confidence pays because no-one will ever believe you if you're not!
Focus pays because 'pivoting' only works once before the money runs out.

Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years?

I want us to be a top tier online brokerage for business data. We can and will be the de-facto business solution that inter-operates with all the leading online and on-premise CRM, HR, ERP and MRM applications available today, and in the future. We will be the glue that eases the pain of mergers and acquisitions where proprietary systems need to be working together.
We will be the spider in your web!