Brad Harrison (Photo: L. Keyson)
At Entrepreneur’s Roundtable at NYU’s Stern School of Business last night, Brad Harrison, a VC at BHV, gave advice to a large crowd about the importance of people and relationships and the ubiquity of connectivity. Just because everyone knows everything about everybody, and that while everything is basically instant, he doesn’t necessarily think it’s a good thing. “Facebook kind of gets creepy; it just does. It starts recommending things that are based on a bunch of data and whatever clicks I do, I get something — and it’s not good. “
But he likes that people are connected via viral distribution and the social graph. He invests in companies and entrepreneurs who understand how applications use social relationships to share information and extract data on people. “As technology gets instantaneous and continuous, the startups that understand the power of their social networks and the fact that there is zero cost to them will have unbelievable growth. We’re starting to see things like how you can take a coupon that you find online, get it on your phone, buy a cup of coffee, hit a button and all of a sudden there is zero friction in the transaction. This is what is requiring businesses to totally redefine the way they do business today.”
According to Harrison, the biggest things in business are people and the relationships between them. ”If you have a bad vibe about somebody you should fire them. My entrepreneurs will tell you that I am absolutely ruthless when it comes to that. If somebody doesn’t click or is messing up morale, fire them. If you had cancer would you get it removed? Absolutely — no questions asked. Hire people that understand that the path to being an entrepreneur is a really winding road with the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows – it’s the people that make successful startups. It’s all about the behavior of people and teams that make great companies.”
McAdory Lipscom, a pitch doctor at CeoCouch.net, talked about entrepreneurs who position their startups as businesses–instead of merely fixing problems. “Some investors say, ‘What problem are you solving?’ It’s a frustration that investors have because of the weakness in which presentations have evolved to. Large consulting firms solve problems; entrepreneurs identify business opportunities. They are the ones that have a vision regardless of the market, whether they are a disruption in the market or whether there are a lot of players in the market. They can still see a business model and a business opportunity amongst all the noise.”
Dean Margolis, a serial entrepreneur without a portfolio, gave advice from the entrepreneur side. He has ideas for a fifth company, but won’t give it a name – he doesn’t think it’s necessary. His four previous venture-backed companies were sold to public companies. The latest was LivePerson.com, which is the button on e-commerce sites that says Click Here to Speak to a Live Person. “Everybody is looking for something cookie cutter, but there is nothing cookie cutter about it. Everyone is different and every idea is different or the company comes together in a different way.”
He doesn’t like being called serial. Margolis said, “A VC once told me that a serial entrepreneur is somewhere between breakfast cereal and a serial murderer.”
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