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Interview with Charlie Kroll, President & CEO of Andera, Inc.

BrownHEN interviewed Charlie Kroll, Brown '01, President & CEO of Andera, Inc., Providence, RI

1. Charlie, You have taken a company that was started when you were an undergraduate into one with 30 employees, 50% annual growth, and a revenue run rate of $4 million. You were featured in the Providence Journal as one of "Rhode Island's Outstanding Entrepreneurs." You were named by the United States SBA as the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in New England. Does it get any easier as one achieves more success?

It doesn’t get easier, but the challenges certainly change. We’re still a small company, but we’ve evolved from pure startup mode into execution mode and as a result, we’ve needed to evolve our thinking and strategy. Early on, it’s much more about getting everyone to buy into the vision and believe you can do what you promise. In execution mode, it’s more about managing limited resources to deliver on your promises. Neither mode is easy and both are rewarding when you start to feel things click.

2. Some of the money you raised come from Rhode Island state agencies that are set up to support entrepreneurial activities. Please comment on dealing with such organizations.

The state agencies have been tremendously supportive of us, but my experience is that they need to believe you can in turn help attract talent, money, and jobs to the state. Our biggest supporter has been the Slater Fund, which has both invested directly in us, as well as brought other angel investors to the table. We’ve also found the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, the Providence Economic Development Partnership, and the Business Development Company of Rhode island all to be helpful, providing us with much-needed working capital loans when we needed them most (and traditional lenders wouldn’t touch us).

3. Banking is perceived as a conservative business lead by people a good deal older than you. Do you believe your youth (and youthful appearance) is an asset or hindrance in promoting Andera?

It probably helps in most circumstances today, now that the company has a more experienced management team and a solid track record. A few years ago, before we had as deep a team or customer base, I think my inexperience was an obstacle, particularly in the years right after the bubble. Today, I think people are more accustomed to seeing young entrepreneurs succeed—the trick is knowing what you don’t know and filling those inexperience gaps with a great team.

4. Andera's business model has certainly evolved from the early days when you designed web sites for FM America—a radio station in Japan—and Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence. Please comment on how you learned of new business directions and recognized their potential.

We did a complete 180-degree turn. We started the business during the bubble as a Web development firm. Once the bubble burst, it was clear we’d need to develop our own intellectual property if we were going to grow. Fortunately, two of our Web development clients (both banks) had engaged us to build them custom online account opening applications nearly simultaneously, and the idea grew from there. That was early 2002, and our first month with zero Web development revenue was August of 2006 – a four year transition that seemed like forty. We needed that much time since we didn’t raise a lot of outside capital to finance the transition. Almost all our initial product development, sales, and marketing was funded out of Web development revenue during that four-year period.

5. How were you able to attract a very strong staff?

It’s never been easy to recruit good people, including today. We haven’t benefited from a lot of the characteristics that typically attract great people, like a billion-dollar exit potential (we’re trying to build a focused and successful business, but not the next Google), a sexy location (we’re in Providence, not Silicon Valley), a lot of money (we’ve never raised significant capital), or until recently even a strong vision (people used to see us as a Web development firm). These were definite headwinds to team building. Gradually, as our vision crystallized over the last few years, and our customer base and reputation grew, we were able to recruit a few people that became key contributors, and it evolved from there. Today, we have almost no luck with job boards, limited luck with headhunters, and extraordinary luck with employee referrals, which is the way I think it should be when things are humming.

6. You must get nibbles from larger organizations that want to buy you out. How do you respond?

Simple. We are focused on building a successful company, and we’re happy to listen to ideas but are not looking for them. We have a lot of growing to do before changing that orientation.

7. What are the top five qualities you would ascribe to an entrepreneur?

I second Ralph Rosenberg’s answer to this question.

For BrownHen readers, Ralph’s Rosenberg’s answers from our August 2007 interview were:
• Can deal with rejection/disappointment
• Good “big picture perspective”
• Even-tempered disposition
• Good sense of humor, and
• Ability to lead and motivate people.

8. As you know, the entrepreneur’s path is filled with trials and errors, and also failures. What’s a valuable insight for entrepreneurs to keep in mind when they’re experiencing setbacks?

Failure is the best (and arguably, only) way to learn. I think I’d be better equipped to lead a company if I had previously been part of one that failed. Short of that, I’ve had plenty of lesser failures that guide me in the decisions I make every day.

9. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

To me, fear is a very passive word. Are you afraid of missing a payroll or losing a deal to a competitor? Well, that implies that you have no control over such things, which usually isn’t the case as an entrepreneur.

10. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN?

