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ronnie cho:hello. my name is ronnie cho,and i am the associate director at the office of publicengagement here at the white house. and i want to first say thankyou for everyone who is here and welcome to the white house. who is first time here;raise your hand, white house? all right. look at that, newpeople coming to the front doors of the white house. my job here at the office ofpublic engagement is to kind

of do exactly whatwe're doing here. bring folks to the white houseto kind of make the connection between, you know, governmentand citizenship and the different things thatwe're working on here at the white house. you know, president obamahas always had a special relationship with youngpeople and i am his liaison. so not only to inform the whitehouse and the president and the administration on the issuesimportant to young americans,

but also to inform the publicon the initiatives that we're working on in supportof young people. so, you know, as i was sayingpresident obama has always had a special relationship with youngpeople going back to his days as a law professor in chicago andall through his career as a public servant and, you know,it's in that spirit that we have these convenings. and so we're sodelighted to have you. on behalf of the white house andon behalf of president obama,

welcome, along with mtv and yec,the young entrepreneurs council, scott gerber, where are you? over there. thank you, very much, for makingthis happen and in bringing these folks together. entrepreneurship is a coreamerican value and it's presented a tremendouscompetitive advantage versus every other countryin the world. you know, from ben franklin tothomas edison, oprah winfrey,

mark zuckerberg, and eventhe late, great, steve jobs, entrepreneurship is sortof baked into our dna. it's a proud tradition thatwe have in this country. and it's my belief thatthe folks in this room, this generation willunleash innovations, launch companies that willchange the world and, you know, i just kind of look around boththe yec folks and the emerging and the aspiring entrepreneursin this room to think about what you'll do and how you'lldo it and, you know,

free enterprise has been themost powerful job-creating force the world has ever seen. think about the jobs thatwe're going to create in the years to come. and we're going to talk moreabout how to get there from an idea to a company, from acompany to products, et cetera; we're absolutely excited toconvene this meeting today. so just a couple of things. i want to run down theschedule for today and

we can get started. so the first session we'llhave here will be hosted by our friend sway from mtv. we'll discuss, sort of convenethe panel of entrepreneurs to discuss their experience asentrepreneurs and what was that very first step. how do you go from product? how do you go fromidea to product? idea to the marketplace?

for many of you who arewondering about that, you know, hopefully we'll armyou with the tools and information to do that. along with some information fromthe government about how we can support these endeavors. i think, and the secondpart of this will be a series of breakouts. there will be three breakoutgroups and so you don't have to memorize this now but i amjust going to let you know,

american university --where are you guys at? raise your hands! all right. nice. you guys are goingto be in room 428. i'll remind everyoneagain afterwards. george washington? nice. you guys are going tobe in 530. room 530. and umd, terps? you guys will bein this room here.

so i'll remind everyone againbut just remember we're going to be moving around. that's going to beright around 3:20 today. and so while the breakout groupon discussion one on one yec members will be able to kind ofanswer your questions in a more personal manner, talk youthrough some logistics and just what it's like tobe a business owner. what it's like to be a youngperson who is trying to get their first business loan andtrying to get access to capital

and trying to figure out, youknow, how to run a company. and then we'll reconvene hereright around 4:10 for some final remarks and someclosing thoughts. and so we've got a really greatprogram today and happy to have you here again. so without further ado, i wantto introduce our first speaker, again, scott gerber,friend and colleague, has been really a rolemodel i think for all young entrepreneurs.

i think it's a one-yearanniversary of the young entrepreneur council. congratulations to all you guys. and scott, if you wantto join us on stage. please welcome scott gerber. (applause) scott gerber:well, first off, of course ihave to thank ronnie and the white house for their warmwelcome in hosting this spectacular event.

i'm really excited to haveso many amazing people in the audience here today representingso many different corners of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. first and foremosti have to, you know, thank you my members at yec. if i could just have all the yecmembers real quick -- i'm sorry it's corny -- but just standup just so folks get a sense of just who you guys are. i just want to give these guysa big round of applause because

these guys aresome of the, truly, these guys are some of the topinnovators and entrepreneurs in america right now in gen y andyou guys will get the great chance to meet them later. i also want to thank mtv. they've been a greatpartner in this. and sway for givinghis time so graciously. i also want to shout outgen y capital partners, if you guys have heard, yecrecently launched a venture arm

that basically is going to be aninvestment company that not only provides a level of capitalinto new seed businesses, but simultaneously that alsohelps with student loan relief. so if i can have also the gen ycapital partner team, stand up? lauren, clarissa,jeremy johnson, i don't think matt ishere, but these guys also, thank you so much, guys, weappreciate your efforts as well. a year ago a movementstarted in this country. you know, youth entrepreneurshipwas not as much of a viable

trend as it's been thanbasically in the last, call it 18 months. and the reason for that isbecause we as a generation have realized thatthis is a viable path. this is somethingthat is not, you know, maybe the socialnorm of yesteryear, but it's somethingwe're willing to accept. something we're willingto really adhere to. and it's so important that thisgeneration realizes that because

now more than everyou're needed. you know, if you take a secondlook to your left and your right, right now, you'll realizepretty quickly that the people in this room are goingto be those innovators, are going to bethose job creators, are going to be the people notthat fundamentally necessarily change the world, i don'twant to make it sound like entrepreneurship is just aboutevery day doing something so grandiose as quote-unquotechanging the world,

but also just creating value. creating some incredibleopportunities for other americans and also justfollowing and continuing a trend on tradition of what thevalue of entrepreneurship can mean in the american culture. you know, i'm like alot of you in this room. you know, there are certainlysome people -- and i joke around often, you know, being in anorganization like yec where members around you every day aretelling you about this billion

dollar company they'reworking on or that, you know, life altering partnershipthey worked on, it can get intimidating. but what gives me the greatdrive is realizing that a year ago, now, i was asmall business owner. i was somebody who started abusiness right out of college and realized very, very quicklythat i didn't have something that really would have helped. really would have helped.

that was somebody elsetelling me what to do. i went to film school at nyu. i am not the product of anentrepreneurial story or some sort of silver spoon mentality. i basically am the firstentrepreneur in my entire family and extended family. i am basically a product ofjust working really hard. and i believe that's what theamerican dream truly is today. it's working really hard.

but it's gotten fragmented alongthe way and many reasons for that for our generation someproblems that we face like our own egos or like, you know,unrealistic expectations and some where the cards have beendealt that we maybe didn't have such a role in play. but back when i started decidingwhy at this moment in our history we needed anorganization like yec, we needed young people not justto say they were activated but to actually goout and give back,

i said i want thegroup i didn't have. and so i went out and startedcollecting some of the best minds out there that i hadbeen fortunate to meet through writing for various publicationsin mass media for doing a variety of things and i said,guys, here's what we need to do. and i'm just so grateful thatthey listened and kind of took the call and ran with the balland now i try to keep up with their ideas of how we can truly,not just change the american economy but, again,change the world.

so i leave you with this onethought when you realize where you are today versuswhere you can be tomorrow. this is not some utopian dream,some unrealistic expectation; this is honestly somethingthat a year from now is achievable for you. if you leave this room today,taking the advice that actually has been bestowed to you by wiseears who will later be happy to give you guys advice, picktheir brains and such, i want you to go out anddoing something with it.

