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Justin and Jason interview founder and former CEO of DoubleClick, Kevin O’Connor, about how he’s applying the lessons he learned as an engineer, entrepreneur and investor to his latest venture FindTheBest.
Just wanted to say I really enjoyed this episode. Kevin had a lot of insight and experience to bring to the table.
Very good interview, you guys are getting better and better at interviewing people. Thank you Kevin for your insights and straight answers.
I agree with Michael R. on the fact you guys had some good questions, which Kevin kept on acknowledging but his answers were often very brief (especially in the first half of the show. A typical example was Justin’s excellent question about justifying boiling the ocean – but I defy most listeners to say what the answer really was! I kept hearing Andrew Warner’s voice in my head saying “but give me a more specific example, give me a story, give me …”! 😉
That aside Kevin indicated that systematic and diligent brainstorming for all important issues was key to his startups success.
When it comes to hiring only smart people or “rock stars” and not focusing on skills I respectfully disagree depending on the context of the company. What I mean is although it can be fine for a startup, but in a an enterprise context it is pretty difficult to find people just based on that generic a profile. You also have to focus on demonstrated skills as you often need people to “hit the ground running” on some aspect of their job. The same also happens in consulting.
I would really like you guys to bring other VCs to shed more light about their approach to working with startups. We would all learn a ton.