Summary of Interview in AlwaysOn network "How One Thing Leads to Another"
In describing his path to success, Joe Kraus (Excite! Founder and now CEO of Jotspot) said at a recent Churchill Club event: “Opportunity creates opportunity in ways you cannot predict at all, and the biggest key to success is straight up, old-fashioned persistence. The beginning of the discussion is when someone says ‘no’ — that’s where the fun begins.”
Joe went on to relate a story about an almost unbelievable series of serendipitous events — all stemming from his persistence — that led to Excite!’s financing and fast-track growth. After Joe graduated from Stanford, he received a book (Accidental Empire) from his then girlfriend. He called the author, even offered him a job (which the author declined). That led to an InfoWorld connection, which led to a paying project, which, in turn, led to an introduction to InfoWorld’s parent company IDG, then to an IDG board member at Charles River Ventures, then to Geoff Yang at IVP (now at Redpoint), and then, finally to Vinod Khosla at Kleiner Perkins. Vinod asked a basic question about Excite!’s business model: how does it scale? Great question, thought Joe. Vinod ordered Joe’s team a $10,000, 10 Gigabit disc drive (hard to believe today) to help them figure it out and ended up investing $3 million in Excite! without ever seeing a business plan. The rest is history. As I said, one thing does lead to another. Of course, Joe’s persistence as “phone guy” in those early years (his words)--when he was literally calling people from WSJ articles and making connections that led to others--didn’t hurt either. It’s a hallmark of successful entrepreneurs. (And something Joe clearly repeated with this week’s purchase of Jotspot by Google.) |