don't talk about it. go and do it. what's stopping you? right now, i mean -- and i hateto shout him out in particular because all the yecfolks are amazing, but something my friend, alexisin the corner over there, has told me countless times hasbeen with the internet today and not just for tech companies,but the internet alone has fundamentally changed theway we can build businesses,

fundamentally changed theway we can create jobs, fundamentally changed ourworld, connected us in ways unimaginable even a decade ago,and it's also opened up the opportunity for you to starta business bootstrapped to the hilt; competing on an evenplaying field with the largest titans in industry. these are the sorts ofthings that are realistic. a year ago, i was a smallbusiness owner and today i'm proud to lead a movement,a national movement,

of several hundredof the top echelon entrepreneurs in america. because, i believed in what wewere doing -- believe in what you are doing and i promiseyou, you will find your way in this world. and my last quick thing, just totell you all is this: a couple years from now when youdon't remember this event, when you don't remember me orany of the yec folks but you just remember one thing, thatone thing that actually meant

something, i want you toremember this: you might get somebody that is going to giveyou that key ingredient to your business today or help you moveto that next step in your plan or next way of getting a client. and that is going to helpyou move yourself up. and in ten years from nowwhen you're standing here, because i believe you can,i mean, a year ago, i mean, ronnie can attest to this, ihad never even been to the white house let aloned.c. in many cases,

you're going to remember thatsomebody gave you that hint of inspiration, that momentthat helped you move yourself forward. and so i ask you todo this: give it back. take a second out of your dayand a few years from now and realize where you came from. if this generation helps everygeneration after it we can build a sustainable entrepreneurialecosystem unlike anything the world has ever seen.

and if i have to ask one thingit's that you fulfill that dream and turn it in to a reality. i sincerely appreciateyou all coming here today. i hope you learn a lot. thank you so much for takingthe time and, you know, keep everything going, man. you guys are really goingto make this happen. so thank you so much. ronnie cho:thanks, scott.

our next speaker is actually,a full disclosure, is my boss, so his name is jon carson. and jon carson, youmight remember his name, right now he is the director ofthe office of public engagement. and leads this effort to reachout to the public and bring them in to the white house and reallybe a part of our team here and understand what we're trying todo with the administration and the president's visionfor the country. but before that he led probablyone of the largest organizations

run by millennials. he was a field, national fielddirector for the obama for america campaign in 2008. and so john carson wouldyou please join us on stage. please welcome jon! jon carson:how is everybody? audience members:great. jon carson:excited to be here? audience members:yes.

jon carson:well, good, because i've got aconcrete ask for each and every one of you. when you leave here today oreven when you step out into the hallway outside of where youcan't get a wireless signal inside the room here, iwant you to tell everyone, tweet everyone, e-maileveryone, blog to everyone, dance and sing on the streetsif you have to about what you learned today, what youexperienced today and about being a part of it.

i want you to tell them whatyou learned, what you liked; tell them what you didn't like. and i ask you this notbecause we're not going to be doing the same. this administration is asfocused and dedicated to advancing issues for youngpeople for entrepreneurs as you could ever ask for. but i ask you because you have avoice and networks that i think is way more powerfulthan all of you realize.

you know, this is whatronnie and i do for a living. we work with every possiblegroup of stakeholders, issues, organizations like yec and i'lltell you what i have learned is that we live in a time when weare surrounded by information but nobody reallyknows what's going on. and i think we're in a timewhere people have a new filter to informationthat they take in. and that filter is not justwhat are you telling me, but who's telling me.

we live in a difficult time. a cynical time, when the factthat it's you that's sending that e-mail, you that's puttingit on your facebook page, you that put it on yourblog matters to the people who know you. so you are able to break throughand pass on information that you learned, information that youare given in a way that just the fact that it's theoreticallyavailable in google can make it happen.

i'll give you justone concrete example. we had an event here a couplemonths ago highlighting young entrepreneurs, ourchampions of change program. ten ceos who are creatingthousands of jobs all of whom are under 35 and one of thegoals of that event was to let people know about some specificprograms at the small business administration that might helpthem start their own company. and this is whatronnie and i do, we help the federalgovernment get more

people involved in programs. and so i thought we were havinga very successful day helping people find out about concreteways the sba could help them. afterwards i had three people,all of whom were entrepreneurs or involved in small businessesor in business school who all came up to me and thanked me forthe event because they'd never heard of the small businessadministration before. again, it's that connection toyou, people, community leaders, people who are networked thatcan really break through in this

time when again we aresurrounded by information but you need that validationfrom someone you trust. and there is really two reasonsi would ask you to share your experience here today. one is you are going to learn asscott said concrete information, concrete ideas,concrete inspirations, whether it be on how thegovernment can partner with you to make entrepreneurship happenor from someone that you meet in the hallway today, you're goingto have pieces of information.

but there's a second reasonwhich is we also live in a day and age when i think especiallyfor this generation and as ronnie said i have seen whatthis generation is capable of. and, by the way, my definitionfor youth is people who had e-mail addressesin middle school. i did not. but those of you who did i haveseen what you're capable of. i saw it with my owneyes on the campaign. but we need you as examples.

a lot of people view governmentand what we're all fighting about here in washington is somesort of bad reality tv show that doesn't either affect themand they have no ability to influence it. so seeing whether they'rechecking your facebook status or seeing that blog you wrote orthat e-mail you sent that you were a part of the discussion,that you were involved in an event that is movingthe ball forward, it's going to help inspirethat next set of people.

so as i said, get theword out any way you can. if you want totweet me about it, a couple of you did onyour way in here today, i'm at joncarson44. i will help pass on thestuff that you're doing. but again thank youfor what you're doing. this administration believesin the young people of this country, it believes in theentrepreneurs of this country. and please help sharewhat you learn today.

thank you. ronnie cho:thank you, jon. and with that i think we'llget right into our program. the next -- if everyone who isgoing to be on the panel -- if you want to get ready and joinus on stage here in a minute? sway, from mtv -- many ofyou -- who knows -- who has heard of sway? just a few of you, iwould probably assume. you know, this is a guy thatwe have all been watching for

a long time. he's been an activist. he has interviewed presidentobama, bono, lady gaga, sort of the folkswho run our culture. and when it comesto entrepreneurship, he's been an entrepreneur. he's started his own radioprogram in oakland way back when, i won't say exactlywhen, but a long time ago. and he's been in thegame for a long time.

this is an issue hecares deeply about. i think we're trying to connectthis idea of an entrepreneur in our generation, what it means tobe a young person who is going to start their own company. you think about thesebig legacy companies, these fortune 500 companies,at some point somewhere down the line they were just, youknow, a person in a garbage. or an idea that somebodyhad and, you know, had kind of the moxieto put it together.

we are, we are the standardbearers here for the next generation of entrepreneurs. and the time is now toelevate this discussion. and so we're happy to have swayjoin us on stage to share some remarks and thenwe'll start our panel. sway calloway:how is everybody doing today? can you hear me? sway calloway:what were you speakingin? this or this? whah whah. whah whah whah whah.