An insight would be for entrepreneurs or company leaders to start a blog and maintain it regularly. I started mine last year and have found it to be a great way to personalize the company and provide context to the otherwise black and white world of marketing collateral and press releases. If you’re balanced in your message, exposing your blemishes as well as bragging about your strengths, THE BLOG humanizes the company and gives the impression you’re open and not hiding anything. It goes a long way.

11. Has becoming a father significantly changed your life?

Absolutely, having a son is the best thing that ever happened to me. He just turned five months old, and my wife and I are having such a blast learning how to be good parents.

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© BrownHEN.org – 2007

Interview with Randy Komisar, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

BrownHEN interviewed Randy Komisar, Brown '76, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Portola Valley, CA.

1. Randy, what is the biggest difference between being a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and working at a startup? What do you miss most about having operational responsibilities?

The great thing about being a partner at Kleiner Perkins is that I am surrounded by a tremendous amount of talent—my fellow partners, the founders and CEOs of our many ventures, the impressive management teams with whom I am privileged to work, as well as the many experts who work with our firm and make us smarter.

What I miss is the single-minded dedication to one team’s mission; the daily camaraderie amongst entrepreneurial team members who work together in the trenches, and the success of the team’s vision and passion, which serve to tie the individuals together.

2. How did an Economics concentrator at Brown and a law graduate from Harvard gain the technological background you obviously have? What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs about learning pertinent technology?

The Brown Curriculum allowed me to branch out and acquire a passable competency as a technologist. Brown’s freewheeling academic environment enabled me to take classes in computer science, biology, engineering, mathematics, and other technical and science-oriented courses that I would not have taken if I were merely focused on acquiring the highest GPA. I was able to broaden my knowledge base and education.

My advice for entrepreneurs would be to obtain a generalist background first. Many universities focus on a very narrow, restrictive curriculum. Brown is an exception; Brown focuses on and excels in undergraduate liberal arts education. At Brown, I discovered how to engage my curiosity and how to learn. The methods and processes I learned at Brown have served me well, including in my current role. Every day I go out and learn something completely new and I tap into expertise from various fields to augment my own understanding.

3. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs writing business plans to secure funding?

In a startup environment based upon taking an innovative leap of faith, all experience will be secondary and tertiary, deduced from markets and the experience of other companies. By definition, you do not have sufficient first-hand experience with the leap of faith to develop a foolproof operating plan. But you do need to put something together in order to aim the venture and to gather the money and talent you will need for the journey.

The notion of a business plan for a startup is necessary but not sufficient. The business plan needs to demonstrate to the investors and team that the founders understand the nature of the challenge they are undertaking. But the team will have to refine and of course correct along the way as assumptions based upon secondary information are tested against primary data from the marketplace.

4. When you are evaluating a particular investment what role does the social contribution, for example, to the environment or to economic justice, play?

It does play a large role, but interestingly, it is not necessarily altruistic, because our role is to create commercial value. We do ask the question, “How will this company provide significant value for others?” If you look at our firm and its investments, whether it’s Genentech, Sun, Netscape, Google or Amazon; all these companies created significant social value that lead to their creation of impressive financial value.

This significant value can be utilitarian: with Google one can find anything at anytime; with Amazon one can shop and buy anything at one’s convenience; with Netscape, one could browse something called the internet and explore an entirely new digital world. These companies did not just create social value; they revolutionized our society.

A few years ago, appreciating the threat of pandemics in a global society, we raised a fund and brought in experts to focus on investing in innovations that promise to detect, treat and prevent pandemics. Aligning our economic interests with a huge public threat is good business.

We currently have a strong investment thesis related to the environment; half of our investments focus on companies that are in the green tech—clean teach area. Al Gore just joined us as a partner to help accelerate our global efforts in this regard. Addressing a big problem, like global warming, by definition provides the prospects of creating great value for all the various constituencies.

5. Can New England, Providence in particular, hope to become an entrepreneurial center similar to Silicon Valley? What is needed?

To create an entrepreneurial center like Silicon Valley, Rhode Island needs to develop a cluster of people with relevant domain know how and a culture that reinforces entrepreneurship. Boston already has a robust entrepreneurial center.

I’ve spent time in Japan, India, Taiwan, Chile, and other entrepreneurial hot spots around the world. The question is always asked, “Why is one location more successful than another?”

What I have noted to be particularly unique about Silicon Valley is the following combination of factors: a highly educated group of entrepreneurs and scientists, a great university, and a robust business infrastructure that supports startup ventures, including attractive working and living environments, a lot of available risk capital, and access to quality legal, consulting and financial services.

But Silicon Valley is more than just a combination of its parts. Its entrepreneurial culture has taken more than 80 years to develop. Silicon Valley attracts certain personalities, which are reinforced over time. What people don’t quite grasp is that the culture is very dynamic and it is reflected at every level. People who decided to come and stay invest themselves in the local entrepreneurial culture.

