Towards Paperless Contracts: EchoSign CEO Jason Lemkin (Part 1)

Jason Lemkin is CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, an electronic signature automation service. He was previously an entrepreneur-in-residence at Storm Ventures and co-founder of NanoGram Devices, Prior to his work in technology he was a corporate counsel at Venture Law Group. He earned a BA from Harvard and a JD from Berkeley. You can find his full bio here.

SM: Jason, take us back to where your story begins. Where did you grow up?

JL: Like a lot of entrepreneurs my age, I grew up during the first PC revolution with the Apple II. I was born in Boston but grew up in Los Angeles. >>>

Deal Radar 2009: SnapMyLife

SnapMyLife, a mobile social media site, was founded in April 2008 by George Grey and David Chang. The company was initially a side ‘project’ on their first venture, mobile content directory Mobicious.com, when they noticed that many users were submitting their own user-generated content to the site. The ‘project’ took off immediately and soon became the pair’s primary focus. SnapMyLife, based in Needham, Massachusetts, allows users to share photos from locations around the world and offers location tagging and interactive picture maps. Moreover, the site is optimized for viewing photos directly on mobile phones. >>>

PBX as SaaS: RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis (Part 7)

SM: In 2006 you decided to take VC money. Why then?

VS: Our business got pretty big, relatively speaking. I am not an insider in that area, but we started getting calls from tier 1 VCs. I was never interested in just doing the rounds, but I figured if folks like that wanted to court us then I should listen. >>>

Entrepreneurship in India

I spoke with a number of people this week, and one comment that came up several times, is that the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India is not coming together as well as it needs to.

Indian readers: Why do you think this is the case? What are you experiencing? >>>

Deal Radar 2009: Central Desktop

Central Desktop is a web-based collaborative tool that allows users at small and mid-sized businesses to share information and communicate in real time with others in their workgroups. Users can also manage projects, coordinate tasks and share files on their own time by using this collaboration platform, whose features include web and audio conferencing, wikis and group calendars. >>>

Book Reviews: No Luck Without Discipline

I really got a kick out of this review by MIT freshman Tong Chen on Amazon:

“Entrepreneur Journeys condenses the aspirations of a dozen of entrepreneurs and present them in such clear and intriguing ways that everyone–even those with no background in business or entrepreneurship–can learn a great deal.

As a freshman at MIT, I stumbled upon this book during my Christmas break inadvertently. Never having thought about entrepreneurship or founding my own company, I opened the book with a sense of curiosity and even defiance–I felt strongly about becoming a quant or pursuing similar careers in the finance sector. Isn’t entrepreneurship just an euphemism for “self-employed” or just adventures people go on in an adrenaline rush? And isn’t success in this field based solely on luck? After reading just a few pages, however, I became instantly gripped by the the inspirations these stories carried. My misgivings for this sector of highly-motivated and responsible businessmen disappeared. Luck only comes after a disciplined foundation of technical expertise and industry analysis. Their pioneering vision, work ethic, and long-term insights–some having even paid for their startups’ employees out of their own pockets–changed my outlook for this economy and even my own career future.

I would strongly recommend this book to others who know little what entrepreneurship really is. I hope more people will read this book and become inspired as I was.”

I can only say this: That I hope many other students find similar inspiration from the book as Tong did. It is deeply satisfying for me to see even one young person feeling this way.

The book is available on Amazon.

PBX as SaaS: RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis (Part 6)

SM: How did you manage to leave the OEM model as your go-to-market strategy?

VS: The idea was to go straight to the customer. If you have hundreds of thousands of small customers paying you a small amount a month, it is better than one customer paying a lot at one time. >>>

Deal Radar 2009: CollegeNET

Harvard, Syracuse and the University of Toronto are just a few North American institutions reporting that a record number of students have applied for fall 2009 admission. But as the economy flounders and endowments drop, more students than ever are also applying for financial aid. One company aims to make it both easier to apply to college and get money to fund it: Portland-based CollegeNET, a transactions applications and service provider for the $250 billion higher education market. CollegeNET provides scheduling software and admission services to 1,300 universities and colleges including Oregon State, Princeton and Stanford. >>>