Entrepreneur = passion. Can't stress that enough.
A couple of days ago I visited a startup (Sharpcast). On a Sunday afternoon. Got the grand tour. First off, a goodly number of folks were there working away. Very reassuringly startup-like. And I got to meet the Founder/CEO, Gibu Thomas. I expected a polite handshake, a 'nice-to-meet-you' and a wave before he went back to his laptop. But no, he bounced out of his office with a 'let me show you a demo', and proceeded to do just that.
He was excited, articulate and seemed to genuinely enjoy doing the demo. And I got an end-to-end show with background info, planned features, market potential, and Q&A - the works, and I wasn't an investor, analyst or influential tech blogger. (He doesn't know about this very-much-under-the-radar blog either.) The potential ROE (return on effort) was small - I was, at best, a possible customer for the product somewhere far down the line.
But Gibu behaved like a quintessential entrepreneur who's pumped every time he talks about his product, and looks for every opportunity to do just that. If it meant another half-hour at work on a weekend, that thought wouldn't even register in his drive to evangelize to yet another soul.
Last Sunday I met a poster-boy for the entrepreurial spirit. And the product's very cool too. I guess he's won another customer so the ROE wasn't quite zero.
1 comment:
Gibu is a really great guy. He has vision, passion and savvy. He has done a great job of building a very smart team, and I applaud the amount of press that he has got for a product that is not yet in GA. He is obviously at the leading edge of Web 3.0 (not a typo)!
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