The secret ingredient is how a place like Silicon Valley deals with, “failure.”
Silicon Valley doesn’t punish or brand those who fail. If you have acquired experience and you are passionate about your mission, you are given other opportunities. Silicon Valley recycles and reinvests in the entrepreneurial spirit, something that most other business cultures do not do. Successful people also reinvest in innovation; they want to be a part of the next big thing; they want to help mentor, guide and support aspiring entrepreneurs. This reinvestment is probably the most significant reason Silicon Valley is so prolific in terms of innovations.

6. How can subjects like leadership and entrepreneurship, which seem to be based on personal attributes, be taught?

I have been teaching entrepreneurship at Stanford for seven years now. Great leaders and entrepreneurs are determined by an individual’s experience and, more important, character. What a teacher or mentor can do is reinforce aspects that are aligned with leadership qualities and provide insights and tools to leaders-in training.

In business, leaders are too often judged by the immediate results posted by their companies. Over a short term, a lot of people appear to be good leaders. Great leaders should be evaluated over a longer period of time on their sustainable successes.

7. What are the top qualities you would ascribe to a leader, an entrepreneur?

• Integrity
• Intellectual honesty
• Empathy
• Good self-knowledge — who you are and what you care about
• Passion and complete absorption in one’s mission
• Perseverance

8. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

I believe fear is a negative emotion and do not find it useful. A lot of people think that if you are paranoid, it keeps you vigilant. But I do not find it beneficial to indulge in fear or to act out of fear.

9. As you know, the entrepreneur’s path is filled with trials and errors, and also failures. What’s a valuable insight for entrepreneurs to keep in mind when they’re experiencing setbacks?

Failure is not personal if you acted with integrity and have given it your best shot. In Silicon Valley, the only real failures are the people who have fallen short because they were lazy, stupid or corrupt. The inability to achieve results does not make you a failure; it can ultimately lead to positive experience that can result in success.

Most leaders with great successes have had moments of personal doubt, and have endured failures along the way.

10. Do you have a mentor who has helped you in career path / personal development?

I have many mentors. The most significant one is Bill Campbell. I worked with Bill at Claris and Go Corporation in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. We met at Apple more than 20 years ago. He is a terrific mentor. I also learn from my colleagues and associates as well as the many young entrepreneurs I work with.

Most important is that a mentor invests in your success, reinforces your abilities to succeed, extends himself/herself to you, and helps provide what you need for your own personal success, however you define that. While a teacher gives you tools to achieve an existing definition of success, a mentor helps make you a better you.

11. What motivated you to write the very well respected, “The Monk and the Riddle?”

The book started as a rant. It expressed the disgust that I felt during the middle of the dot.com boom. I feared that entrepreneurship was losing its meaning and purpose. It was being co-opted by the carpet baggers and the get-rich-quick crowd who were no longer pursuing entrepreneurship with passion and purpose, heart and soul. The book came out just in time, a month before the crash. To some extent it is gratifying that it is still so well received and used at numerous universities around the world, but its continual success reflects the fact that the base excesses of the boom are never far away.

12. Since the book was written, sometimes it seems like people are being less kind to one another than they had been. What hope do you have for the world?

That is a big question. The human condition is one where we are challenged and tempted by ego, greed, self-interest; many celebrated role models for success are aggressive, brutal and uncaring. It is hard for most people to rise above that and discover that it is the love and support for others that ultimately determine one’s level of satisfaction and fulfillment. Until we rise to that level of kindness, hope will be in short supply. But I am at heart an optimist and believe that people truly want to be kind, so I will hope for that.

13. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN?

To live a satisfying and purposeful life, you have to make a contribution. I find it very useful to live a life of integrity in a literal sense—to be integral—to incorporate my principles and values in my livelihood, to express my values in my daily life genuinely and authentically, and to engage empathetically with the host of wonderful people with whom I am privileged to cross paths every day.

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© BrownHEN.org – 2007

Interview with Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype

BrownHEN Interviewed Josh Silverman, Brown '91, CEO of Skype, London, UK.

This interviewed took place while Josh was CEO of Shopping.com in 2007. Josh was also co-founder of Evite.com.

1. Josh, please describe how you co-founded Evite.

Late 1998, I was brainstorming with my friend and colleague Javier, with whom I had worked at Netscape and came up with ToGather.com. The Internet was exploding. I was working 90 hours a week in medical imaging. I had no time left for ToGather so I had to quit my job to write the business plan. It was scary, but the great thing about it was that it forced me to succeed. If I had stayed with a cushy income, it would have been too easy to decide not to take risks.