well, i won't need a microphone. first of all, i want to saythank you to my team here from public affairs and mtv news andwho i came in to d.c. today with and one of my business partnerskelly jackson and carolyn concepcion are here as well. and i want to say thank you toall the students who came up and, you know, showed that they,they are ready to start their own business because i havealready got about ten business cards which is very important.

so i want to giveliam, where are you? liam, gave him around of applause, let's do this enterprising. dan fink? he could get you amac at a pc price. (laughter) andrew fromdate-check which will, if you are planning on startinga grocery store and you want to make sure that yourproduct isn't out of date,

andrew can saveyou a lot of money. michael, michael sininsky isa guy who is very successful. he is already rich. where is mike at? he owns -- make sure you attachyourself to mike. and also being at mtv, you know,ronnie mentioned lady gaga and bono and a few other people, andi just want you guys, you know, we wanted to bring a specialguest in here today so i want

you guys to please look to theback of the room and welcome a fine example of anentrepreneur jay-z. give it up for jay-z,ladies and gentlemen! that works every time, man! ha-ha. you wouldn't believe that iwould bring jay here, right? but jay-z is a fine exampleof an entrepreneur who have done well. so he is here in spirit.

okay? jay-z is here in spirit. so we're going to have ourpanelists come up today. these guys are to the businessworld what jay-z is to the pop world, what lady gagais to the pop world. our panelists today, i want youguys to definitely take the time to steal as much informationas you possibly can on how they became success stories. like ronnie said when i firstcame in to the business, just a few years back, i startedas an entrepreneur before i

became, you know, settledinto the music business. i was someone who looked up torussell simmons who started his own record company,def jam records, and wanted to do my own thingin northern, california. so i started an independentrecord label and i didn't sell millions of records but i soldthousands of records which equated to a lot ofmoney independently. and i went on to start amarketing and street promotion company called streetwise.

now, i wasn't sure what i wasdoing but at the time it seemed like the right fit being the waythe music business was expanding and i was an independentcontractor who showed major q chains like sonybmg or universal music, rca, how to market, micro-marketin different marketplaces around the country. that led to me starting aconcert tour with small in the beginning, we did likefour to eight dates but eventually it grew.

and it expanded to become apopular concert called rock the bells which is now -- i'm nolonger a part of it but it's one of the most successfulhip-hop tours to date. and this all happenedbefore i came to mtv. i came to mtv to be a newscorrespondent and to talk about music culture and in a reallyhonest way and through mtv news i have been able to do that. and then through the exposurei've been able to really relate to young america andtry to, you know,

engage them in political issuesas well as issues like this, entrepreneurship which iswhy i'm happy to be here. i'm actually hereto learn, you know. i'm going to moderate thispanel discussion, but i'm also, i plan to steal a lot ofyour secrets, all right? and make them applicableto my everyday life. just a show hands, how manypeople -- everybody is in college, right -- how manypeople plan or have started their own business?

just a show of hands. yeah, to recent studies haveshown that 54% of what we call millennials, peoplebetween the ages of 18 and 34 have done this. and this is kind of what acanvas is right now in america, you know, we're suffering a lotof challenges in our economy. sometimes you come out of schooland may not be a job made for you or a job that fits youso you have to do something. and you have to find somethingyou are passionate about that

you are dedicated to and bewilling to take those pitfalls and work through them and workaround them and that's some of the information we wantto accomplish today. we want to find out what kindof mentorship programs do some of these success stories have. what kind of pitfallsdid they face? you know, i know alexis hada hard time in becoming rich. and we're going to find out -- -- how did hemaintain to do that.

and i want you guys, too,before the day is out, get all your stories, getall your questions, you know, get -- rise up, make sureyou ask some, you know, you are quiet right now, i wantyou to speak up today, okay? make sure you ask something thatyou will be able to take away and apply to your everyday life. without further ado, let's bringthe panelists up, jeff avallon, jeremy johnson, tinawells, alexis ohanian, vina caplan and -- friedman?

jeff avallon:no, i'm jeff, man. sway calloway:you're jeff. oh, friedman. okay. yeah, you hear this guy? wait until you hear his story. jeff, what up, man! good to meet you, man. so real briefly, let'sstart with you, jeff. i'd love for each and everyone of you guys to introduce yourselves and tell alittle bit about yourself

and your business. and then we'll continuewith the panel. try to keep, if you don'tmind, keep it -- you know, successful peoplelike to talk a lot. -- which is what we want todo, but in this introduction, if you don't mind,keeping it brief. go ahead, jeff. jeff avallon:well, man, i waspumped to meet jay-z. if you can find any wayto involve him in the yec?

i know scott would love it. we would all love it. so if you can make someinquiries on that that would be sweet. sway calloway:work on that, scott. jeff avallon:my entrepreneurial story startedwhen i was 12 years old or somewhere in there and myyounger brother and i started a lobster business and we endedup growing it to the point of a commercial size operation by thetime we were sophomores in high

school selling about four to sixhundred lobsters every day off of a commercial lobster boatinto the wholesale markets to be distributed around the world. we started that business withthe goal of affording ourselves the opportunity to try and failat like a million different things during collegeand after college. i am now fortunate enough to bea part of a start-up called idea paint which right now i think isthe coolest thing in the world. but it's a paint that goes onany smooth surface you want and

it transforms it into ahigh-performance dry erase writing surface, justlike your white board. so really super simple idea. tough technology to get. we're now actively distributedin 20 different countries around the world. have over 70,000 installations. we basically create some super,super creative spaces and are perfect for people whohave offices whose walls

are not flat. you know, say like an oval. so if you know anybody withan oval office put a bug in his ear today. sway calloway:okay. thank you, jeff. jeremy? jeremy johnson:i love the lobstercompany start. jeff avallon:thanks. jeremy johnson:okay. so, jeremy johnson-- great to meet you all.

my entrepreneurial journeystarted pretty young. i was about 15 and starteda marketplace for virtual currency, actually, ingames like second life. totally random, justrealized that people were, for some reason, basicallywilling to pay a lot for items that were actuallymade out of pixels. you know, for some, you know,another reason decided that in college i was goingin to politics, came down here to d.c. for aninternship and realized about

halfway through that iwanted nothing whatsoever to do with politics. and so got back in to startups. as a junior in college ilaunched a social network around the admissions processfor undergrads really looking to help high school studentsunderstand their options a little bit more effectivelyand to allow colleges to have additional data points torecruit those students for things beyond athletics.

so i actually left college afterjunior year to pursue that. we grew about a hundred thousandkids to a hundred colleges using it to interact with them. it was acquired in 2007 by zinchwhich my guess is some of you guys have actually used. and at that point westarted tutor which is my current company. and we partner with eliteschools to build out, i would argue, the best onlinedegree programs in the world.

so we work with georgetownhere in d.c., actually, to help them run a mastersin nursing program online. masters in teaching and mastersin social work with usc. and actually the first top20 online mba program with unc chapel hill. so our goal is to helpincrease access to incredibly high-quality americanuniversities to people all over the country who don'thave the luxury of leaving their work to pursue a master's degreeor people internationally who

don't have the abilityto come to the u.s. for a year or two. so thank you, guys. sway calloway:thank you. sway calloway:tina. tina wells:hi, my name is tina wells. and when i was 16 years old istarted a company called buzz marketing group. i'm pretty old.

