12: Growing oDesk to Become The Market Leader in Online Work
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Release Date: 08/12/2015
20: How to Use a Relationship Map to Create a $4 Million Company
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Tamara Nall founded The Leading Niche, a consulting firm to the federal government and larger firms. She shares with us the secret of growing her company to $4M in revenue - the relationship map.
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19: A Customer Acquisition Strategy To Grow From 2 to 27 Employees
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Randy Reyess is co-founder of VenturePact, a technology services firm that matches companies with talented application development teams from around the globe. He has also written in publications such as Forbes, Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. ...
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18: How To Systematize And Productize A Services Business
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Rachel Rodgers started the Rodgers Collective, a cool, innovative take on a law firm. She has grown the company over the past 5 years or so, and has lot to share, including a great way to think about protection as an entrepreneur.
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17: The Rand Fishkin Case Study on How to Build an Online Presence
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
We continue our conversation with Rand Fishkin this week and dive into the details of how to build an online presence - even if you're starting from scratch. We started with search engine strategy and ended the conversation with a case study to bring it all home. ...
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16: Rand Fishkin on How to Focus Your Online Marketing Efforts (Part I)
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Rand is known as the Wizard of Moz - the godfather of SEO and all around highly respected online marketing thought leader. He's the founder of Moz, a suite of popular tools to help build and manage your online presence. The episode covers the six different channels to market your business online, and talks about how to focus your activities on what's most relevant for your business. The Venn diagram Rand mentions is certainly a game-changer if you’ve been wading through tactics (vs. strategy) to build your online presence.
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15: How To Build a Business That Lands $700,000 on Shark Tank
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Brittany Hodak is co-founder of ZinePak, a company that creates custom, interactive publications for super-fans. They partner with top brands and entertainers (ahem... Taylor Swift) to elevate regular consumer promotions (e.g., CD in a store) into an interesting and memorable experience. Several months ago, they were invited by Shark Tank Producers to pitch their company, and walked away with an offer of $725,000 from Robert and Lori. ...
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14: How Did Engineers Create a New Fashion Category?
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Aman Advani co-founded Ministry of Supply while at business school at MIT. They have created the performance professional category - business professional attire that's actually comfortable. ...
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13: The Path to 1 Million Users. Twice.
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Theban Ganesh has built and sold two different businesses that have attracted over 1 million users. In today's conversation, we cover the rise and exit of his two startups, why he chose to go back to corporate after his first, how to choose a co-founder, and most importantly, his advice to companies that are struggling to gain traction with their products. ...
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12: Growing oDesk to Become The Market Leader in Online Work
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Gary Swart joined oDesk in 2005 as CEO and led the company for over 8 years, turning into the market leader in the online work industry. It was the first workplace to reach $1 billion in work, and has over 5 million freelancers and thousands of jobs posted daily. Gary led the company through a merger with #2 player eLance before leaving to join Polaris. ...
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11: Leading oDesk to Market Leader
Execepreneur: From Executive to Entrepreneur
Gary Swart joined oDesk in 2005 as CEO and led the company for over 8 years, turning into the market leader in the online work industry. It was the first workplace to reach $1 billion in work, and has over 5 million freelancers and thousands of jobs posted daily. Gary led the company through a merger with #2 player eLance before leaving to join Polaris. ...
info_outlineGary Swart joined oDesk in 2005 as CEO and led the company for over 8 years, turning into the market leader in the online work industry. It was the first workplace to reach $1 billion in work, and has over 5 million freelancers and thousands of jobs posted daily. Gary led the company through a merger with #2 player eLance before leaving to join Polaris.
In this episode, part II of our conversation, he shares with us the importance of focus in a company, iterating quickly, why he thinks being an execepreneur is a good idea – and why he’s ok being hit by a pitch.
My question for Gary this week: Having been involved with large corporations like IBM, and a number of startups, what motivates you to help grow small to large and what’s your advice for execepreneurs?
“I remember flying home from Seattle in a small Alaska Airlines plane and I got claustrophobic… I said I don’t want to wake up 15 years from now saying I didn’t step up to the plate. That wasn’t going to be good enough for me. Even if I didn’t hit the ball I wanted to stand at the plate”
Questions:
- You started to discuss focus last week and how that was critical for oDesk - can you give us examples of tradeoffs you had to make?
- What are your thoughts about Executives taking the leap to entrepreneurship, similar to your situation?
- What’s the one thing you’d leave our Execepreneur audience with?