Learn From Proven Entrepreneurs

Jennifer Kushell wanted to build a multimedia company that helped young adults as they transitioned from home and school into the real world. But a tough economic climate meant she couldn’t raise much money from investors. So she decided to write a book.

In this interview you’ll hear how she took the advance she got on her book and invested the money into making the book a best seller. The success of the book raised her profile and grew a community, which she used to launch her business.

Hiten Shah wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on past business ideas (and you can in this video how painful those losses are to him). Then everything changed…

I invited Sean Moriarty to Mixergy to learn how he thinks about buying companies.

At Ticketmaster, Sean’s acquisitions included Paciolan, TicketsNow, Emma Entertainment and Echo Music. In this program, you’ll hear how he thought about he and his team thought about and executed some of those acquisitions.

Who: Jennifer Kushell, co-founder and president, Young and Successful, and author of three books
When: Thursday, April 22 @ 11am Pacific Time
Where: Mixergy.com/live (participate from your computer)

So this interview is kind of a 2-in-1. We start off with a biographical interview, where you’ll see how Todd launched a business while working a full-time job. Then we turn it into a mini-seminar about generating online ad revenue.

How does Jessica Livingston do it? How does she look at new, (usually) unproven entrepreneurs and figure out which of them are worth banking Y Combinator’s money, reputation and mentorship on?

When I asked her co-founder at Y Combinator, Paul Graham, he said she has a “social radar.” “She is very rarely wrong,” he told me….

Scott Tilton and his co-founder didn’t have much money to advertise their new site, so they got in a motor home and traveled the country to evangelize their business and get to know their target market of athletes. To maximize the time they spent meeting athletes at events, they made deals with publications that reached their audience. The two founders would distribute magazines and stickers at events and the publications would give their fledgling site free marketing.

It was tough work, but it got them their first…

I’ve known Clearstone Venture Partners for about 5 years and watched them help entrepreneurs think through and launch their businesses. Like Rahul Sonnad, who I met when he worked out of Clearstone’s offices while he launched Geodelic, the location discovery app.

I invited Sumant Mandal to talk about how he went from being an entrepreneur who never heard of venture capital, to becoming the firm’s Managing Director. And to ask him about how Clearstone helps new tech companies launch and grow.

Who: Jessica Livingston, founding partner, Y Combinator, and author of Founders at Work
When: Friday, April 16 @ 11am Pacific Time
Where: Mixergy.com/live (participate from your computer)

He was a first time entrepreneur, but in 1996 Curt Dalton saw the opportunity in the online gaming business. So raised $200,000 from people he worked for when he was still in school, and along with 3 friends, he launched Oasis Casino and Sportsbook.

This is the story of how they built their business on an island called “Curacao,” which is off the coast of Venezuela. I think you’ll like Curt because he’s open with his numbers (the business made $10 million in profit at its height) and with…

Stack Overflow, the question and answer site for programmers, went from 0 to 6.5 million monthly unique visitors within 2 years. So the company launched a few related sites, which did well too. That’s when they decided to create Stack Exchange, a hosted question and answer platform that anyone (who has $125 per month) can run, about any topic they choose.

As you’ll hear in this interview with Joel Spolsky, the company’s co-founder, it didn’t work.

- You’ll hear how he researched the thesis that Union Square was built on.
- You’ll see why he “dumbed down” his ideas when he raised money.
- You’ll learn how he found his partners.
- You’ll see how he finds the companies he backed.
- And more.