Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 7)

SM: What about Iran? What is happening there and what is your relationship with Iran today? SP: There is so much talent there. Sharif University is like MIT, and they send a lot of their students to Stanford. We are blocks away from Stanford, so I am recruiting students who have grown up in Iran

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Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 6)

SM: I recently watched a program on 60 Minutes about lions being poisoned in Africa. Over the holiday, we were in a forest which is the home of the Royal Bengal tiger. In that forest there are 274 tigers left. The idea of doing social causes with your gaming networks is very interesting. SP: If

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Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 5)

SM: What was the genesis of a company based on social applications? How did you arrive at the thesis that it was a sustainable market? SP: I organized a hack-a-thon at our offices at FreeWebs. We told every developer to build what they wanted on the Facebook platform for FreeWebs. I started advocating getting everyone

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Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 4)

SM: What was your next step after HyperOffice? SP: I became the founding president of Webs. My first hire at WebOS was a really young Afghan-Turkish immigrant named Zeki Mokhtarzada. He was super smart.

Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 3)

SM: Did you get any investors to help you get started? SP: We raised money from investors after a year. Initially we raised $150,000, and then $700,000.

Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 2)

SM: How did the circumstances of your upbringing transfer into your professional life? SP: That forged in our minds the sacrifices our parents were making for us. The least we could do for them was study. I wanted very badly to make them proud.

Shervin Pishevar’s Dream: Social Gaming Network (Part 1)

SM: Let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from? SP: I was born in Iran, and my parents immigrated to America the first time in 1976. My father came here for his master’s degree. We went back to Iran in 1978, right before the revolution.

Terry Cunningham’s Adventures: Crystal and Coral8 (Part 7)

SM: Which markets are you selling to? TC: We sell into ticks, clicks, and blips. Ticks are Wall Street, clicks are e-commerce, and blips are sensor networks like RFID. Ticks are a no-brainer and we have a lot of big customers. Clicks are customer interaction management and next generation CRMs.