I was doing market research while writing the business plan, and had a healthy dose of luck. I came across a company with three people: two talented engineers who had five products, including using Evite to go after the online calendaring space. I had the business expertise; they had two fantastic engineers who were Stanford grads and a Haas b-school grad. So Al Lieb, Selina Tobbacowala, John Bracken, and I got together.

The first six months, we did not raise outside capital. We focused on the business model and put our product in front of users. We lived on Rice-a-roni; by the time we raised money, we had already given the company a lot of soul and substance.

2. What were some of the lessons you learned from running a start-up?

We had to perform all the basic operational tasks that you take for granted; we had to go and prove to a landlord, a law firm, and a PR firm our potential worth, which took a lot of energy and time. We had to figure out how to create noise in the press—how to get our company to stand out amongst hundreds of new startups.

3. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs regarding raising money?

The ideal situation is never. Otherwise, take as little money as you need. If you can get to revenues quickly, that would be optimal. Figure out what the customers are willing to pay, build your company and keep operating costs low while generating customer value. Also, recognize that raising money from a top-tier VC may be perceived as a sign of success, but is not necessarily a true indicator. The hardest people to get money from are customers, not a VC.

4. Recently, you were CEO of Shopping.com. How did Shopping.com gain such as impressive market share in Europe?

We had a business model, a playbook for running an operation; it took us several years to refine that in the U.S. market and export that to Europe and Australia. Fortunately, it has translated very well from market to market. eBay acquired Shopping.com for $635M; it was publicly traded in NASDAQ and has grown quite nicely since acquisition.

5. Conventional wisdom is that eBay is an example of "winner takes all.” Do you worry that a competitor could dislodge eBay from its supremacy?

I think eBay would argue that it competes in segments such as auto dealers, apparel dealers, etc. It is more apparent in the past few years that with the onslaught of competitors, those who exclusively sell through eBay are now multi-channel e-tailers. The competition has much gotten fiercer and eBay’s roles as well as its competitors are disrupted by technology, and I imagine they will continue to evolve.

6. How can an aspiring entrepreneur gain the knowledge and experience required to work effectively outside the United States?

I think it is hard enough to be an entrepreneur in one’s home market. Going to a foreign market adds new levels of challenges and complexities. I believe it is important to show curiosity and interest in the culture. Even though the business language is English, I learned enough Dutch to facilitate my interaction with the locals.

I found wonderful talent in my Netherlands team and I had great opportunities to acquire some great startups in Europe. I noticed some common traits amongst U.S. and European entrepreneurs:
• Tenacity
• Vision and ability to sell one’s vision well
• Attention to customers
• Expertise
• Ability to attract great talent

Differences include:
• Regulations
• Market conditions
• Environments for raising capital
• Tax structure

In general, although the European economy was well structured to encourage entrepreneurship, the culture has not favored entrepreneurial efforts as Silicon Valley has. Entrepreneurs have garnered more respect that they did five or 10 years ago, but when I was in Holland, it was still harder to access capital.

7. How valid are the ideas you learned about Public Policy at Brown in the environment you work in now? How about what you learned in your MBA?

Public Policy was great training, surprisingly relevant. After Brown, I worked for a senator and this served me well in leading large organizations. I learned to articulate extremely complex ideas in two sentences or less. I also learned a lot in the classrooms during b-school at Stanford and have found value in the alumni network.

8. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

When I quit my full-time job to go work for Evite, I was terrified. My biggest fear was my fear of failure. That said, I also recognized that as an entrepreneur, I had more control over my own destiny. I chose to use my fear as a motivator; I told everyone what I was doing. I was very open about what I was doing: starting a company. This forced me to commit in a public way and pushed me toward achieving success in ways that I would not have had I stayed with an established company.

What else did you learn?

I learned to manage very stressful situations and to remain calm. I also learned entrepreneurs need to stick with their vision in the face of strong adversity and yet possess enough judgment to know when to adapt or when to quit.

I thought that Evite was about saving time—a utility similar to email or a calendar. When we talked with our users, we learned that they were passionate about the sense of community that was created around the event before the event. So Evite was more about marketing a community device: we had gotten the core value proposition wrong. We were smart enough to listen, adapt, and build our service based on what our consumers wanted. As a result, Evite continues to be a great brand.

9. Did you live in The Netherlands when you were responsible for that market? What did you enjoy during your stay and what do you miss?

My wife Shirin and I enjoyed a very high quality of life in Amsterdam, which is a very nice and walkable city. We would ride our bikes home from dinner at 11PM. Our daughter Leila was born at home, in the traditional Dutch way. We enjoyed and missed being in the center of Europe; I had a wonderful opportunity to run one of the great European Internet brands—Marktplaats—a true blue Dutch brand.

