TAG: launch a company

Kathleen Goolsby, Editor - SandHill.com

Startup trendslide is a mobile business intelligence company that developed an innovative application to help companies get a pulse on their business. Co-founder Jeffrey Vocell describes their path to success.

Seymour Duncker , Founder and CEO - iCharts

We launched our startup, iCharts, in 2008. One week later, I was sitting in a venture capital firm's office, waiting for my appointment, and I saw the headline that Lehman Brothers was bankrupt. The market crashed and, along with it, venture capital funding for new startups went away. Suddenly my company was thrust onto a circuitous path over the next three years that took us in a completely different direction than what I'd planned. What follows are some of my lessons learned and challenges while building my company, and my advice for avoiding four startup pitfalls.

Judith Hurwitz, President and CEO - Hurwitz & Associates, Inc.

For more than 25 years, I have been a consultant and industry analyst in the enterprise software market. I have seen many companies come and go. In my newly published book, "Smart or Lucky? How Technology Leaders Have Turned Chance into Success," I have analyzed what makes the difference between companies that turned their luck into sustainable success and those that failed. Many of the 25 or so companies in the book are companies that I worked with or analyzed while they were emerging. I was privileged to have a front-row seat within a very dynamic industry.

Kathleen Goolsby, Editor - SandHill.com

Wyse Technology CEO Tarkan Maner recalls that when he took the company out of its obscurity, their goal was to "invest heavily into virtualization software to create a cloud-based application where the user - rather than a device or a system - is in the center of everything." Though innovation is an integral part of any software business, the effort can lead to business transformation and cause some kinks in the business. As Maner points out, "transforming a business is much more difficult than starting a new business and brand from scratch because there are so many different dynamics."

Maryann Jones Thompson - SandHill.com

After selling his third software company to Oracle in 2007, Jon Fisher took a break from the CEO life to become an expert on economic cycles and their impact on the entrepreneurial process. Fisher spoke to SandHill.com about the importance of timing a company's launch, economic cycles, exit plans, and why he supports "natural selection" for economic pundits.