Found+READ: Comments by Jack Jia

Jack Jia — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 05:39:43 GMT

Matt – Thanks for the question. I had more “near death” experiences than actual death with the start-ups that I was part of. Luck was certainly a factor but only a small one. More importantly, it is about how we handled each near death incident. That’s what I mean by feeling despair and hopeless. A smart team or a mentally prepared founder has the ability to transfer the negative energy to innovations and breakthroughs. Winner and losers are decided right there. In the Interwoven case, we were almost dead several times – running out of money with no Silicon Valley VC willing to invest in us, in-fights, massive delay of the initial product launch, failed to deliver a product that would give us 100% more revenue and market. 2.5 years later, the company was worth $7 billions and everyone thought Interwoven was destined to succeed. That was so far from the truth if we knew what we went through. NOTE, in no case, we were down because of competitions. I learned in hard ways that a startup’s biggest and maybe the only enemy is itself. It is the people within.

By definition, a startup will fail. There are way too many reasons why a startup can and will die. It is like hiking through the Amazon jungles. There is no known path that will get us out of there. We are dead for sure if the hiker doesn’t have the fundamental survival skills INDEPENDENT of each roadblock. Luck can only carry us so far. Then it is all about our determination, flexibility and mental & physical readiness.

Jack Jia — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:52:41 GMT

Will – I want to challenge the assumption that you need to know a lot of people before you can start a company. Certainly you need to be in the field working for a few years before taking on the world. And you need to network often and wide. However, when I started Baynote, my connections (after being Interwoven CTO for 8 years) were not near to be enough. I allocated $5,000 to buy people breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks just to get their feedback. I didn’t know Prof. Cliff Nass and Prof. Rajeev Motwani, the two professors at Stanford who helped me PROFOUNDLY for the foundation of Baynote. However I knew people who knew them. The 6 degrees of separation told us that we are all very closely connected. For starting a business, the important people are within 2 or 3 degrees from you. If we cannot find those advisors to exchange ideas, how can we later find customers to test and sell our products?

Jack Jia — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:42:11 GMT

Om, I was asked to write my startup experiences for Found-Read without knowing what your new blog was really about. I didn’t read your intro until now, days after I have posted my “Get Psyched” http://www.foundread.com/view/get-psyched. Boy, we are talking about the same thing!!! Even more stunning for me is that these “lost” feelings don’t go away even for serial entrepreneurs with our 2nd and 3rd startups. We are simply more prepared to recognize and take advantage of them. Thank you for creating this space for sharing our inner souls!