EFactor Presents: The Ins and Outs of Entrepreneurship

 

EFactor went back to basics in San Francisco with “Entrepreneurship 101,” a no-nonsense primer of all things entrepreneur, including an overview of basics and plenty of first-hand accounts of successes, failures, inspirations and journeys. This panel featured speakers Amanda Galton, Oliver Starr and Amy Jin.

 

Amanda Galton is a Senior Associate of Emerging Companies at Orrick. She has nine years of practice under her belt working with a diverse group of companies on corporate legal matters. Building an A-Team that will help you grow your company, and attending relevant events to scout for promising new talent, said Galton, are important steps for new entrepreneurs. You need more than a great idea, she said, you need to also be able to execute one — and a unique and dynamic team will make that happen, especially if you can manage them and link the ideas and talkers with executers. Writing skills, Galton added, are equally essential, along with trying to be as active an alumnus as possible at your college or university, where resources abound. Galton said she’d like to be remembered simply for making people’s ideas happen.

 

Oliver Starr is the Chief Evangelist at Pearltrees.com, and is an entrepreneur with plenty of accolades in the fields of business development, community building, social media and blogging. The original employee at TechCrunch and a former consultant for companies like Microsoft and Nokia, Starr explained to attendees at this event that ample preparation and excellent coaching are crucial to novice entrepreneurs seeking investors. He also emphasized the importance of picking good board members, since they ultimately are the people that fight for you. Staying well read and developing your writing skills (especially when it comes to writing headlines, which he thinks are important attention-grabbers), added Starr, are also important — among his necessary reads are Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki, and Cash Copy by Jefferey Lant. Knowing how you want to be remembered, Starr said, is also important — he himself hopes to be remembered for delivering ideas to people without all the background noise.

 

Amy Jin is a current Strategic Partner Manager at Google, with a background in sales and fashion startups, including her own line of womenswear, MEI New York. Jin’s advice to attendees is to always be able to pivot — flexibility is of the utmost importance in today’s business environment. In terms of education, Jin added that she thinks some background in finance would be very helpful when it comes to understanding the money matters behind starting a business. At the top of Jin’s list of inspiring books is the Steve Jobs autobiography — necessary reading for all businesspeople.

 

We’re sure our attendees were invigorated by this evening’s indispensable advice from seasoned professionals, and we’re so happy to have been able to connect the pros with those who are just getting their feet in the door. We owe a special thanks to our sponsor for this event, Orrick, one of the world’s leading law firms for the representation of entrepreneurs, emerging companies and investors.

 

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