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© BrownHEN.org – 2008

BrownHEN interviewed Dan Siegel, Founding Partner of Derwin & Siegel, LLP

BrownHEN interviewed Daniel Siegel, Brown '80, Founding Partner of Derwin & Siegel, LLP, Portola Valley, CA.

1. Dan, could you please review the route that took you from a Brown undergraduate to a prominent intellectual property lawyer?

Upon reflection, I find it interesting that my journey was perhaps a typical Brown interdisciplinary one, with little pre-planning or foresight. I entered Brown with a vague interest in biomedical engineering, satisfying both the, “Mom wants you to be a doctor” concern (despite my lack of interest in the natural sciences) and my burgeoning interest in technology. Soon after arriving at Brown, I developed an interest in computer science (a new department at Brown) and felt I had found my niche. To some extent, I made a common Brown mistake, and took pride more in the courses I did not have to take (foreign languages and virtually all of the humanities) than in the opportunity to chart my own course. Fortunately, I took advantage of Brown’s many unusual offerings, including a course on the “4th Dimension,” one on “the Brain” taught by three professors from different disciplines, and another on “Cryptography.” To this day I have far more vivid memories of those unusual courses than of any computer science courses required for my degree.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, by truly choosing those unusual interdisciplinary courses, I had begun my journey of academic exploration. Along the way, perhaps by chance, or perhaps because my father (who died when I was ten) had been an attorney, I decided to “give in” and take a course in my junior year on the humanities side of the spectrum—a political science course relating to the law taught by Professor Edward Beiser. I have a specific recollection of a meeting Professor Beiser arranged to discuss a paper that I had written on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bakke decision, a landmark affirmative action case.  As we discussed the nuances of racial quotas (as distinguished from race being merely one of many factors), I discovered in that very meeting my passion for the law, in particular for legal/analytical reasoning. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can honestly say that Professor Beiser is the reason I went to law school and became an attorney. I better take this opportunity to publicly thank him in case I continue to procrastinate in tracking him down to offer my personal gratitude. “Thank you Professor Beiser! You really did make a difference.”

After law school, I applied my interdisciplinary approach to my career search, combining my passions for computer science and the law in an effort to forge a career in “computer law,” a field that didn’t really exist at the time beyond vague references to intellectual property. When other attorneys explained to me that copyright law and patent law were legitimate legal disciplines, but that “computer law” had no more meaning than “car law” or “furniture law,” I only became more determined to find my niche. I quickly discovered that focusing on a particular industry or area of technology had a dramatic effect not only on my personal interest in the subject matter, but on the nature of the legal issues as well, including my ability to add value to an analysis of interrelated business and legal concerns.

Over the years, I have worked on a myriad of intellectual property matters involving the application of trade secret, copyright and patent law to computers systems, software and networks such as the Internet. I have been fortunate to be paid to learn about cutting-edge technologies from experts in many areas.

So, what led me here? In retrospect, it seems so simple. Follow your passions, even as they evolve, and continually keep your eyes open for opportunities to integrate those passions into a career, as well as into your hobbies.

2. When do you recommend an entrepreneur with an idea for a novel product first talk to an intellectual property lawyer?

My pat answer is “right away” and then “later on.” The catch is that an entrepreneur needs some good free advice (not necessarily an oxymoron) immediately. Simple advice relating, for example, to documenting inventions and establishing ownership can be invaluable at a very early stage. But, entrepreneurs rarely need a significant amount of time from an intellectual property attorney at such an early stage, which is fortunate because entrepreneurs rarely have much money at this stage. They need some basic guidance with a roadmap to avoid the obvious pitfalls as they embark upon the initial stages of market research and product development.

At a later stage, however, as they near completion of a prototype and have honed their business model, they may require greater assistance, for example, with contractual issues and development of a patent application. Funding of intellectual property work should go hand in hand with funding of other technical and business aspects of a venture. Alternative-fee arrangements can sometimes facilitate this process depending upon the timing of funding rounds.

3. Can you give a short review of how an entrepreneur can protect her or his idea before the patent process is begun? If a short review is not possible, can you suggest where an entrepreneur can learn what to do? In particular, do you recommend the use of provisional patents?

Prior to the relatively time-consuming and expensive process of preparing a patent application, entrepreneurs protect their inventions primarily via trade secret law, for example, by not using or disclosing their inventions publicly. Apart from contractual issues relating to co-founders and their employers, little else is required beyond documenting their development efforts and maintaining confidentiality—at least until a “public” event approaches (such as a demo at a trade show or a “live” test of a website).

When such public events become necessary from a business perspective, a provisional patent application may be appropriate. If sufficient time and resources are available to justify a “normal” (utility) patent application, then the value of a more thorough patent application almost always justifies the additional effort and expense. When little or no time or money is available, however, a provisional patent application will at least enable the entrepreneur to avoid being barred from later patenting the “core” invention (particularly outside the United States). A provisional patent application will typically include existing written materials and perhaps a brief write-up summarizing the invention. Its value will be limited if not followed up with a more thorough patent application, but it does at least preserve the option of filing such a subsequent application.

