Friday, May 23, 2008

Jason Calacanis on Entrepeneurship cebit 08

JASON CALACANIS – Founder and CEO of Mahalo.com (Sequoia Capital Adviser
Mahalo.com is a human powered search engine focused on search terms including travel, products, news , entertainment, sports, food and health. Cofounderd Weblogs Inc that he sold to AOL in Nov 2005, then GM of AOL’s netscape… strong insight into the internet calls a spade a shovel…

Jason spoke about the need to only hire excellent if you are to succeed… hire the good is not enough. The beta between average and good is too small.

Hire slow and fire fast!! Get rif of “the bad people culture”
Hiring exceptional people lowers the management burden so they can then focus on the strategic.

Customer support is key as this is a free focus group. Jason makes himself available 24/7- that is how he learns what his customers are thinking.

Jason gave an excellent Ying and Yang description of the Internet:-

– An entrepreneur is not paranoid – he is strategic. People ARE after your market share and your demise. Develop strategies to prevent this

– An entrepreneur is not narcissistic – he is confident (people are just jealous!!)

– An entrepreneur is not detached – he is stoic – an entrepreneur needs to be focussed

– An entrepreneur is not stubborn - – he is resilient. If an entrepreneur does not persist – he will get his ass kicked!!

– An entrepreneur is not obsessive – he is thorough needs to be detailed

– An entrepreneur is not unbalanced – he is committed

– An entrepreneur is not crazy – he is brilliant

There will always be people who will say why something will not work….

No comments: