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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