Picking Brains of Internet Entrepreneurs, Straight from the Garage.

Mike Arsenault, Product Manager of Spreadable (Deadpooled), A Product of Grasshopper Group, Reveals How & Why Spreadable Failed, Shares Mistakes/Lessons Learnt

Monday May 23, 2011

     
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Mike Arsenault was the product manager of Spreadable, a powerful word of mouth marketing tool that was developed by the Grasshopper Group. The company, which is lead by  David Hauser, has been building products that make it easier for entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses. The parent product Grasshopper.com – a virtual phone system for entrepreneurs is their most popular and reputed product and serves over 100,000 entrepreneurs. With Grasshopper.com’s enormous success in its kitty, the Grashopper Group launched Chargify – a Recurring Billing System for entrepreneurs, which is also doing pretty well. However, they couldn’t achieve similar success with Spreadable and they had to shut it down.

We at Foundora were excited to see how Spreadable would evolve over time, ever since David Hauser had mentioned about it in his interview with us. But, when we heard about its shut down, we were simply curious to know how it happened, what went wrong and more importantly learn from them. We reached out to Jonathan Kay, the Ambassador of Buzz at Grasshopper and got an interview arranged with Mike to speak about the Spreadable story.

In the interview we try to learn from Mike how Spreadable happened and the reasons for the failure, his lessons learnt and a lot more.

Interview Overview


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Founder of oneforty, Laura Fitton Speaks about oneforty, Explains Business Potential of Twitter, and Shares Her Startup Lessons Learnt

Monday April 18, 2011

     
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Founder of oneforty, Laura Fitton Speaks about oneforty, Explains Business Potential of Twitter, and Shares Her Startup Lessons Learnt

Once known as the “Queen” of Twitter, Laura Fitton is the co-author of Twitter for Dummies and the Founder of oneforty.com – A Social Business Software Hub.

Laura is credited with explaining Twitter’s business value to Guy Kawasaki, at a Google TechTalk, at top business schools and to thousands of others tech leaders. She’s been speaking professionally about the business use of Twitter since October 2007.

She even launched the first Twitter for Business consultancy in 2008 and began working on oneforty while writing Twitter for Dummies. With her consulting clients consisting of top corporate companies including IBM, Ford and Johnson & Johnson, she has been quoted in more than 100 national publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Newsweek, and BusinessWeek. Laura believes that everyone can benefit – dramatically – from Twitter because of its power to overcome isolation.

In this interview with us, Laura shares of her journey, start of oneforty, how she manages her personal & professional commitments and a lot more. Read it…

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Abhi Lokesh, Co-Founder of Fracture, Shares His Startup Story, His Lessons Learnt & Speaks About Challenges of Tangible Product Startups

Monday February 14, 2011

     
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Abhi Lokesh, Co-Founder of Fracture, Shares His Startup Story, His Lessons Learnt & Speaks About Challenges of Tangible Product Startups

Abhi Lokesh & Alex Theodre, two friends from the University of Florida, started Fracture in 2009 when they realized that printing and framing pictures has remained just the same for a couple of hundred years. With Fracture, both Alex and Abhi are trying to bring a huge revolution in the way people save their memories; so, how are they doing it? well, the idea is simple yet very exciting – it makes it extremely easy & interesting for anyone to get their pictures from their digital camera to their wall (no, it’s not your Facebook wall but the actual brick and mortar wall). And its not just any other framed pictures – these so called Fractures are elegant, HDTV like fine glass prints.

So, unlike many other startups that provide intangible products, Fracture is a unique startup that provides a product that you can touch, feel, hold, scratch and even smell. That’s why its whole different ball game than the regular web based startups – that’s what excited us to learn more about them.

We are going to explore all the happenings at Fracture to learn more about their interesting business, challenges, and lessons learnt in this interview with Abhi Lokesh – the co-founder of Fracture. Our thanks to Matthew Bivens, the Marketing Director at Fracture for introducing us to their startup. Read On…

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Tor Grønsund, Founder of Lingo Social and Lecturer of Entrepreneurship, Shares His Entrepreneurial Story & Talks About Different Methodologie

Tuesday December 14, 2010

     
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Tor Grønsund, Founder of Lingo Social and Lecturer of Entrepreneurship, Shares His Entrepreneurial Story & Talks About Different Methodologie

Tor Grønsund, entrepreneur, blogger, and lecturer, is the man of multiple ventures. Tor is the founder of Lingo Social, a software company based in Oslo, Norway. He is also advisor to EasyPeasy, an open source and web-based operating system for portable computers, and speaker at various Internet and startup events.

