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VIDEO: Centro Founder Shawn Riegsecker at Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871

05/09/2013

Centro Founder, Shawn Riegsecker, shared his journey and lessons at Aril’s Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871. We had another sold out crowd join us @ 1871 for pizza, beer, and to hear Shawn’s incredible story.

This is the eighth installment of Founders’ Stories. If you would like to check out any of the prior videos from past events, you can see them here: Braintree Founder Bryan Johnson, Open Table Founder Chuck Templeton, Grub Hub Founders Matt Maloney and Mike Evans, Belly Founder Logan LaHive, Context Media Founders Rishi and Shradha, Siri Founder Dag Kittlaus, or Starter League Founders Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee.

Shawn started Centro, one of the fastest growing software companies in 2001. He grew up in Ohio and began his career by selling Yellow Page advertising. In 1996, he started putting newspapers on the web and by 2000, he joined a streaming media company called Everstream. He learned early on that media was changing the industry. In 2001, the time of the dot-com crash and 9/11, Shawn saw the opportunity to move fast because everyone else was slowing down. He took advantage of the time and wrote a document called “Corporate Manifesto” which laid out his vision of leading a great company.

Corporate Manifesto has helped shape Centro’s philosophy and a reason why Centro has been ranked #1 on Crain’s Chicago Business’ Best Places to Work three years in a row. Today, Centro develops software and services that support both agencies and publishers as they navigate the increasingly complex digital space. Centro has executed more than 20,000 local and national campaigns.

My INCISENT Labs teammates and I have really enjoyed partnering and sponsoring all of the Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871. Since the event sold out, we recorded it and are putting it online for those who couldn’t make it. We broke up the hour into four segments for easier viewing.

In the first segment, Shawn gives a background of his life and discusses where his company’s philosophy came from.

In the second segment, Shawn shares his childhood memories, being adopted into a conservative family and who his influencers were. Shawn shared that he’s driven a lot by his life experiences and how he found role models and inspirations that helped lead to his remarkable success.

In the third segment, Shawn explains how he made software and services work. He talks about selling and creating the revenue that allowed him to create software and bootstrapping it the first few years and finding investors.

In the fourth segment, Shawn answers more of the audience’s questions. He shares many interesting things like his hiring process, his work with President Obama and a movie he’s producing.

We hope you enjoyed this interview with Shawn, and look forward to tonight’s Chicago Founders’ Stories @1871 where I will be interviewing Savo Founder, John Aiello.

Pat Ryan is a business and social entrepreneur who has created several high growth software companies as well as several innovative urban education initiatives as a social entrepreneur. Pat’s first company, FirstLook, was recognized by Inc Magazine in 2008 as the #4 fastest growing software company in the U.S. in its Inc 500 rankings – the highest ranking ever for a Chicago based software company. Pat is also the Founder of MAX as well as the Founder and CEO of INCISENT Labs, a platform and incubator for innovative, industry-changing technologies that spin out into high growth companies. MAX was created in INCISENT Labs where Pat and a team are currently incubating their latest start-up. Pat blogs at Coolerbythelake.com and can be reached on Twitter @INCISENTLabs.

VIDEO: Starter League Founders Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee at Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871

04/23/2013

Starter League Founders Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee shared their journey and lessons at March’s Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871. We had another sold out crowd join us @ 1871 for pizza, beer, and to hear the two entrepreneur’s stories.

This is the seventh installment of Founders’ Stories. If you would like to check out the prior events, you can see them here: Braintree Founder Bryan Johnson, Open Table Founder Chuck Templeton, Grub Hub Founders Matt Maloney and Mike Evans, Belly Founder Logan LaHive, Context Media Founders Rishi and Shradha, or Siri Founder Dag Kittlaus.

Both guys are graduates from Northwestern University. Neal attended Northwestern thinking he’d play sports but ended up focusing on his academics and majoring in finance. Mike, a political science and film major was the Academic Vice-President of the student body. When Neal ran for student body president, he met Mike and they both got to know one another. Neal went on working with different companies and worked with Context Media Founders Rishi and Shradha. Once Mike graduated, Neal asked him to join him launch a new tech start-up.

