Women 2.0 PITCH 2012 competition judge Sukhinder Singh Cassidy talks about her own experience and lessons learned in raising venture funding. She co-founded Yodlee in 1999 and raised $200M+ in venture capital for her venture, then worked as VP at Google and CEO at Polyvore. Today, she runs JOYUS.
This is her advice for early-stage entrepreneurs:
“When you want a company, the best thing to do is just to start… One of the principal laws of physics is ‘an object at rest stays at rest. An object in motion stays in motion.’ You got to get going… There is nothing that makes something less daunting than doing it a few times, and there’s nothing that’s better for an entrepreneur than diving right in – to have your first pitch in this environment is awesome.”
“For a first-time entrepreneur, what people really look at and measure is your ability to make progress. This is why getting going and even releasing an alpha product is so critical. It’s one of the key metrics that first investors will judge you by – ‘what is her ability to go out and get stuff done?’ …inevitably to hit your first milestones will take longer than you think, so I’m always a fan of taking more money in the bank if it’s available to you.”
For more sage advice from the speakers at Women 2.0 PITCH Conference, visit http://www.women2.org/2012-women-2-0-pitch-conference-lessons-learned/