that was 15 years ago. and i -- i feel old every day-- i was always interested in fashion and beauty and startedwriting product reviews for a newspaper for girls called thenew girl times and this was in 1996 so the idea of being atrend spotter or, you know, buzz spotter is the term weown of cool people who do cool things was really somethingthat was completely new. and so i started out as thisoriginal person that different companies, whether it wassockonears, new balance,

or nike would say there is thisgirl, if you send her sneakers, she'll tell you what she thinks. it's really cool. and it became too much for me. and my parents wondered why upswas coming to our door every single day withmore and more stuff. and i hired my friends andwithin a few months i had 250 buzz spotters, and i had friendssaying i have a cousin here or there, you know, in texas, shewants to be a buzz spotter.

and again rememberthis was 1996. and i said how would icommunicate with her? e-mail, i had just gottenmy first e-mail address. and so fast forward to 2000,cosmo girl wrote a piece about what i was doing, wegot 15,000 applications. our panel grew to 9,000. we now have about 40,000 peopleworldwide who report trends to us and we have, you know,hundreds of corporate clients who want to know what's nextand new with young people.

we've actually did someresearch with the yec on youth entrepreneurship. and so a big part of ourbusiness is predicting trends in youth culture and then forme personally two years ago i authored a book series forharper collins children's books called mckenzy blue so many ofyou who have 12-year-old sisters you might be a little obsessedwith this really cool red head girl who is like a21st century ramona. so that's kind of whati got to do for fun.

alexis ohanian:my name is alexis ohanian. i actually didn't really getstarted in the entrepreneurship until my junior year ofcollege when i talked, i guess it was kindof late on this panel, i happened to be goodfriends with steve huffman, a guy i met in freshman year andwe were really into video games and thought maybe we could starta company where we made video games for a living. and that seemed funbut not practical.

so we had a different idea. and we were fortunate enoughduring our senior year spring break to be in boston to heara guy named paul graham give a talk called "how tostart a startup." and we met with him afterwardand he was so, i think, either impressed or horrifiedthat we came all the way up from virginia, we wentto school at uva, to hear his talk thathe said, all right, let's get coffee afterward.

and pitched him onthis startup idea. and he said you gota pretty good shot. about a month later he announcedsomething called y cominator, which, today, is like theseed stage venture firm, he was on cover offorbes a few months ago, but back then we just thoughthe was a really cool, smart guy. and we applied toy cominator thinking this would help our chances. we went up for an interview.

and steve and i were rejected. we got drunk that night. and then that ishow it went down. the next morning hung over ona very long train ride back to charlottesville, i got a callback on my phone from paul and he said, listen, still don'tlike your idea but we like you guys so if you want to be iny cominator, change your idea. come up with anythingelse and we'll fund you. and it took us about two secondsto get off that train and get

right back to boston. and we'd been thinking about ouroriginal idea for about a year but with that opportunity opento us we quickly jumped on it. and we happened to be in thefirst round of y cominator, we had spoken with paul forabout an hour after we got back to boston. what would come out of thatwas a website called reddit which about 16 months after welaunched it was acquired by condã© nast and i am proud to saytoday is one of the top 50 most

trafficked siteson the internet. most of that growth,i will point out, happened after steveand i left reddit, so whether or not that isrelated i'll leave up to you. but i haven't been ableto kick the startup bug. and i helped steve launcha travel search site called hipmonk, chipmonk without the c. and i have also launched a sortof newman's own for nerds called breadpig whichcreates geeky things,

sells them anddonates the profits. what's fascinating about allthree of these startups i have been involved with launchingis they have cute animal logos. so if that's a good concretetakeaway for you all to have, it's have a cute, adorable logo. but very -- jeff avallon:that's really,really good advice. alexis ohanian:thank you. dina kaplan:if you learn one thing todayit's cute animal logos.

we can tweet about that.john will be very happy. i do want to, by the way, thankyou ronnie for having us here. scott, that was an incrediblyinspiring talk so thank you. and sway you are truly not ahost but an entrepreneur also -- sway calloway:oh, thank you. dina kaplan:-- so we're excited tohave you lead this session. dina kaplan:my life as an entrepreneurhas definitely been changed by people just like alexis. so you will get something out ofthis even if it's not from us.

my first story of my career willbe from having met this really charismatic guy when i wasreally, really, really young. i was a republicanat the time, sorry. but i told my parents, mom, dad,i just met a guy who's going to be president; hisname is bill clinton. oh, my god. i want to go workfor him some day. and they said, oh, honey,he's governor of arkansas. nobody's heard of arkansas.

he'll never even run. but sure enough, he ran andi dropped out of school, dropped everything that i wasdoing, drove to new hampshire, volunteered for him. i ended up working in the whitehouse for a couple of years. from there i actually -- this isso bizarre to be here because i ended up working mtv for abunch of years right after that. then i was on air as atv reporter for a while. but i had met another reallycharismatic guy while i was a

reporter who also changed mylife just as bill clinton did and at the time i met him i saidif i know anyone that is going to be the next billgates, it's this guy. i met him at a bar,believe it or not. so one of my lessons to you guysis going to be make note of the charismatic people that youmeet in your life who others are drawn to because theycan change your lives. so i met this guy, kept intouch with him for years. and five years after we met hesaid i'm starting a company;

do you want to come with me? and i said, just as i madethat promise upon meeting bill clinton, i made thatpromise about meeting you, no matter what i'm doing-- at this point i was in my dream job. i was reporting on air at wnbc. but i said, no matter what,whatever i'm doing at this point if this guy invites meto co-found a company, i'll drop it and i'll join him.

and that was how i endedup becoming one of the cofounders of blip. are you guys familiar with blip? anyone? we are basically -- thepeople on the panel, great -- we are basicallythe platform for web shows. so for people creatingoriginal tv shows for the web, what we do is bring in ads,bring in revenue for the shows through advertisements, procter& gamble, coca-cola, disney,

et cetera -- run ads on theshows and share the revenue back with the producer so that thetop producers on blip are now making close to a milliondollars a year, if not more, just from us. more than any of the foundersof the company, go figure. but it's been really exciting. when, yeah, when we startedthe company of course we had no views. we were five first-timeentrepreneurs.

and now we do about 330million video views a month. we are actually the largestindependent video network in the world, which is cool. so it's been a really,really exciting journey. and i have also startedsomething called the founders club where we bring togetherall the top entrepreneurs on the east coast and celebratethe startup community. outside of siliconvalley there is one. hopefully you guyswill be part of it.

and i am also a founder of agroup called calliope where we support and mentorwomen entrepreneurs. we gather together all the topwomen entrepreneurs on the east coast also and try tospur entrepreneurship, not just among menwho are probably 98, if not 99% of the founderswith vc backing in the country, but women also. so i'm happy to talkabout that as well. nick friedman:good afternoon.i'm nick friedman.

so cool i don't need a name tagso you can just write down nick friedman, that's my name. i'm cofounder, president, ofcollege hunks hauling junk. and we are the largestu.s. based junk removal and moving franchise. opportunity i actually startedit when i was in college, believe it or not. i was very modest at the time. the summer before my senior yearof college we were just back

here in washington, d.c. forsummer vacation trying to think of ways to make extra money andmy buddy had a cargo van from his mom's furniture store,so we borrowed that, put computer printout fliersin people's mailboxes that said college hunks hauling junk. got a decent amount ofbusiness that summer. went back to schoolfor our senior year. we wrote a business planand entered it in to an entrepreneurship competition.