Through his entrepreneurial career Tor has co-founded Unplugd, a dorm-room startup turning private wifi routers into public hotspots, operated his own market research practice – both while still studying, worked with FAST Search and Transfer (now a Microsoft Subsidiary) and Schibsted ASA, followed by joining Ignitas, where he has been involved with various early-stage ventures.

Tor runs a blog, Startup Methodology – Methodologist, where he shares his insights, knowledge and experience with fellow entrepreneurs. On his blog, he writes on numerous interesting and worth-knowing-about startup methodologies such as Disruptive Innovation, Diffusion of Innovations, Agile Development, Business Model Canvas, Lean Startup, Customer Development and Rapid Prototyping.

In this interview, Tor spoke to us about his experience as an entrepreneur, in-depth about startup methodologies, lean startup & cust-dev and a lot more.

Interview Overview

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Patrick Vlaskovits, Co-Author of The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Cust-Dev, Shares His Startup Journey And Explains Cust-Dev & Lean Startup in a Nutshell

Tuesday November 9, 2010

     
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Patrick Vlaskovits, Co-Author of The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Cust-Dev, Shares His Startup Journey And Explains Cust-Dev & Lean Startup in a Nutshell

Patrick Vlaskovits, the co-author of The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development, has been in the technology industry for over a decade now. Although he worked on a few startup that didn’t turnout successful, he continued with his entrepreneurial passion. During those days, he came across Steve Blank’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany and that changed the way he perceived startups and what building a startup meant. In fact, after rigorously applying the CustDev methods on a new startup idea, he began to understand the core of the methodology. Later Patrick, along with Brant Cooper, went on to write The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development – a “cheat sheet” to The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Today, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development is one of the best learning resources and must read book for tech co-founders. That’s not all! Patrick also co-organizes LA Lean Startup Circle and is again busy with his new startup.

Again, Patrick, who also blogs here, was introduced to us by Dan Martell, Co-founder of Flowtown, and he agreed to speak to us about customer development and other aspects of startups on Foundora. And, in this audio transcribed interview, Patrick speaks about his first venture he used to test Cust-Dev, customer development methodology, lean startup methodology, pricing, and a lot more.

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David Hauser, Co-Founder of Grasshopper Group, Shares his Entrepreneurial Journey, Lessons Learnt & More.

Monday November 1, 2010

     
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David Hauser, Co-Founder of Grasshopper Group, Shares his Entrepreneurial Journey, Lessons Learnt & More.

David Hauser, is the co-founder of Grasshopper Group – a company that serves and empowers entrepreneurs via its powerful tools like Grasshopper and Chargify. Grasshopper Group was listed by Inc. Magazine among the 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America; in fact there are many such accomplishments that it got.

David has had an inspirational journey with quite a few amazing recognitions such as Young People Who Rock by CNN, Among Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 25 by BusinessWeek, and 40 Under 40 Business Leaders by Boston Business Journal and many more, under his belt. Working on his own company is not the only thing he does; his strong entrepreneurial spirit has allowed him to serve as a consultant for various companies as well as a mentor to emerging entrepreneurs. In other words he lives by his motto “Empowering Entrepreneurs to Succeed.”

Our thanks to Jonathan Kay, the ambassador of Buzz at Grasshopper Group, for arranging an interview of David with us on Foundora. In this interview, David speaks about his background and journey from GotVMail to Grasshopper Group, and speaks about the re-branding, his lessons learnt and much more. Read On…

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Aibek Esengulov, Co-Founder of MakeUseOf.com, Shares His Startup Story and Tells How Persistence Helped Him Succeed

Tuesday October 26, 2010

     
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Aibek Esengulov, Co-Founder of MakeUseOf.com, Shares His Startup Story and Tells How Persistence Helped Him Succeed

Aibek Esengulov is the co-founder of MakeUseOf.com – one of the best sources we have on the web, for reliable information about useful tools, and applications. Today, with about 5.5 million unique visits per month, MakeUseOf.com is among the coolest technology blogs on the Internet. Aibek, who presently resides in United Kingdom, got his Bachelors in Computational Science from Germany and decided to launch his own company. However, his first project was a complete failure; but that did not stop him from pursuing his entrepreneurial dream and he started working on MakeUseOf.com. But just starting did not bring him success – he had to stick to his guns for nearly 2 long years before earning anything out of it.