Although the two of them knew little about coding, they spent a year finding different ways to learn about it. From there, Starter League (formerly known as Code Academy) was created. After meeting with several investors and creating a business plan, Mike and Neal launched Starter League, a software school that gives students a three month long opportunity to learn and network with the best Chicago developers and entrepreneurs.

My INCISENT Labs teammates and I have really enjoyed partnering and sponsoring the past seven Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871. Since the event sold out we recorded it and are putting it online for those who couldn’t make it. We broke up the hour into five segments for easier viewing.

In the first segment, Mike and Neal talk about how they got the idea of Starter League and how they started the business.

In this segment, Mike and Neal give a background of their lives and how they met at Northwestern. You get to know a lot about their journey to becoming entrepreneurs.

In the third segment, Mike and Neal talk about the many other opportunities they were offered, including working for President Obama’s presidential campaign. However, after speaking with numerous leaders in the industry and investors, Mike and Neal stuck with their idea of starting a school that teaches coding.

In the fourth segment, Mike and Neal get more in depth on the students and people behind Starter League and share what it is like to partner with 37Signals.

In the final segment, the founders take on questions from the audience members.

We hope you enjoyed this interview with Mike and Neal, and look forward to our next upcoming Chicago Founders’ Stories @1871.

Pat Ryan is a business and social entrepreneur who has created several high growth software companies as well as several innovative urban education initiatives as a social entrepreneur. Pat’s first company, FirstLook, was recognized by Inc Magazine in 2008 as the #4 fastest growing software company in the U.S. in its Inc 500 rankings – the highest ranking ever for a Chicago based software company. Pat is also the Founder of MAX as well as the Founder and CEO of INCISENT Labs, a platform and incubator for innovative, industry-changing technologies that spin out into high growth companies. MAX was created in INCISENT Labs where Pat and a team are currently incubating their latest start-up. Pat blogs at Coolerbythelake.com and can be reached on Twitter @INCISENTLabs

 

The Story Behind Siri: Founders’ Stories Video of Dag Kittlaus

03/18/2013

Siri Founder, Dag Kittlaus shared the highlights and lessons of Siri’s remarkable journey at our February Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871. We had another sold out crowd join us @ 1871 for pizza, beer, and to hear Dag’s incredible story of creating Siri and working with Apple.

This is the sixth installment of Founders’ Stories. If you would like to check out the prior events, you can see them here: Braintree Founder Bryan Johnson, Open Table Founder Chuck Templeton, Grub Hub Founders Matt Maloney and Mike Evans, Belly Founder Logan LaHive, or Context Media Founders Rishi and Shradha.

Dag became one of the leading thinkers on mobile computing by becoming obsessed with the telecom and mobile phone revolutions in the mid-1990s. Dag read everything he could find on the topics, met with people on the cutting edge, eventually securing a position at Norway’s leading telecom company and later at Motorola where he led cutting edge mobile projects. By the time he started Siri, Dag had already spent thousands of hours immersed in mobile businesses, creating strong Founder-Market Fit.

In 2008, Dag became an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SRI where he began working on Siri. Together with his co-founders, Dag pitched Siri as the “Do Engine”, the virtual personal assistant that has changed the future for mobile technology.

My INCISENT Labs teammates and I have really enjoyed partnering and sponsoring the past six Chicago Founders’ Stories @ 1871. Since the event sold out we recorded it and are putting it online for those who couldn’t make it. We broke up the hour into seven segments for easier viewing.

In the first segment, Dag shares the beginning of his entrepreneurial experience and he explains how he got into the tech industry without an engineering background.

In the second segment, Dag discusses how he left Chicago and moved to Norway when he was hired by a top technical company at the time as a technology expert. Later, Dag was recruited by a telecommunications company called Telenor on the cusp of huge mobile technology breakthroughs in Europe.

In this third segment, covers Dag’s transition back to America and his time at Motorola where he almost built the initial Android. Yes, he almost worked on Android before he worked on the iPhone.