it ended up winning first prize. so that gave us a little moreconfidence and credibility to the concept. but we had always brought up tokind of follow that traditional career path. you study hard, youget good grades, you get a good corporatejob after college. so we moved back to d.c. weactually used the business plan as a way to make our rã©sumã©look good to get a good job.

and we were workingconsulting about three months. i e-mailed my businesspartner and said, you know, what's our timeline for startingcollege hunks hauling junk on a full scale? and he e-mailed me backin all capital letters, my timeline is rightnow exclamation point, exclamation point,let's do this. so we took the businessplan off the shelf. and at the time our vision wasno longer to be just a couple of

guys with a truck running aroundtown chucking junk over our shoulders, we wanted to builda national brand that was respected for itscreative branding, it's fun company culture, itscustomer service experience. and we have actually reallyleveraged mainstream media to allow us to grow. we actually now have 40franchises across the country. we have a central call centerdown in tampa, florida. and i guess some ofyou guys may have seen,

we have been on two realitytv shows, abc shark tank, and bravo'smillionaire matchmaker. so i was not the guy. my business partner picked hisdate up in one of our trucks and made her clean out agarage for the episode. it was pretty tremendous. but we're very passionateabout entrepreneurship. our vision is to be the largestemployer of young adults and college students in the nationand really a launch pad for

entrepreneurs because we treatour employees as if they're business owners. when they go out on thetruck they control the cost, the pricing and the estimating. so they're really learning andbeing empowered with skills that will carry themthroughout their careers. so that's really becomeour vision and our passion. sway calloway:let's give him around of applause. so, i'll start.

i'm going to just throw out afew questions based on some of the things you guys said. okay, i'll just start on theother side of the table, nick, how can i get a jobworking for you? that would be thefirst question. i'm joking. so, nick, you actually --your company is number 156 on inc.'s 500 list offastest-growing businesses. and you have beenall over television.

and you guys kindof, your perspective, you come from ahumorous perspective. you guys don't seem like youtake yourselves so seriously. but you are very professional. how do you draw the balancebetween being funny and having people actuallytake you seriously? nick friedman:sure. well, for us it's been achallenge because anybody with a truck and some laborcan be in our business. there is pretty muchno barriers to entry.

so what we've had to do is tryand really separate ourselves from the rest of the pack. the independents with the truckand a logo on a website and a phone number; how do wesort of set ourselves apart? and for us, you know,what we're selling, what our customers arebuying are our employees. and the only way to attractthe coolest and fun, best customer service employees,is to create a fun company culture that people aregoing want to be a part of.

so we tell our staff and ourcustomers that, you know, we don't hire junkhaulers and movers; we hire the future leaders ofthe country that want to learn sales and marketing and customerservice and want to have fun while they're at work. and it is a playful nameand it's a catchy brand. and all of that is creatingultimately the company culture which will allow us to delivera fun experience to the customer which will create therepeat business and the

referral business. and i think a lot of companiesneed to start out kind of defining what the internal, theinside of the company is going to look like as opposed totrying to design the customer service experience first becauseif you design the inside to kind of be a reflection of yourselfand your own personality you're going to attract the people thatwant to be a part of that and then ultimately they'll deliverthe experience that you want to deliver to the general public.

sway calloway:okay, one of the things we wantto talk about are the pitfalls that some of you guys might havefaced along the way and how did you work through it. did you face any pitfallsin developing your company? nick friedman:me? sway calloway:yeah, or has it justbeen smooth sailing? nick friedman:no, it's never beensmooth sailing. i mean -- sway calloway:can you talk aboutone specifically?

like a time you hita brick wall and -- nick friedman:yeah, i would say the biggestbrick wall for us was probably in 2009 when i guess therecession/depression hit, whatever you want to call it. when we first startedour business was 2005, the housing market wasbooming, everybody was moving, everybody was spending money ongetting rid of junk or moving to their new house that was biggerand better than the one they were moving out of.

so all we really needed to do tomake the phone ring at the time was put a sign out or park ourtruck on a busy intersection and people were callingfor our services. but in 2009 everybody'sbudgets were tighter; everybody was cuttingback on their spending. people were moving less. so for us it kind of forcedus to actually, i think, step in to becoming areal true business person. no longer was it just amatter of a flashy logo

and a catchy name. we had to become strategic ofwho we were marketing to and how we were marketing to themand what our messaging was. and what life event triggersdoes our service best cater to and what type of internetadvertising and positioning will our website be best suited for. so we had to really learn all ofthat when we already had five or six franchises opening and wethought we were just going to be printing money all the wayto a hundred, 200 franchises.

so we kind of had to take a stepback and become better business people ourselves and reallybecome more strategic, surround ourselves with guyslike these folks that understand internet advertisingand so forth. sway calloway:okay, jeff, let me ask, avallon,let me ask you a question, because you started at12, you know, you and your brother, right? you started a business at 12. when you start a business at12 obviously you don't know

everything that thereis about business. you're 12! you know, so who weresome of your mentors? and then how did you begin topick mentors even beyond your first mentors and what kindof advice and, you know, direction did they give youthat you felt was helpful? jeff avallon:so i would say our firstmentors were probably my father and my grandfather. family, you know, are mentorsfirst and that is strictly just

in the sense of them beinggenerally supportive of what you're doing. i think, you know, as, you know,i have grown in life i think mentorship is one of the mostimportant things so developing somebody as a person anddeveloping a business. i think there is a differencebetween mentors and advisors. i think that an entrepreneur'sjob in the early days of starting a concept is tofilter the advice from mentors. if you go down just the pathof listening to one mentor,

a lot of times you might end upin a poor spot or you might end up in a great spot. but i think you should seek outdifferent people with different opinions and your job as anentrepreneur when you are starting out is to filter theadvice for what's most pertinent and relevant to yourself. sway calloway:hum-hum. i want to talk to you, dina,about that, because as a woman, your experience in the worldof business is extremely unique

which is why i amassuming, you know, you're on the board of allof these organizations that specifically help women, thereare a lot of young women in the audience today. can you talk about thatexperience, you know, that uniqueness? dina kaplan:yeah, definitely. and i can say that ihave incredible mentors. in fact, i don't know if blipwould have gotten off the ground

if it weren't forone of my mentors. there is one namedgerry laybourne, who you guys maybe familiar with, she ran nickelodeonfor a long time. she started oxygen. at the time that shewas running oxygen, i had another mentor of minethat i was serving on a board with called the women's mediacenter say who in this room -- we were in a roomful ofmany celebrates -- who

do you want to meet? and i said, gerry laybourne. she walks me right over, gerrylaybourne was actually talking to barbara walters at thetime seated at a dinner table, and she grabbed gerryand said, come here! and gerry said, okay. sure, what's up? so this woman said i want tointroduce you to this young woman who's just started acompany called blip tv in the

web video market. and gerry said, perfect. can you come see me tomorrow? what? you're running a network. she said i'll clear my schedule,call me in the morning, come see me wheneveryou're able. so i call her the next daythinking they're going to say thanks, click. they said, great, gerryis expecting your call.