MakeUseOf.com, since then, has been featured and recommended by a lot of mainstream websites and publications including Fast Company, Washington Post and PC Magazine – thanks to Aibek’s, his co-founder’s and his team’s consistent efforts.

In this transcribed version of the audio interview, Aibek shares his startup story, journey and speaks about his experience of launching, growing and leading a team of a bunch of technology geeks at MakeUseOf.com, with us. Read On…

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An Award-Winning Entrepreneur, Dan Martell Shares His Journey, Cust-Dev Case Study of Flowtown, Learning & More.

Tuesday October 12, 2010

     
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An Award-Winning Entrepreneur, Dan Martell Shares His Journey, Cust-Dev Case Study of Flowtown, Learning & More.

Dan Martell, who began his journey back in 2001 when he was just 22, is today one of the most recognized entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley. His first startup, Spheric Technologies – that had more than 20 Fortune 500 companies as clients, grew well over 150% for 3-4 consecutive years. Dan sold it and moved to silicon valley with an intention to be among the best people in the industry.

He soon started advising startups and his advice have lead to the success of hundreds of companies. The award-winning entrepreneur, Dan is also an angel investor. However, Dan’s present focus is Flowtown - a social media discovery engine, which he co-founded with another amazing entrepreneur, Ethan Bloch. Flowtown, today, serves over 20,000 small businesses and is growing faster than ever.

After a series of email exchange, we could finally arrange an audio interview appointment with Dan and now we have got the entire audio transcription for you. In this interview, Dan speaks on various subjects including Kiva – a non-profit organization, Flowtown, and most importantly, how lean startup/customer development methodologies turned around Flowtown from a failure to a success. Read it on.

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Sarah Prevette, Founder of Sprouter, Shares Her Startup Story, Talks About The Importance of Networking For Startups And More.

Thursday October 7, 2010

     
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Sarah Prevette, Founder of Sprouter, Shares Her Startup Story, Talks About The Importance of Networking For Startups And More.

Sarah Prevette is the CEO & founder of Sprouter, a social network for entrepreneurs. Sarah always believed in sharing, learning and socializing so that everybody can benefit from each other – and hence the concept of Sprouter evolved. The company is growing rapidly under her leadership ever since it was launched last year. Sarah was named among the 30 Under 30 young entrepreneurs by the Inc. Magazine, and had appeared on several main stream media channels such as CTV, Profit Magazine, the Toronto Star, and Wall Street Journal. She has also been featured on several online technology blogs including Mashable.

Today, after Erin Bury – the Community Manager of Sprouter, introduced us to her, Sarah gave us her interview and provided her insights to Foundora about her entrepreneurial journey, lessons and of course Sprouter.

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Founder of IMified, Adam Kalsey Shares His Entrepreneurial Story, Learning and Gives Advice to Upcoming Startups

Monday October 4, 2010

     
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Founder of IMified, Adam Kalsey Shares His Entrepreneurial Story, Learning and Gives Advice to Upcoming Startups

Adam Kalsey has been an Internet entrepreneur since 1995. He was the founder of IMified, a platform for instant messaging applications and was the CTO and VP of product for the cloud computing and advertising company, Pheedo. Adam became the product manager and developer evangelist for Tropo after his company IMified was acquired by Tropo’’s parent company Voxeo. Adam’s passion for startups and zeal to share his learning led him to found a startup community called SacStarts for Sacramento area.

Unlike many entrepreneurs/developers, Adam shares his knowledge and expertise with others on his blog. With over 10 years of experience, Adam Kalsey talked about his background, failures, learning from his startups, and a lot more on Foundora. Don’t miss reading it.

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