4. How has the globalization of business changed the practice of intellectual property?

The answer to that question depends, in large part, upon the nature of the technology and the business platform. In one respect, having global investors, customers and competitors enhances the importance of intellectual property concerns outside the United States, such as foreign patents. In my practice, however, where the Internet is often the platform, much of the potential infringement of intellectual property rights is likely to occur in the United States, or at least not be restricted to other specific countries. In such cases, the value proposition of obtaining non-US patents is often diminished. There are, of course, exceptions, such as mobile communications or other networks that might be more regionally restricted. In those cases, the global concerns of early investors often drive the focus on intellectual property rights in other countries.

5. Besides intellectual property issues, what other legal problems have you seen entrepreneurs face?  (Product safety? Disagreements with partners? Non-compete agreements, etc.)

Excluding ownership issues (which are intellectual property issues), the one issue that seems to arise most frequently in any entrepreneurial venture is one of management. At some point, investors tend to have a falling out with founders over the issue of who is best-suited to lead the company. While this may not appear to be a legal issue on the surface, it often results in a nasty contractual dispute involving lawyers and legal fees. The earlier that founders begin to think about this issue, and engage their investors in ongoing candid communications regarding this issue, the more likely they will be able to reach a consensus when this issue rises to the surface (and it will).

6. Where do you see the big entrepreneurial opportunities of the future? In particular, does software seem to offer the same entrepreneurial excitement as it did?

From my perspective, software will always provide significant entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly via the Internet and mobile communications networks.  Writing software has the inherent advantage of being a much less capital-intensive way to implement functionality than, for example, manufacturing a device (sometimes a subtle distinction). Moreover, the abstract nature of software lends itself to more modular approaches to complex problems, if only because it is less constrained than hardware to being reconfigured. Finally, with respect to intellectual property rights, software offers greater flexibility in fashioning such rights, for example via patent claims. Some see this as more of a problem than an opportunity.

As for specific technology areas, I cannot claim to offer any particular wisdom.  The growth of social networks and mobile communications services are certainly two fascinating areas, but there are many others. I personally expect to be using my mobile phone to perform tasks in five years that I cannot necessarily even contemplate today.

7. What were your reactions to the recent SFBrown's First Entrepreneurs' Forum in Silicon Valley?

I thought the forum was great, even beyond the main attraction—the presence of Dean Hazeltine. I learned a great deal from the interaction between the professionals and those who are considering embarking upon an entrepreneurial venture. I don’t attend many alumni events, but I am getting more nostalgic lately, and have always been interested in the entrepreneurial spirit, both professionally and personally. To me, the key is getting a good cross-section of attendees, from recent Brown grads to older Brown grads who have worked with entrepreneurs, and perhaps even interesting speakers who might not have a connection with Brown. It is also helpful to hear from current (or even prospective) Brown students to get a sense of where their interests lie.

8. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

Certainly fear can be both. Ultimately, that depends on how each of us handles fear, whether brought about internally or externally. As for myself, I have dealt with fear at different stages of my career. I’m ashamed to admit that fear usually seems to relate to money (even when we deny it), in particular, to the prospect of having to change jobs or careers.

I have changed jobs frequently, though usually by choice when an opportunity arose. In those cases, my fears were limited to making the “best choice,” which for me involved over-analyzing the relatively small differences among good choices. In the few instances when external forces brought about the need for a job change, my fears seemed to be a motivating factor, forcing me to abandon the complacency that tends to set in when you are generally satisfied with a job or career path. My fears made me focus and become more proactive about my career path.

Overall, I would have to say that fear has been a motivating factor for me. I have never regretted any of the job or career changes I have made, and in fact the more significant changes in my career path have ultimately been the most satisfying. I still expect there are more to come. I have always admired the entrepreneur who can make a significant sacrifice (e.g., give up a well-paying steady job, if those still exist in today’s economy) for the uncertainty of a startup “dream.” I am personally slightly more risk averse, but hope to tap that entrepreneurial side of myself whenever the opportunity arises. I am always on the lookout for such opportunities.

9. Do you have a mentor who has helped you in your career path/personal development?

I cannot identify any one individual that I would consider a mentor in my professional development. I have tried to “pick and choose” different qualities from people I have worked with over the years. I would note, however, that I have been guided as much by traits that I perceive as negative as by those I consider admirable.

