Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Your customer base is enterprise customers?

David Steinberg: Yes, our customers are enterprise.

Sramana Mitra: You were just talking about specifically how you’ve differentiated and brought the pieces together using, to some extent, a roll-up strategy. Is that part of the strategy now?

David Steinberg: No, we’re not a roll-up strategy. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: These companies that you brought together to get the base level offering going, how did you identify them?

David Steinberg: That’s a great question. I took a core team from my last company who focused on M&A and corporate strategy. That team started looking around and calling everybody on earth. For example, we started the company in October of 2007, but we didn’t do our first deal until April of 2008.

Sramana Mitra: They were looking for companies within a certain domain. What constraints did you give them?

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That IPO was 2004?

David Steinberg: That’s correct

Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the public company till?

David Steinberg: 2007.

Sramana Mitra: Is that the timeframe in which you started the current company?

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I agree with you. Those are character traits that make great entrepreneurs. Without that, you’re not going to sustain because it takes a lot of work and energy. I’m trying to provide a framework that people can apply to ideas.

David Steinberg: What I was going to say is the things that made me a great entrepreneur were those things. But the thing that drove me to start my first company was I thought mobile phones were cool. It was something that I really liked. I do think that entrepreneurs picking something that they’re into is going to make it a much easier process. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That is a great resume. Can you tell me the story in a way that is useful for people to learn from?

David Steinberg: Here’s the learning. I do what’s called triangulation whenever I’m starting a business. I look for three different data points that say either the same thing or the opposite thing but lead to the same conclusion. What led me to believe that moving wireless sales from offline to online were a bunch of things? The first thing is I read a tremendous amount as the best way to learn is through read publications and online. I read an article in Advertising Age magazine that said that the Internet is going to explode and Internet marketing is going to grow at 25% a year. Two days earlier, I had read an article online that said the Internet was going to explode and content was going to grow at 17,000% a year. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was this a company that you financed in any way or was it self-financed?

David Steinberg: I maxed out my credit cards and tried to get some money from my family. They would not give me any initially. I then went to my stepfather and said, “This is what I want to do.  I have this plan. Would you help me?” He said, “Absolutely not. You’re way too young to do this. Go to work for somebody for five years in the business and then I’ll lend you whatever you need.” I didn’t want to wait but we grew the business so quickly that within six months, we were already doing over a million a month. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 1)

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Today’s entrepreneurial landscape is full of serial entrepreneurs who start really young and build company after company. Some succeed and some fail. David’s four companies have all been successful.

Sramana Mitra: David, where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What’s the back story?

David Steinberg: I grew up in New York City.

Sramana Mitra: Was there any entrepreneurship in your DNA?

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Don DeLoach, CEO of Infobright (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I heard you speak multiple times about the Internet of Things – that you are aligning your company against that trend. What blue-sky opportunities or white spaces would you draw the attention of entrepreneurs to?

Don DeLoach: Not in an effort to be overly consistent but more of just being honest, I do think the Internet of Things is a vast opportunity. It’s also a challenge. It’s one of those things where when you first think and hear about it, the response is cool. I can interact with my house while I’m on vacation or my thermostat can automatically adapt to circumstances. You hear about these things and they tend to have a cool effect, but then when you think about it a couple of levels deeper, what start to come out are a few things. >>>