Start With What You Know - 7 entrepreneurial lessons learned

Notes de l'éditeur

1. History as a software entrepreneur:starting in 8th grade, traveling baseball team, building and selling software in high school and college.Building websites turned into CMS: Hannon Hill, 2001First startup out of college, Pardot, was named one of Inc’s fastest growing companies 2007Pardotsold in 2012 for 100MPeople want to know how I did. These are some lessons I learned along the way. Some of them may seem obvious; others won’t, but these are the rules I lived by at Pardot, and will continue to drive me as I take on new challenges as a serial entrepreneur. 
2. Yes, engineers who want to be entrepreneurs must first get comfortable wearing a sales and marketing hat.
3. Story about first mistake and turning 5 customers into one of Inc Magazine’s fastest growing companies.
4. Nice to have isn’t good enough.
5. Your product should change the way your customers think about doing their job.
6. Lunch with Ex-Eloqua CEO.
7. Prius Example.
8. Talk about success building a revenue generating business without VC support. How it forces focus, etc.
9. Talk about feature creep that sometimes comes with too much money on your hands
10. Good timing is better than good luck.Marketing timing matters.Talk about market dynamics: Manitcore, Hubspot, EloquaTransition into Pardot. Saw an opportunity in the market to create a CRM tool for B2B online marketing: micro web analytics, click tracking, segmentation, contact-to-contact email marketing, etc.B2C focused tools like Google Analytics, Wordpress, etc.
11. B2C focused tools like Google Analytics, Wordpress, etc. were already in the market.
12. Focus on one thing you do well.
13. Success should breed focus. Success often brings new reasons not to focus. Being popular has its problems. When you’re the cool kid the the party, everyone wants a piece. If they cant guarantee you enough sales.
14. YOU HAVE A 100 % CONTROL OVER WHO YOU CHOOSE TO WORK WITH DAY IN AND DAY OUT.Pardot was named #1 place to work by AJC. Every new hire: is this hire going to strengthen or weaken or team? We invested in culture. Recruiting, 4 hours house cleaning, 100% health insurance. Vacation policy was be reasonable. Positive self starting and supportive