On the personal side, I would have to say that my wife (Amy) has been my mentor. I have learned to examine myself and better understand motivations behind my own behavior, as well as the behavior of others around me, to a far greater extent than I ever could before I met her. This has certainly aided my professional life as well, in that it helps me better understand my working relationships, which certainly shapes my decision-making process.

10. Who are three other individuals (dead or alive) who have influenced you?

That’s a tough one. On the educational side, I would have to mention Professor Beiser again, as he is the only teacher I can recall who ultimately had a profound influence on my career path. On the personal side, it would be difficult to leave out my mother, from whom I learned many of my good and bad traits, perhaps the most important of which are never to take myself too seriously and never to give up on my dreams.

Finally, I would add my son, Alex, to that list. At the age of 18, he is now able to “keep me honest” and remind me when I am being hypocritical. Even more important, he serves as a constant reminder of what is really important in life. He was recently admitted “early decision” to Penn (sorry, I tried), and even wrote an essay during the hour-long flight from Philadelphia to Providence on the “risk” of trading his legacy advantage at Brown for his “dream” of attending Penn, knowing that he might be sacrificing the opportunity to attend either one. I suspect his essay will come to mind whenever I ponder entrepreneurial opportunities in the future.

11. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN?

This is not a recent insight, but I repeat it so often to friends and acquaintances that I should share it in this forum as well. It is a philosophy (or over-generalization) that applies to virtually anyone who performs services. This could be your boss, your secretary or other employee, a consultant, a politician, or even yourself. I heard this years ago from a consultant friend of mine, who first heard it from his brother. I don’t really know its origin, but it goes something like this:

There are two types of people in the world—“reasons” people and “results” people. Now, “reasons” people always seem to have a reason that they could not perform some task, and often it is a very good reason. Nevertheless, there always seems to be some reason. “Results” people, on the other hand, somehow manage to perform their tasks the vast majority of the time. They are far from perfect, but it is a rare exception when they offer a “reason” for being unable to perform a task.

I have found that, over the years, I tend to categorize almost everyone I know as a “reasons” person or a “results” person. I even find myself slipping from time to time into that “reasons” category, after which I quickly try to correct my course. I don’t necessarily like being so judgmental (particularly when I’m so aware, most of the time, of my own myriad of faults), but I have been surprised how rarely “reasons” people seem to change. This doesn’t make them bad people, just not necessarily ones you want to rely on to perform certain tasks. So, I leave this as a simple “mental exercise” (as I suspect we all know some “reasons” people) and not one meant to be used to judge others too harshly.

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More about Dan...
Daniel Siegel is a founding partner of Derwin & Siegel LLP, a boutique intellectual property law firm in Portola Valley, CA. He has worked and written on computer-related intellectual property matters for more than 20 years. His practice has included infringement counseling, licensing, analysis of large patent portfolios and detailed technical specifications, as well as design and management of “clean room” projects to demonstrate the absence of copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation. He currently specializes in invention identification and early-stage strategic patent preparation for high-tech startups, with a focus on increasing company valuations by targeting commercially significant technologies of potential competitors. Prior to forming Derwin & Siegel LLP, he co-founded the Silicon Valley office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, following stints at various Bay Area law firms. Daniel holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Brown University (‘80) and a JD degree from Columbia Law School (’83 – third year completed at Stanford Law School).

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© BrownHEN.org – 2008

Interview with Jonathan Boutelle, CTO of SlideShare

BrownHEN interviewed Jonathan Boutelle, Brown '97, CTO of SlideShare, San Francisco, CA.

1. Jonathan, please elaborate on some of the uses envisioned for SlideShare listed on the web site—"Do you want to get the word out about your product or service? Do you want your slides to reach people who could not make it to your talk? Are you a teacher looking to share your lesson plans?" You must be asked often if you see SlideShare as having the influence of You Tube or MySpace—what is your response?

SlideShare is a way for people to get their voices heard, to share their knowledge and perspectives with the world. Sometimes the intent is educational; sometimes it is business. Our goal is to get the documents you want to share out in front of the people that are interested in reading them.

Design-wise, we copied YouTube shamelessly in the beginning. The logic for doing so was pretty simple: it made the site very easy to explain. People knew exactly where to find things on the site, and had a very clear expectation of what features would be available and how they would work. When people come to your site from a Google search, you have maybe 15 seconds to engage them before they click the back button. So you don't want to force them to learn anything: you have to operate within a paradigm they understand. For us, that paradigm was the YouTube paradigm, which you could generically describe as  "a leader-board driven social media sharing site.

We still keep a close eye on YouTube, they have a tremendous research team and any changes to their design are likely to have been well tested and therefore effective. But at this point, a lot of our designs are influenced by our measurements of the behavior of visitors to our site, and by our efforts to come up with ideas that will increase the behaviors that we want to encourage.

