Entrepreneurial DNA
“This is my second start-up. But I’m not a serial entrepreneur. The first start-up was a company that we ended up selling for a very modest amount to Dentsu, which is a large Japanese advertising agency, and it’s how I actually met Marc Andreessen, and then we started NING together. I’m so passionate about what we’re doing with NING that, when you hear people talk about moving on to the next idea, it just doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have any more good ideas. This is it.”
Finding the One: Is This Idea Launch-Worthy?
“I think that it really depends on the scale and scope. So, what is it? Is it a consulting business? Is it a product business? Is it a business that requires a lot of capital, or a little bit of capital, or that you can work on with no capital? It depends on what you’re trying to do, and how you’re trying to do it. I think the most important thing is [to ask yourself] if this is something that you think about, but you don’t think about it as a job. I think that’s the biggest thing. It’s really, really challenging to start any kind of business when you’re looking at it as a job.”
Do It on the Cheap
“The great thing about the Internet today is that there are so many ways to get up and running with businesses for a very, very modest amount of money, and with, quite candidly, very little technical ability as well. I mean, that’s one of the things that I think NING is very cool for, is the fact that for $19.95 a month, you can run your own ads, or do with it what you like, and it’s your brand. It’s your choice. It’s certainly a low-cost, low-risk way of getting up and running with your own thing, compared to building a technology product from scratch and needing to hire 25 engineers.”
Experts Needed
“I don’t think there’s any way that you can create a technology business without an incredibly strong engineer. I am so fortunate that I have very, very strong engineering leaders, and people who can vet things that I can’t, or see things that I can’t. There’s no replacement for that.”
It’s a Lonely Road
“When you’re sitting there by yourself, or with your co-founder, and it’s just you guys, it is not nearly the most fun part of the job. We’re three-and-a-half years into this, and we’re a team of 90 people, and we have a product that people really seem to like a lot. And we’re humbled by that. That’s fun. But when you’re sitting there, and it’s just an idea, it at times can be very lonely. The highs are really high, but the lows are really low, in part because it’s still so much in one’s head and in one’s thoughts, as opposed to something that’s been acted upon at that point.”
