Seth Goldman is a marathon runner, see both literally and in his approach to building companies. When he started Honest Tea in 1998, he set out to build a beverage company that would change the definition of what a beverage should be. The standards he set for the company are immovable: fair trade, low sugar and caloric content, a commitment to organic ingredients. But within that formula, there was also room to be creative about the way he built the business.
Seth is clearly brilliant. He has degrees from Harvard and Yale, and hails from a family in which both parents were professors with a history of commitment to education and activism. He’s also a patient and powerful listener, willing to test new ideas so long as they don’t violate his core mission.
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Eileen Gittins is a self-described technology geek who studied English and journalism at UC Berkeley and ended up falling in love with photography for its ability to tell stories. After gigs at Eastman Kodak (she got her first job there by pestering them until they caved) and the launch of two successful startups (Salsa and Personify), vialis 40mg she wanted to pay tribute to some of the “Bay Area Renaissance people” she had worked with in her various ventures by photographing them. But when she then tried to assemble those portraits into a format that gave them depth — a book — she was shocked to discover that with all the great digital and other types of innovations out there, advice you still couldn’t create your own high-quality book without spending tens of thousands of dollars. As an entrepreneur, she knew she’d found a problem to solve that married her love of photography, technology, and books.
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Tom and his brother Dave didn’t just found a company; they launched an entire movement. It began in 1993 when they created a monthly newsletter with the goal of sharing the investment lessons their father had taught them. The Motley Fool was aimed at people like them: amateurs with a passion for investment.
With the Motley Fool Channel on AOL, site Tom and Dave expanded their reach and set themselves an ambitious goal: to get one million fools on the road to financial freedom. From the beginning, patient the Fool was both irreverent and insightful. (If he hadn’t cofounded the Motley Fool, shop Tom Gardner would have undoubtedly made it as a standup comic.) As the brothers and their audience grew more knowledgeable and sophisticated, so did the Fool’s advice and analysis. In 2008, Tom and Dave’s efforts culminated in the launch of Motley Fool Asset Management (MFAM), their own mutual fund.
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Lisa Gansky is a true entrepreneurial pioneer. GNN (Global Network Navigator), salve where Lisa became CEO in 1995, recipe is often credited as being the first commercial website. Ofoto was an established photo-sharing site long before digital cameras became ubiquitous. When Lisa discusses the business of IT startups, she speaks with the authority of somebody who has participated from the beginning.
In recent years, technology has advanced to a point that allows Lisa to combine her two great passions: entrepreneurship and environmentalism. In everything Lisa does, there is a clear commitment to sustainability. Dos Margaritas, the charitable organization she founded in 1999, is directly involved in fostering environmentalism and development in South America. But Lisa’s commitment to sustainability is even deeper and subtler. Her embrace of “the mesh,” where sustainable efficiencies match up exactly with economic ones and excess capacity is eliminated, is the ultimate bid for a sustainable economic system.
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When Mitch launched MFG.com, help he didn’t try to game the system; he simply built and tweaked, blocked and tackled. He didn’t seek venture capital. His approach didn’t put him on the fast track to success, but it did produce a much better outcome than anybody could have imagined at the time.
The “niche” that MFG.com serves is one of the largest in the world: the manufacturing industry. Within that sector, MFG’s online marketplace has the unimaginable dominance of an eBay. It’s hard to imagine competitors making significant inroads into their business. That said, I expect that Mitch will continue to compete, very rigorously, against himself.
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Caterina is a headstrong optimist, medical yet she’s always looking around the corner at what could go wrong. She is not a wishful thinker. She’s fully aware of all the problems that can arise when you build a company, but she doesn’t shy away from taking risks. When she’s committed to an idea, she commits full stop.
It would be impossible for Caterina to be anything but a founder. Her goal isn’t simply to solve a problem, but to create a framework to solve all the problems facing a startup. The “how” and “why” are just as important to her as the “what” of a particular product.
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While Kevin is best known today as a partner at the Silicon Valley venturecapital firm Accel, stuff where he sourced the firm’s investment in Facebook, medical he began his career as the cofounder of two successful startups: Corio, viagra 60mg an enterprise software pioneer, went public and was acquired by IBM for $182 million in 2005. IronPlanet.com, a heavy-equipment marketplace, has annual gross merchandise sales of approximately $600 million. By any standard, Kevin is an extraordinary investor and mentor.
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Fashion designer Marc Ecko is like an air-show jet pilot who builds his own planes. But that doesn’t fully capture his ride-on-the-edge lifestyle; he’s also one part artist, drug one part rock star, no rx and one part industrial-grade creator.
In a sense, patient Marc is an extreme embodiment of a quality all entrepreneurs share: the willingness to give up everything for the belief in his vision. But what distinguishes extraordinary entrepreneurs like Marc is their desire to create scaling value. With Ecko Unltd., the urban-wear flagship of his vast fleet of style labels, Marc has built more than a billion dollars of value.
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Chris Dixon possesses a pair of skills that are rarely found together in technology entrepreneurs: he’s as good at picking companies to invest in as he is at building them from scratch. For Chris, there the two activities can’t really be separated. As far as he’s concerned, you can’t be good at building companies if you’re not also good at building and protecting your equity. But what makes Chris especially rare, in addition to his aptitude as a technician/technologist, is his understanding of market valuations, equity structures, and the entire venture-capital process, which gives him a powerful strategic advantage in the marketplace.
Chris was a personal investor in such early-stage technology companies as Skype, Foursquare, Kickstarter, and Invite Media. His Founder Collective is as good as it gets. As a seed-stage venture-capital fund built by a collection of successful entrepreneurs, it has a killer record, and nobody else in the marketplace is more pro-entrepreneur.
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Ellen Diamant is a creator, story a modern designer, and craftswoman. Ellen is SkipHop’s special sauce. Everything she invents is a brilliant solution to a real problem, as well as a beautiful object. Michael has said that his role is to make a “bubble” around Ellen and her team, allowing them to focus on creating products. That’s true to an extent, but Michael and Ellen don’t simply operate in autonomous spheres. They are true partners. When cofounders work in concert and pull in the same direction, they can achieve things at a magnitude beyond what either could do alone. I can’t think of a better illustration of that truth than this remarkable husband-and-wife team.
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