2. You are based in San Francisco, California (USA) & New Delhi (India). How did this dual base come about? Problems must have come up at times with a bi-national base. What advice to do have for others in overcoming difficulties caused by having managers on different continents, speaking different languages, based in different cultures?

Our third co-founder, Amit Ranjan, is in Delhi, and has been with us from the beginning. In early 2004, the three co-founders (Rashmi Sinha, Amit Ranjan, and I) got together to form a product company. Our initial product was a minor success; it was an online survey tool called MindCanvas. In early 2006, I got the idea for SlideShare, so we have always been a "micro-multinational".

Collaborating across time zones and cultures is hard work, but it's also very rewarding. I got to go to India a lot and learned a lot about Indian culture. It's important to have real relationships with the people you are working with. Skype video helps a lot with that; I spend about an hour a day having video conversations with our Delhi team.  Actually visiting and working with people is also really important—for the first several years I was spending 2-3 months a year in India. I do believe that for building great products you need people that are truly part of the team: NOT contractors, consultants, or outsourcing companies. Building a product is a very iterative process, and requires a lot of passion and commitment to get right.

3. Slide Share has a very impressive list of investors and members of the Board of Advisors. How did you recruit such distinguished people?

Many of our investors and advisors started out being SlideShare users. We noticed their content and "friended them" on SlideShare, and the relationship grew out of their appreciation for our product. So we didn't need to sell them on the SlideShare vision; they were already using the site and finding it useful.

4. Two of the three founders of Slide Share graduated from Brown. Do you think anything special about the Brown experience encourages entrepreneurship? If so, how can that special quality be preserved and nurtured?

A lot of Brown graduates are very strong technically, but also have broader background. This is important because as an entrepreneur, you aren't just working on developing technology: you also have to figure out what to build, how to market the product and sell it, how to do accounting, how to pitch to and negotiate with potential investors, etc. It’s a very broad set of skills that are required.

I have one idea that I'd like to pitch, though! I do think that entrepreneurial courses similar to the ones the Stanford CS department runs (the Facebook app class,  http://credibilityserver.stanford.edu/captology/facebook/
the iPhone app class http://www.stanfordiphoneclassapps.com/) would go over very well at Brown. The web has created powerful new distribution channels with very low barriers to entry, so it's possible to have semester-long educational experiences that result not just in usable software and occasionally, in viable businesses! And the experience—whether successful or not—of shipping software and trying to get other people to use it teaches a budding entrepreneur a lot of important lessons.

5. The SlideShare website says, "[We] think that small teams with fire in their eyes can do big things." Can you describe first-hand experiences when such was true?  How does an entrepreneur create a team with fire in its eyes?

Sure. I and another engineer built the first version of SlideShare in less than a month! And neither of us had previously coded in Ruby, the language SlideShare was written in. We simply didn't know enough to be intimidated by the problem, and we really wanted to make the idea a reality. It also helps to be building something inspiring: I don't think if we had been working on DRM software or an accounting package we could have built the same enthusiasm in our team.

With software, every person you add creates additional communication overhead, so it's very important to stay lean and mean. In fact, one of the main advantages that startups have over incumbents is that they have less of everything! Less people, less resources, less bureaucracy, and less experience. This is what lets them move faster and stay focused. 

6. Do you think big opportunities remain in the software sphere?  Has all the important work been done?

No way! Is life perfect, yet? Our work and personal lives have plenty of room for improvement. As long as that's the case, there will be opportunity.

7. Can you describe your creative process? How did you come up with the idea for SlideShare?  How did you turn the idea into a revenue-generating product?

The idea for SlideShare came to me when I was organizing a conference. Speakers kept on coming up to me and asking me how to put their PowerPoint decks into the conference wiki. I assumed there would be a site like SlideShare for doing so, and when I couldn't find one I knew that we had to build it. I designed the site (in PowerPoint, of course ;->) over that weekend and we started coding a prototype immediately.

8. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

Fear stops a lot of people from becoming entrepreneurs, but once you make the jump, fear of failure is a crucial motivator. Once you start telling people you're doing a startup, you really don't want to tell them that you failed. So you work like hell to succeed! 

9. Do you have a mentor who has helped you in your career path/personal development?

Andy Van Dam, in the Brown CS department, was an important mentor to me. He got me interested in Computer Science, gave me my first academic internship, and gave me the background I needed to get my first industry job in computer graphics. He's an amazing teacher and an innovator both in technology and in education.

10. Who are some individuals who have influenced you?

I love the writings of Paul Graham, and would encourage anyone considering entrepreneurship to read his essays (they're available online). 
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

Dave McClure, our investor, and spiritual advisor, has influenced my thinking on startups a great deal (particularly on the importance of metrics).
http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats


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© BrownHEN.org – 2010