what time can you come in? i said 3 o'clock. i come in, she seesme immediately. she says what do you need? and i said what i need, gerry,is i need a revenue deal. the company has been up andrunning, we have users now. we have viewers,we have producers, but i need a revenue deal tohelp me close the first round of funding for the companyto show investors there's a

business model here. and she said i cando something for you. bring your team back,i'll bring my team. we're going tomeet in two weeks. we met in two weeks. we figured out a dealthat we could close. we closed it a week later. and as the deal was closedour first revenue deal, which did lead to a muchbigger deal with cnn,

which led to the closing of ourfirst angel round and got us off to the races. she held back andshe said, dina, i want you to know iknow what i'm doing. i feel like my job right now isto enable the next generation of women leaders. pay it forward someday when you can. so this is why i've startedcalliope group with susan lyne as the chairman of gilt groupeand pat mitchell who runs the

paley center to helpother women entrepreneurs. we can make a differencein other people's lives. i would just say forfolks that are very busy, everyone on the panel, the folkswho have invited us here today, at some point you canscale your mentorship. it's very -- it's hard to doone on one with everyone that reaches out to you. but if you can scale yourmentorship with callioipe group will meet with 30 women at atime who are entrepreneurs who

need advice and thenthat's a way to, you know, get more bang for yourbuck and to use your time more efficiently. but my huge advice which isechoing what scott has said and what ronnie referredto is immerse yourself in the economy of favors. do favors for people even whenyou're in college and someone is asking you for help inan internship help them? and then when you need help,like i asked gerry laybourne for

a favor, don't be afraid to ask. but there's a wonderful economyof favors that all of us will tell you that powers theworld of entrepreneurship and of startups. and the more that you canimmerse yourself in that, the better off you'll be andeventually your company as well. sway calloway:okay. thank you. we'll jump to jeremy over here. you mentioned that on tutor isworking you guys are partnered

up with georgetown, unc, chapelhill, usc, other institutions. you went to princeton, right? jeremy johnson:uh-huh. sway calloway:and you droppedout of princeton? jeremy johnson:i did. sway calloway:he dropped out of princeton! jeremy johnson:it seemed totallyreasonable at the time. jeff avallon:stay in school, everyone. sway calloway:stay in school.

but some of the wealthiestpeople the world didn't. never mind that. okay? jeremy johnson:it often doesn'twork out that well. sway calloway:right. well, thestatistics show. do you ever regret notcontinuing at princeton or was it worth the gamble? and who -- what did your mentorstell you when you decided to make that decision? jeremy johnson:they were a littlesplit, to be honest.

sway calloway:okay. jeremy johnson:one of my closest mentors andactually a partner of mine at tutor, john katzman, he foundedthe princeton review and who i met through my previouscompany, you know, i literally cold e-mailedhim and said, hey, i'm leaving school to starta company in your space, and i'd love to meet you. he's like, sure, come on upto new york, sounds great. sat down with him for two hours.

the first hour he tried toconvince me not to drop out. and then i explained theidea to him and what we had done thus far. he was like, all right,maybe just take a year off, but come do it with me. and i said, thanks, john,i really appreciate it, but we're going to see whathappens first and, you know, i'll be in touch. and so i think the realityis that it's a risk.

but it's a risk that i hadcalculated at the time. i knew at that point i hadfunding for the company. not a huge amount but enoughthat i knew i could run it for a year and a half and seeif we'd get off the ground. and so, and so i talked to thepeople in my life whose opinions i valued, variousmentors, coaches, parents, and ultimately decided that itwas an opportunity that i wanted to explore andsomething that, yeah, i very well might get again, buti knew it's what i wanted to do

so why not give it a try. and, you know, who knowswhat would have happened. but thus far i'm prettyhappy with the decision. sway calloway:let me ask you something,because i had a similar situation, i took courses, iwas attending san francisco state and i wantedto go into law. i wanted to go tohastings law school. and but i started taking coursesin this extended curricula program that they offer it wherethey have people from the field

teach you about the fieldyou wanted to be in. an attorney came in andtaught me about, you know, the law aspects ofthe music industry. had another guy taught me aboutdistribution and marketing. so what i did ismy plan was, well, let me take all of these classesand i learned what i felt like i needed to learn to apply itto my everyday life and my passions, and it worked outfairly decent -- i mean, i'm not on the panel,i'm actually moderating,

maybe next year i'll beat the table -- you know? so what advice would you giveto -- i'm sure there's plenty of people who are on the fenceabout should they continue school or not because they arebubbling to just get into this workforce, any courses youwould recommend or, you know, classes or, you know, resourcesyou think they should utilize to work in their favor ifthey choose to do so? jeremy johnson:yeah, absolutely. and i think it'simportant to note, like,

my company partners with eliteschools to build out incredibly high quality onlinedegree programs. there's clearly a huge value toacademia and to what colleges and graduate programsoffer the world. there are some career pathswhere you fundamentally need not only an undergraduate degree,but actually a graduate degree. entrepreneurship doesn'thappen to be one of them. what you need is credibilityand the willingness to fail repeatedly, quite frankly, asyou're trying to figure out a

way to add sustainable value. and so please don't take myleaving princeton as sort of a knock against academia. i had a fantastic time. and for me it was an opportunitythat i couldn't pass up. but i will say that the classesthat were most useful for me across the board actuallywasn't just at princeton, it was in high school as well,were the ones that help teach you, one, that you don'tand can't know everything.

and, two, that teachyou how to learn. the way that you sort of findinformation and that could be using google or knowing whichfriends might have the answer and reaching out to them. that actually is immenselyhelpful in any career path you take. so it doesn't have to bean entrepreneurship course. it's any course thatreally challenges you to learn how to learn.

those are by farthe most valuable. that discipline acrossthe board, will be really, really useful. and it's something youshould, i would say, take very seriouslyas an undergraduate. you may not use allthe content knowledge, but you absolutely will use theknowledge of how to learn and how to challenge yourself. sway calloway:that was beautiful, man!

i like you, bro. jeremy johnson:i like you, too. sway calloway:all right, thank you, man. there's a "bromance" brewing. (laughter ) alexis, you're aninteresting guy, you know. most people are here becausethey want to make money. alexis ohanian:if only you knew. sway calloway:if only i knew?

this guy gives away money. you have what you call an"uncorporation" with breadpig and it donates all of itsproceeds and thus far you have donated over 175,000? alexis ohanian:yeah, we're just comingup on 200,000 now. sway calloway:200,000. that deserves around of applause. alexis ohanian:well -- sway calloway:hold up.

alexis ohanian:i should be very clear, though,so some of our products, they are all very geeky,one of them is a book, we actually publish popular webcomics and so the proceeds from this particularbook, xkcd volume 0, very popular nerd comic,actually gets donated to room to read which buildsschools to promote literacy. and in doing so, we'reincreasing our market because illiterate childrencan't buy our book. so it is not selfless at all!