In this segment, Pat and Dag discuss Dag’s experience as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SRI, where he met his co-founders and started Siri.

For Dag the most important skill an entrepreneur can learn storytelling and in this segment Dag discusses how he learned this skill and how it helped him pitch Siri as the “Do engine” and in turn, find the funds to start Siri.

In the sixth segment, Dag shared what it was like to meet and work Steve Jobs and work with Apple.

In the final segment, audience members get to ask Dag questions.

We hope you enjoyed this interview with Dag Kittlaus, and look forward to our next upcoming Chicago Founders’ Stories @1871.

The Most Important Predictor of Start-Up Success

02/11/2013

Many highly accomplished investors and entrepreneurs believe that “Founder-Market Fit” is the most important predictor of startup success.  SV Angels’ David Lee seems to have coined the term when he shared that that they prefer startups whose founders have achieved Founder-Market Fit, which he defines as “founders who personify their product, business and ultimately their company. In the early days, this usually means building something for themselves or starting a company in a sector where they have deep domain expertise (or both).”  Chris Dixon (whose Tech Crunch Founder Stories is the inspiration for our pizza and beer version at 1871) points out that Founder-Market Fit is the best way to predict whether a company achieves “Product-Market Fit” which eminent entrepreneur and VC Marc Andreesen, defines as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market” and “the only thing that matters for a new start up”.  The critical idea behind Founder-Market Fit makes sense: an entrepreneur who doesn’t have a deep understanding of their market (Founder-Market Fit) will have a very difficult time creating a great product to satisfy that market (Product-Market Fit).   I learned this one the hard way in founding my first start-up: FirstLook.

Like a lot of companies founded around the time of the internet bubble, FirstLook was solving a problem that its founders only understood from looking at it from outside the industry.  We quickly learned that despite our research into the industry, our understanding was 2 dimensional – like using a satellite photo to understand the terrain on the ground.  We struggled to achieve Product-Market Fit.  After burning far too many years and far too much cash, we figured out how to best serve the market, finally pivoting FirstLook onto a trajectory for success.

In contrast, our most recent start-up, MAX (Marketing through Automated eXpertise), has grown to a scale in its first two years that took us 5 years to achieve at FirstLook and is tracking to grow at far more dramatic rates.  The difference: Founder-Market Fit – I’d learned the industry from the “inside-out’.  Living with a problem and understanding it in a nuanced way provides insights that won’t be apparent to someone looking at it from the “outside-in”.  These gaps often only become apparent when start-ups fail to rapidly achieve Product-Market Fit.  While it is possible to iterate long enough to figure out Product-Market Fit through pure trial and error, this is incredibly expensive from a cash burn and company morale perspective.  Few start-ups have the capital to keep their company afloat long enough to reach Product-Market fit in such an inefficient way.

So how did many of the most successful founders reach Founder-Market Fit?  In a word: Experience - the right experience.

Founder-Market Fit can be learned through experience or deep immersion learning.  Braintree Founder Bryan Johnson, who is building one of the most exciting payments companies in the world, is a great example of the benefits of Founder-Market Fit through experience.  Before creating Braintree, Bryan was a very successful salesman in the payments business, selling the status quo products to companies.  He saw the pain and inefficiency of the status quo up close empowering him with the insights and nuanced understanding that serves as the basis of Braintree’s unique solutions.   While the road is littered with failed payments start-ups, Chicago’s Braintree is the emerging leader in this exciting space and has secured over $70 million in financing from two of the Valley’s top Venture Capital firms: NEA and Accel.  Check out Bryan describing his path to creating Braintree on Chicago Founders’ Stories 

In addition, this week’s Chicago Founders’ Stories guest, Siri Founder Dag Kittlaus, became one of the leading thinkers on mobile computing by becoming obsessed with the telecom and mobile phone revolutions in the mid-1990s.  Dag read everything he could find on the topics, met with people on the cutting edge, eventually securing a position at Norway’s leading telecom company and later at Motorola where he led cutting edge mobile projects.  By the time he started Siri, Dag had already spent thousands of hours immersed in mobile businesses, creating strong Founder-Market Fit. Check out this week’s Chicago Founders’ Stories to hear the whole story.

