How not to Fuck Up the First Time Like I Did Mark Suster NextGen Conference, January Lessons from Both Sides of the Table

Me  Software development at Andersen Consulting  BuildOnline, CEO in London at 31 (sold to public company)  Koral, CEO in Palo Alto (sold to Salesforce.com)  VC in Los Angeles

The Stupid Mistakes I Made the First Time (but not the second time!) ** there were no blogs, no instruction manuals ;-)

I Didn’t Start Young Enough

JFDI

I Wasn’t Passionate About My Idea

I Raised Too Much Money

I Had Too Many Cofounders

I Pushed PR Before Our Product Was Ready

I Launched Too Many Products & Overspec’d

I Internationalized Too Early

My Team Was Too Much Like Me

I Hired Too Senior of a Team

I Attended Too Many Conferences

I Didn’t Flip Burgers

I Charged Too Much

I Became a Prostitute for Revenue

I Never Thought About Selling the Company

I Stayed Too Long

Take Aways 1. Don’t be afraid to try when you’re young & unencumbered 2. Find a topic you’re passionate about 3.Start lean

Take Aways (cont.) 1. Flip burgers 2. Don’t be a ho 3.Focus on your customers – nothing else matters

Mark Suster NextGen Conference, January ; BothSidesoftheTable.com