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Ben T. Smith, IV is an American entrepreneur who has held key roles in several large companies and start-ups. He was founding CEO of CodeGear (an established software company that spun off from Borland), was the founding CEO of Spoke Software, and is Chairman and Co-founder of MerchantCircle (a startup which provides an internet directory service for other companies).  [Source:  Wikipedia]

I asked Ben to share some of his key learnings as a startup CEO.

In Ben's own words:

1. Both is Bad, Both is always Bad, No Strategy should ever pursue both of anything.
   
   
2. Sales Guys Suck, An enterprise sales force will cost you $10M net to put in place, no matter what anyone says and will spend all its time telling you how to run everything else.
   
   
3. Revenue can hurt, Revenue always sounds good in early board meetings, but in some companies is bad.
   
   
4. Don't mix DNA, "Netscape" DNA and "Oracle" DNA don't mix well, they both think the other guys are stupid.
   
   
5. Consensus looses, No great experimentation and game changing risk is done by teams bigger than 10.  More than 10 people have to achieve consensus.
   
   
6. Risk is free,The crazier the idea the better,  The one advantage you have versus a big company where cash is free, is taking massive risk that is cheap and that the big guys can't really take.  The right decision for Yahoo or Oracle is never the right decision for a startup

• Don't Run out of Money.  Never Run out of Money.

Hmmm ... how many times can someone utter the word "facebook" in 4 minutes?


Turns out quite a lot!

X Jordan Tamagni October 18th 2007 I am not now nor have I ever been a Republican.

Add your entry here.

My name is: Nik Palmer

My online profile of choice can be found at: Facebook, I keep Linked in fairly updated as well.

The abc's about me (bio in 3 sentences):
-a. Nik Palmer practices Kickboxing (MMA), exercises his Nerdness, and has lots of Dogs that he mushes. .
-b. Nik Palmer professionally, acts as the net; making sure nothing slips through.
-c. Nik knows recruiting online, RPO, BPO, protocol standardization, training, management, and how to solve user and software puzzles.

My take on Social Media...

What's hot:

• Radiohead,
  
• Tay Zonday,
  
• Customized Facebook aps,
  
• merging hardware and social media.

What's not:

• myspace (unless you are in entertainment).

What's good:

• Ease of convergence and communication, welcome to the connected future.

What's bad:

• Ease of convergence and communication, when do you shut off?

What's next:

• Short Term: Social Network Backlash. When PTB realizes the power of connected population, I think we'll see more regulation, fragmentation and dis empowerment of the social networking tools. Most likely this will be fueled by more excessive portrayal of "online predators" such as phishing, sexual offenders, and information privacy scares.
• LONG TERM: Next Generation Convergence hardware. Social networks need an aggregation device that allow you to trip flick between them. There are software solutions to some of this and RSS goes a long way to making data cross populate. What I see happening is single point devices (iphone ^3) that handle your data, intarweb, email, voice, IM, and music communications. Single point devices with full smart mob tech and full privacy controls. The seeds of this are already here.

My name is: Charles Hudson

My online profile of choice: Facebook

My ABCs
a. I'm from Michigan and went to Stanford
b. I've worked in VC, Product Management, and BD
c. I'm really interested in new product introduction and consumer electronics

My take on social media is that it's the wave of today, even if many people working in the space haven't figured out all the answers yet.

What's hot:

• Facebook applications,
  
• iPhone apps

What's not:

• Enterprise software

What's Good:

• Niche blogs

What's Bad:

• Reality TV and its impact on society

What's next:

• Better monetization for social media sites

My name is: Mark Maunder

My online profile of choice can be found at: http://markmaunder.com/

The abc's about me (bio in 3 sentences):
-a. I run Feedjit.com. We serve 1 million widgets per day.
-b. I'm a serial entrepreneur on my 7th tech startup.
-c. I used to paint cranes for a living.

My take on Social Media...

What's hot:

• Distributed social graphs like MyBlogLog tried to be and like the one Brad Fitzpatrick is working on at Google.

What's not:

• Facebook apps. Launching an app in a sandbox where the average CTR is 0.04% and where you are subject to Facebook's strategic whims is a long shot and should only be used in concert with a much broader strategy.

What's good:

• The thing that everyone else isn't doing.

What's bad:

• The thing that everyone else is doing - like vertical social networking.

What's next:

• We're only scratching the surface of what's possible via distributed Javascript apps loaded in real-time - like Feedjit for example. Few people think of AdSense, Google Maps API or Analytics as widgets - but that's all they are.
  
• Tools like Prototype have made it possible to write rock solid Javascript code that is cross browser and cross-OS compatible. Watch this space.

My name is:  Brian Reich

My online profile of choice can be found at:  HYPERLINK "http://www.thinkingaboutmedia.com"www.thinkingaboutmedia.com (but its not updated as often as I would like)

The abc's about me (bio in 3 sentences):
-a. Director of New Media at Cone LLC, a leading brand marketing and cause branding agency in Boston
-b. Author of the forthcoming Media Rules! (to be published in November by Wiley & Sons - http://www.amazon.com/Media-Rules-Mastering-Technology-Audience/dp/0470108886/ref=sr_1_1/002-0879754-1791210?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188137303&sr=8-1)
-c. Recovering political operative turned media junkie, baseball fan, soon-to-be-father for the first time

My take on Social Media...