Finally, one of my favorite stories of deep immersion learning is about a Y Combinator company called 42Floors.  Founder Jason Freeman decided that there had to be a better way to search for office space, but he also realized that having a bad consumer experience didn’t make him an expert in solving the problem – any more than having a bad meal qualifies me to create the next great restaurant. “Taking advice from (YC Founder) Paul Graham, Freeman decided he wasn’t just going to build a web product, but actually learn the industry first.  He got his broker’s license, shadowed a broker in town, and learned, over the course of six months, that his original thought of attacking brokers was incorrect – he should instead work with them.  “I chose not to go to war with the brokers, but to work cooperatively with them. And they’re willing to give us their listings because they want to market better than they are currently.” Freeman’s time spent in deep immersion and achieving Founder-Market Fit saved him from a potential expensive decision, going to war with the brokers might have alienated the customers he now currently serves. The results have been tremendous: 42Floors has grown at a remarkable rate in the year since and has raised nearly $18 million from some of the top firms and Angels in the Valley including SV Angels, Bessemer and NEA.

While Founder-Market Fit isn’t the only factor in these companies’ success, it gave them a real leg up on their competition.  As you consider investing significant time or money in a start-up it’s worth remembering the price of weak Founder-Market Fit.  In my experience, investing in creating the right Founder-Market Fit like Bryan, Dag and Jason Freeman is the best investment an aspiring entrepreneur can make.

Pat Ryan is a business and social entrepreneur who has created several high growth software companies as well as several innovative urban education initiatives as a social entrepreneur. Pat’s first company, FirstLook, was recognized by Inc Magazine in 2008 as the #4 fastest growing software company in the U.S. in its Inc 500 rankings – the highest ranking ever for a Chicago based software company.  Pat is also the Founder of MAX as well as the Founder and CEO of INCISENT Labs, a platform and incubator for innovative, industry-changing technologies that spin out into high growth companies.  MAX was created in INCISENT Labs where Pat and a team are currently incubating their latest start-up.  Pat blogs at Coolerbythelake.com and can be reached on Twitter @INCISENTLabs

 

The Key Habit of Disruptive Entrepreneurs

02/04/2013

As we prepare to kick off Chicago Founders’ Stories in 2013 with Siri Founder Dag Kittlaus, my INCISENT Labs teammates pointed out that the videos and post on our most recent guests, Context Media Founders Rishi and Shradha, have been viewed over 2,000 times on Built in Chicago (their story is a great one – once again I was reminded of important lessons to keep in mind as we build our next company).

As I reflected on how many people turn out to be interested in such great entrepreneurial stories, one of our Labs’ guys mentioned that his first time founder friends like the idea of Founders’ Stories but have just been too buried in their companies to check out any of the interviews. I’m a big believer in the criticality of focus and hustle in making start-ups work yet a couple of conversations later that week reminded me that there is a price to being purely heads down.

A few days later I connected with two legendary founders – both still very active and busy entrepreneurs – who have kindly agreed to join us for Founders’ Stories later this year. I was surprised to hear that both had already watched several Chicago Founders’ Stories’ interviews on their own. The contrast made me wonder:
“Why do these highly successful entrepreneurs make a priority of hearing other founders’ stories even though they are no less busy than other founders who are buried in their business?”

I realized that innovation guru Clay Christensen addressed this question in his most recent book - The Innovator’s DNA – which identifies the traits of “disruptive innovators”. Clay’s research identified the skill of “Associating” – applying ideas and practices from one context to another – as the critical differentiator separating disruptive innovators from the pack. This skill is very similar to that most often associated with the greatest venture capitalists – “pattern recognition”. The prerequisite to developing both of these skills: Exposure to a significant number of high quality learnings from other contexts. In mathematical terms: increasing your “n”.