it's just business. sway calloway:it's just business? alexis ohanian:yeah, i was verymotivated by paul newman, "i can't make salad dressing"because if you know newman's own, it's the exactsame business model. read his book. it's not at great book,but it was informative. and yet i modeled it rightafter that and came up with another cute logo.

sway calloway:really? okay, and so what are someof the pros and cons to this? this is very, you know,unconventional approach. what are some ofthe pros and cons? alexis ohanian:well, you know, you guysare probably all familiar with tom's shoes? yes? is anyone not familiarwith tom's shoes? okay. what's interesting now is we arestarting to see i think a lot more it is calledsocial enterprise.

the tax structure hasn'treally been figured out for it, but it is a lot of new upstartcompanies that are actually taking consideration,sort of, the social good. and whether they are doing itexplicitly by making donations which is awesome ina sustainable way. or whether it is just tryingto build a business that is not doing harm to thesystem or to the world. and i think what is reallyexciting right now is in this generation, i think a lot morepeople are starting to look at

more creative waysto run a company. our general ethos at breadpigis to simply make the world suck less, which is, ifyou think about it, the exact same thing is makingthe world a better place, just a slightly different,slightly different flip on it. and i think it's something thatfolks are responding to in large part because we canbe so honest about it. we visited the schoolswe build in lao. we send photos.

and we do this for actuallya small amount of money, because we get a few photostaken from someone's camera phone in nepal and we putthem on our website, right? if we can see what peopleare having for breakfast, halfway around theworld on twitter, why can't we see whereour donations go? why can't we see the projectsthat we are affecting with our ten or $15 and make themfeel like something bigger? and what's very coolis about, you know,

a generation that expects to seewhat their friend in france is having for breakfast, also getsto get really excited about some of the good works thatthey can do as well. sway calloway:all right. okay. cool. you seem real happy right now. you happy with life? alexis ohanian:i am a very fortunate dude. if you think about it,even statistically, like i as a middle class,growing up middle class,

white male, two happy supportiveparents, paid for my college, and i am six four, whichcorrelates with ceo salary, like if my life were a videogame it would be on easy mode. and i am -- (laughter) --that was a slow one there. few of you were gamers. a few of you didn't want toadmit that you are gamers. but it is all right, weare all friends here. and so i am very,very aware of this. and one of the things thatexcites me the most about the

internet is that there are nomeritocracies in the real word. right. none of us know meritocracy,in industry or in business, you know, it is nota fluid marketplace. but the internet actuallyis a meritocracy. an internet with neutrality, aninternet without pipa and sopa is a place where anyentrepreneur regardless of his or her background, solong as they have the access can build something.

and that is really,really powerful. sway calloway:cool. tina. tina wells:yes. sway calloway:how are you, tina? tina wells:good. how are you? sway calloway:interesting panel so far. right? tina wells:it is fascinating. sway calloway:it is fascinating. you guys all right?

everybody learningsomething so far? all right. i am taking all kinds of notes. i will be the richestguy here next year. plus i have got mtv, thisbig old brand we have. right? viacom.viacom stand up. right. go ahead, stand up. big old corporations youhave a unique experience. you know you are named -- imean from american eagle to,

you have worked with a lot ofbig time corporations being a small business. you could -- can you speakon was there any frustrations dealing with the bureaucracyof big business and how did you cope with that asyou started to grow? as your business startedto grow and expand? what advice would you give toliam over there who i am sure is going to be big? he told me wantsall of the money.

so i am sure -- -- what advice wouldyou give in that process? how did it work foryou specifically? tina wells:yeah, well, in 1996 there werenot a lot of people like me. and i remember the first timemy local papers said they were going to do this story on me. and i was like i amnot excited about this. i have to make calls and tellpeople they have been talking to a 16 year old.

and half of themdidn't believe me. they are like, no, you are not. and i am like, yes, i am. i can tell you. so for me, i remember tryingto dress so corporately and wear suits and really fit in. and one thing ialways tell people, i always get this question,how did it feel being young, black and a woman?

and i said i am in marketing, theonly color that matters is green. and i can 100 percent tellyou that that is true. you know, i think my dad alwaystold me, knowledge is power. and so make sure i go in a roomknowing what i am talking about. so i think coming froma research background, whether it is writing abook series for girls, or developing new products, ilike to think about, you know, what do people want,what do they need, how do we get it to them?

and i think it's that thinkingthat sort of propelled me to these groups. i mean, the cmo of americaneagles outfitters has no time to waste on anyone whohas nothing to offer him. so it is also notwasting people's time. and to piggyback off ofsomething that dina said earlier, i have a reallygreat friend who always says, "you can't make withdrawalswhere you don't make deposits." and i think a lot of timespeople email us saying, can you,

can you, can you, instead ofsaying i would like to take you to coffee. and there is that one of ouryec fellow entrepreneurs jordan goldman has a great story onhow he built his company taking people to lunch. and so for me, i think it becamethat -- when you talk about mentorship, really saying, okay,what do i need to learn from this next person and and whatcan i do for them to get there? you know when i started atbuzz, i worked for free.

and my first client was neilcole, kenneth cole's brother, who created candies and bongo. and it was the best educationi got to how retail works, how shoes go from a showroom to being created, to hitting stores. and so, that was a lotof my early education, but i will really will sayno matter how old you are, go into a room knowing as muchas you can about what you do. that's what matters.

because the worst thing everis to get introduced to someone that could totally changeyour life and you have nothing to say. you can't tell someonewhat your business is. and i can tell you as a personthat gets pitched a lot of business plans, it does nottake ten pages via email. it should take two paragraphsto say this is what i am trying to do. so i think being concise andreally being very specific about

what you are trying to do isprobably the most important thing you should be ableto do as an entrepreneur. sway calloway:okay. so i want to mixit up a little bit. any question i might throw out,if anyone wants to chime in, let's just get a dialogue going. okay. i am going to useliam; you are just my go to guy right now, liam. liam, stand up. give liam some love, man.

juju bars. get yourjuju bars soon. go ahead and sit down, liam. so liam, liam at some point, heis going to want to -- where are you located at right now? liam:springfield. sway calloway:springfield. liam:yeah. sway calloway:that is where? liam:springfield, virginia,right outside of dc.

sway calloway:virginia. virginia. at some point he isgoing to want to grow, he is going to need youknow some type of financing; you know somebody isgoing to have to back it. jeff, you were veryinstrumental in raising money. right? you have raised how much? maybe, 14 million? jeff avallon:yeah, my greatest is 14 million. sway calloway:14 million dollars.

what advice -- how did you gofrom point a to getting that 14 million deposit, how does thathappen for someone likely am? jeff avallon:so in our case, it actually tiedin mentorship and advisership. so i personally believethat in order to find great opportunities and find whatyou love to do in life, you have to be almostopportunity-obsessed. and seek out as manydifferent things that you can. and a core piece of finding newopportunities is your adviser network and your mentor network.

a lot of them, youguys are all in school. a lot of them are yourcollege professors initially. they all have experience; theyhave connections in the world. they can be a great source ofadvice and support for you. and their doors are always open. and it was i know in mycase for -- for everything. our funding, our strategicinvestors, breakaway ventures, and firm and capital partners,some of the key people, founder of reebok and theprevious chief marketing

officer of reebok, they wereadvisers and mentors to us. and it came from us beingyou know kind of young, asking for advice, everybody isalways open to give advice to young entrepreneurs or youngpeople trying to do something. and when the time isright, their door is open to help you out. so i would say as your-- as you are in school, look for people to helpadvise you, look for mentors, and constantly be open toseeking out new opportunities.