What's hot: 

• Mmmmm... snackable.  People (myself included) are absolutely enamored with micro-blogging platforms (like Twitter) and new advertising formats (like GE's 'One Second Theater' campaign online) -- really anything that gets the user's attention without them having to make a significant investment of time or energy.  Those formats are great, and provide additional opportunities for organizations to put information in front of their audience.  The big challenge will be figuring out whether you can deliver enough information in 140 characters or 1 second to compel someone to take real, meaningful, and measurable action towards your brand (whether its buy, donate, vote, or whatever).

What's not: 

• Gadgets.  People don't care what piece of technology they are carrying -- they want to get good information, experiences and stuff.  They want to have fast and reliable connections and the ability to communicate with their friends.  Devices like the iPhone change the way that users look at the challenge of getting information and it raises their expectations for what is possible.  But it is still just a gadget.  Content creators and providers look at the gadget as the central part of the relationship with an audience (and create walled gardens for members) and in doing so they miss out on the opportunity to truly engage people, build relationships, and provide value that keeps us coming back for more. 

What's good: 

• Media is good -- and I don't mean the newspapers, TV stations, or radio folks... I mean the information, experiences, and stuff.  There is more good content out there than ever before: interesting videos, compelling articles, games and simulations that help us learn, and that's just the beginning.  I can tell you story, after story, after story about the compelling things that I did online today (and that's just one of the platforms that I have access to each day).   I can't always tell you who created it, what it was promoting, or even how I came across it... but I know that the time I spent was valuable and that's the most important thing.

What's bad:

• Advertising -- I know advertising is a necessary evil, and I accept its role in our society.  I would never advocate for it to be eliminated from our culture (in fact, a lot of what I do is spend time looking at various forms of marketing and promotion, because that's where a lot of the interesting innovations are coming from), but I would very much like for its quality, targeting, and utility to be improved.  Every day I read an article, or a blog post, or talk with someone in the advertising industry who tells me of the magnificent ability to target users with relevant and compelling information.  Why don't I see it in the advertising that surrounds the websites I visit, the TV shows that I watch (and Tivo) and the publications I buy?  Either the targeting is poor -- based on some formula that assumes it knows my interests based on some limited review of my surfing habits, but applies no human/common sense -- or the quality of the creative leaves something to be desired.  Either way, advertising has so much potential to deliver information or an experience to me that helps me learn or motivates me to buy and it routinely falls short.

What's next: 

• Better everything.  Most of the content online today is crap.  Billions of emails are sent an hour, and so much of it is spam.  Millions of websites and blogs are launched every day, and many offer little new insight or remain static and become outdated.  Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to various sites, and most of them are never watched.  Why is so much of the content that exists today boring, useless, and wasted?  Too much attention is focused on the mode of delivery (can I get it on a WAP platform, should I push it through MySpace, etc.) that the effort and resources needed to create timely, relevant and compelling information, experiences and stuff are not invested.  But there is hope!  Eventually people will realize that what the audience really wants is the good information, experiences, and stuff -- and shift their time away from developing a better device, and onto improving the quality of the content.  The audience will be happy and they will consumer and share more.  The producers will be happy, because can more easily monetize good content, that people want, over bad content that they don't.  And the level of innovation and interest will only rise as the quality of what is available challenges us all to do more and better the next time around.

My name is: Dustin Mooney

My online profile of choice can be found at: Facebook

The abc's about me (bio in 3 sentences):
-a. I am a senior in high school.
-b. I am a young technology entrepreneur.
-c. I believe that teamwork is a key to success.

My take on Social Media...

• What's hot: I believe that the hottest form of social media is Facebook. People are migrating to Facebook from everywhere and I believe it will continue to grow.

What's not:

• MySpace is overrated.
  
• I also believe that these little social networking sites that are popping up everywhere are just a waste of time and energy.

What's good:

• The iPhone is awesome. Apple as a company in general is great, they are so innovative. The iPhone is really the way technology is heading.

What's bad:

• Google is a great search engine, so why do they feel they must conquer the world. Their Docs and Spreadsheets is horrible and would never be used by any serious business. Furthermore the way they are trying to mimic Apple by coming out with a smartphone of there own, is just idiotic.

What's next:

• I believe that next is a fully functional social platform on a mobile device.
  
• I also believe that educational social platforms are going to be a hit. Why? Well it is simple, we all know the Blackboard blows, so college students are going to have to find other tools to communicate and collaborate for educational purposes.

My name is: Scott J. Kleper

My online profile of choice can be found at:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=219493
http://www.scottkleper.com/

The abc's about me (bio in 3 sentences):
-a. I wrote Mac shareware in high school
-b. I've been a programmer, author, lecturer, cartographer, researcher, and cookie salesman.
-c. I started Context Optional, Inc. (developer of several Facebook apps) in 2006 with Kevin Barenblat and Grant Goodale.

My take on Social Media...

We're quickly approaching the point where it's no longer something to debate, it's just a given. Few people develop new apps these days thinking, "How can I design it for a hypothetical user?" Instead, they think, "How can I design it for groups of users?"

Hopefully Facebook turns their success with their platform into a leadership role in standardization and opening of social platforms and formats.

What's hot:

• Apps that are more useful on Facebook than outside Facebook (Scrabulous, I Never)
• Developers working together to fill the documentation holes that Facebook won't
• Simplicity
  

What's not:

• A new Facebook ad network every week
• A new Facebook API change every week
  

What's good:

• Fast development
• Incorporating user feedback
• Employees who blog with the company's blessing
  

What's bad:

• Closed formats
• Downtime
• Mean people
  

What's next:

• Personal productivity apps on social networks
• More professionally managed celebrity online profiles
• Free app hosting
  

My name is Brett Petersel

My online profile of choice can be found at:
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/brettpetersel