The most successful founders are unrelenting in their desire to increase their “n”, which increases the quality of their insights and decisions. The incredibly successful founders we are privileged to host on Chicago Founders’ Stories got there by being learning machines – what better way to continue to learn than to hear about the experiences of the creators of the Grub Hubs, Open Tables and Braintrees of the world? Like those deep in their first start-up, highly successful founders didn’t realize this right away – they developed the habit along the way. The good news is that the videos of their stories will live on at www.coolerbythelake.com for whenever founders are looking to increase their “n”.

 

It’s “Cooler by the Lake”….and you and I get to hear the even cooler stories of incredible founders

01/28/2013

About a year ago, I sat in the inspiring offices of Gensler Architects in the old Carson Pirie Scott building— getting a sneak preview of the conceptual sketches of 1871 with 1871 Founder J.B. Pritzker, CEC CEO Kevin Willer and Built-in-Chicago Founder Matt Moog. As I marveled at the incredible design of what is now 1871, my hosts cautioned me that the real secret to making spaces like 1871 a success in other cities wasn’t the architecture or even the companies that officed there. Instead they shared that the key was to bring the rest of the community there through compelling programming.

J.B. said “For this to work, 1871 will need to consistently host compelling programming and that will only happen if we can get people to help us create that programming.” Inspired by the vision for 1871, I told J.B. I would do my best to play a part in making that happen and would work to create and sponsor some kind of compelling monthly programming for Chicago’s entrepreneurial community.

As an entrepreneur, I thought of my favorite fare and was immediately inspired by one of my online favorites: Chris Dixon’s Founder Stories on TechCrunch TV. Borrowing (with much respect) a great idea and lacking the copywriting skill to pen a unique name, I volunteered to create Chicago Founders’ Stories – a monthly live interview of great founders @ 1871 over pizza (Chicago style pizza was a great culinary and entrepreneurial innovation in the 1950s!) and the fuel of many great start ups – plenty of beer.

Over the past several months, Kevin Willer and the CEC team have been great partners in making this idea a reality. Chicago Founders’ Stories debuted at the end of 1871’s opening week to a sold out crowd. CEC Momentum Award winners and GrubHub founders, Matt Maloney and Mike Evans were fantastic as our first featured founders, sharing stories that made everyone—including me—a better entrepreneur. Chuck Templeton of OpenTable, Bryan Johnson of Braintree, Logan LaHive of Belly, and Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal of ContextMedia have continued this exciting new tradition, each sharing incredible insights into lessons learned and their journey. I am excited to have Siri Founder Dag Kittlaus kick off 2013 on February 12 @ 1871 (sign up at http://founderstorieswdag.eventbrite.com/#).

Since the events are selling out, we’ve been recording each session and posting them online for those who can’t make it. I’m amazed to see that each of these videos has received more than 1,000 views on Built-in-Chicago.

As we enter 2013 and the series continues to gain momentum, I realized I needed a place to host our growing video library so that they stay accessible as my Built-in-Chicago blog posts fade into the archives. At the same time I have had the privilege of hearing from entrepreneurs who want to continue our discussions from Founders’ Stories as well as get ideas on where they can learn more (fortunately I’ve been bookmarking my favorite posts from across the web). To solve for both, I have created “Cooler by the Lake”– a blog and site to host the Chicago Founders’ Stories videos. I’ll try to post every Monday morning and share great ideas and resources that I have encountered. I hope people will share their thoughts, ideas and comments. Named after a classic Chicago phrase, I hope that Cooler by the Lake adds a little bit to our burgeoning startup community—a tenacious and hungry group that is indeed, cooler by the lake.

Chicago Founders' Stories

Pat hosts Chicago Founders' Stories, a monthly live discussion with successful founders on their journey and lessons learned.


Grub Hub Founders Matt Maloney and Mike Evans
View the Video
Open Table Founder Chuck Templeton
View the Video
Braintree Founder Bryan Johnson
View the Video
Belly Founder Logan LaHive
View the Video
Context Media Founders Rishi and Shadhra
View the Video
Siri Founder Dag Kittlaus
View the Video
Starter League Founders Neal Sales-Griffin and Mike McGee
View the Video
Centro Founder Shawn Riegsecker
View the Video
© 2013 Cooler by the Lake | Lessons from Building Digital Startups in Chicago