Last week I was in San Francisco, where I had the chance to learn from and interact with a number of entrepreneurs, investors, and others in the West Coast entrepreneurial ecosystem. While I heard a number of valuable presentations and panels while there, there's nothing quite like a punchy quote to grab your attention! Here are a few I found most intriguing, exciting, or otherwise out of the ordinary!
5. "I invest in 1 or more of the 7 deadly sins", said Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chairman of LinkedIn, angel investor, and new venture capitalist at Greylock
His rationale: Sins matter to people! We care about them! We are passionate, emotional, seduced, irrational sometimes, about the "sins". LinkedIn is all about greed. Obviously the big idea here was that the company's product or service has got to be incredibly compelling to a big market of people, but I like to think it's even bigger -- that the best ideas are those which people literally will be unable to decline for both rational and emotional reasons.
4. "This is the decade of the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)," said Josh James, Founder and CEO of web analytics company Omniture (which went public and then was bought by Adobe for $1.8 billion)
Well, of course I wrote this one down! But aside from my personal interest, the backstory on the thinking was provocative. James suggested that the 1990s were about the CFO (ERP, cost management, installing financial discipline), the 2000s were about the CIO (IT, infrastructure, client servers, the internet), and now, the 2010s will be about the CMO. The opportunity that will define CMOs and separate the good from the bad -- particularly for online marketing companies -- will be customer experience. How does digital interactivity and optimization really enhance and improve the customer experience? How do companies take all the data that can be individually available (such as a person's purchase behavior via web purchases, qualitative feedback through Twitter, number of Facebook connections, etc) and turn that into an unparalleled, brand new customer experience? Or, to make the idea more tangible -- if I, the consumer, could tell you exactly what I like -- what types of offers work for me, what my social networks are, how I use promotions, how I shop and purchase merchandise -- how will you tailor your customer experience to me specifically?
3. "The work starts when we make the investment," by Felda Hardymon, Senior Partner of Bessemer Venture Partners and professor at Harvard Business School
The meaning? Money is just the beginning of the value that an investor can bring to a company. I was struck by the fact that this was being said by an investor, as opposed to an entrepreneur (although certainly entrepreneurs would agree)! Investors see their role -- in fact, hold themselves accountable -- for creating value beyond just the money, and entrepreneurs who leverage their investors for knowledge, skills, and connections are wise.
2. "Biology is the science that will drive everything else in the future," by Dr. John Hennessy, President of Stanford University
I was not familiar with Dr. Hennessy's background but was immediately impressed with his street cred regarding areas of innovation and entrepreneurship. (As a quick summary, he has a PhD in computer science, used a sabbatical year to found a company which commercialized his research in processors, and is a board member at Google and Cisco Systems, among others). So it was especially interesting to hear from an accomplished IT academic and entrepreneur of his belief that the next area for innovation will be the application of technologies and science -- IT, physics, and chemistry -- to solutions which address medical challenges. Putting his money where his mouth is, Dr. Hennessy built an interdisciplinary research program called "BioX" (x = any of the sciences, fill-in-the-blank style) to encourage students and researchers from across the sciences, engineering, and IT to create collaborations and solve the world's biggest biology-based challenges.
1. "Wow...congratulations...you should be extremely excited to have an exit right now," by various people in California
Yes, this wasn't a quote attributable to any one person, but it was a frequent comment I heard in reaction to the news that JumpStart Ventures portfolio was about to have an exit. JumpStart Ventures portfolio company DIY was acquired last week, generating positive IRR for JumpStart and representing our first exit. It's a real milestone for our portfolio and demonstrates that the model we have been executing for the last five years can work. Congratulations to the JumpStart Ventures team, the DIY and Yardi teams, and thank you to our donors for their continued financial support over the last five years and in the years to come!
Cathy Belk is the Chief Marketing Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business management. She brings 16+ years of experience in a variety of marketing and business roles, but gets her energy from working daily with entrepreneurs and their growing companies.