and a lot of thoserelationships, can very likely lead to startingto get funding and starting to create investor bases and youknow soft circles of investors and so forth. sway calloway:what -- i have been to acouple of meetings with vc's. and the first one iwant to pretty much, i wasn't dressed even like this. i was, you know, sway fromthe block, if you will. you know.

and needless to say, we didn'tget the funding and stuff. but i learned a valuable lesson. what advice would you giveto some of these young entrepreneurs out here interms of their approach? their look? their vernacular,their presentation? jeremy, what would you say? jeremy johnson:so before we even jump into thefunding conversation because the best advice is to be compellingand have people believe they are

going to make a lot of money andthey are going to miss the train if they don't get on right now. but that is -- that isaside from the point. one thing to take --to keep in mind, liam, more importantlythan anything else, is that funding isactually often times not helpful for start-ups. so actually one of thebest books i have read -- actually a womaninvolved with (inaudible).

and jessica livingston, wrote abook called, founders at work. which tells the story of reallythe birth of some of the most famous technology basedcompanies, you know, of our time. and what you will notice acrossthe board, almost all them, at some point the foundersstarted off doing something because their goal was toadd value and build momentum. ultimately, realized that whatthey were doing really wasn't a good idea at all, but that therewas something else about their

business that they learnedbecause while trying to sort of advance down the field, theyrealized there was something that actually was a goodidea and was scalable. and the only way that youcan sort of realize that, the only way you can hit thatinflection point is to actually not have enough capitalto really gloss over it. if you have $14 million in thebank and you don't need it and you don't know whatyou will do with it, then what you will do is youwill continue down a path that

doesn't actuallybuild a business. because a business onlyworks if it is sustainable. and if you are justgiving away money, you can spend moneyon lots of things. if it is not sustainable,you will actually, literally, kill your chances of success. so money is useful when youknow what you will spend it on. money is useful when you havea system or a business that can scale and additional capitalwill help you do that faster.

but until then, what you reallyneed is to figure out something that works and that requiresagain throwing yourself at a problem and learning as much asyou can as quickly as you can. sway calloway:okay. cool. did you wantto add to that? dina? dina kaplan:yeah. that is definitely true. we looked out at allof the video companies. we started in 2005, very early. and the ones that raised themost money early on are all the ones that went out of businesswithin the following two years.

because they had so much money,they didn't have to focus. we had raised so littlemoney, that we had to focus. and i think it was abig reason for success. i will say to your point, sway,i actually think you should be very authentic. i mean, if you look like markzuckerberg male or female with the most awfulshoes in the world. but if that is you, own it. and i think that is okay.

i would say you probablydon't want to pitch vc's when you are starting. in terms of how to meet them,you can be very strategic about it with advisers, whichis great advice from jeff. you can also work it. and there are somany tech events. even in virginia, there arecertainly a ton on the east coast and the west coast. we raised money in 2005, 2006,when there was basically --

there was no setmoney for start-up's, but just through spending let'ssay 80 percent of your time on product head down, but 20percent head lifted up, which is what mypractical advice would be to everyone here. engage in the communitythat you want to serve and provide value to. and ask every single solitaryperson that you meet with in the day, including your friends,including your parents,

your parents' friends. have no pride. you have to think you areproviding these people with an opportunity that they might beangry if you don't offer it to them, because you are buildingsomething very valuable. and you can't be shyas an entrepreneur. so work the crowd. work your industry and you willabsolutely be able to raise money for your project.

sway calloway:okay. cool. so we havegot about ten minutes. okay. so i will just keepfiring questions as i learn from you guys. i am going to goto over to nick. you mentioned that you werewith the millionaire match-up. what was it? what showsdid you appear on? nick friedman:the two reality shows were sharktank on abc and millionaire matchmaker on bravo. sway calloway:and bravo, youreceived a lot of press.

you have gotten a lotof national recognition. how important is that attention? like when you received thatkind of press to building your business and how would youadvise these young entrepreneurs to go out and do that or not? nick friedman:okay, so any time that youhave third party recognition, whether it is news mediaor pop culture media, like a reality television shows,it is an opportunity to gain brand awareness, exposure andcredibility for your -- for your

brand or for your company. the benefit to a company isgoing to vary based on the type of company. the benefits of ourcompany is huge, because like i said before,there is hundreds of thousands of moving companies out there. so how do we become top of mine? how do we become one thatpeople recognize when they see the truck drive by?

it is because they saw it ontheir television or they saw it on a news interview. you know, there may beinternet businesses that aren't necessarily or business tobusiness companies, you know, b to b companies that don'tnecessarily have the same benefit from main streammedia or from the publicity. but, the way we have approachedobtaining it and acquiring it, is very different thanmost companies do. we've approached itmuch like a sales job.

the idea being that when areporter gets up every day, they have a story thatthey have to tell. they need something that theyneed to report on, write about, talk about, so their audiencewill be interested and continue to watch or read. and so the way welooked at it is, we would come up with two orthree different angles that we would call up reporters orproducers or editors as well as email them and say, hey, doyou have a couple of minutes?

i have got a greatstory for you. you know, here is -- here isthe angle we are talking about. and here is how we think itfits into the type of stories that you report on. just like if you had a productor service that you are calling somebody to sell to them; wecame up with story angles that we were calling to pitch toreporters and journalists. so it wasn't just sending outpress releases that end up in a stack of paperthat nobody reads.

it was actually trying to buildrelationships with the reporters and journalists who actuallydo them a favor by providing them these -- these stories. and it is worked to a hugeamount to our benefit. it creates a snowball effectwhere you know you become an authority figure or you become arecognizable brand or name that people want to reach out to. and scott will be a great personto attest to the power of main stream media.

i mean, the yec has benefitedimmensely from the exposure that scott has been able to generatefor the young entrepreneurship council which, in just sucha short period of time. just a year. so anybody startingout a business, it is a great wayto gain credibility. start with your local media. the local media is excitedabout feel good stories. they want to talkabout a local person,

starting a new business thathas a unique angle to it. and so that is wherei would get started. sway calloway:okay. did you guys do calendars? nick friedman:i am sorry? sway calloway:did you do calendars? nick friedman:we actually did calendarsone year believe it or not. sway calloway:yeah. easy way in bro. nick friedman:i was mr. january, so. sway calloway:you were mr. january.all right. great.

my man. my man. tina, how important is failure? tina wells:it is good and it is bad. i will tell you my dad,my line that i lived by, my dad always told me growingup, if you failed a plan, you plan to fail. and so every time i said dad,i am going to do a, b, and c, he is like that is great. but what is the plan?

so i think for me, iam always a planner. and so i always think wheredo i want to be tomorrow? how do i get there? i am big on making plans. but i have to say i havelearned a lot from the times i failed in my life. and a lot of times i think youdon't -- because i started so young, the one thing iwill say to all of you, is starting young is greatbecause ignorance is bliss.

and i think if i had had someof those failures or mistakes at 31, i wouldn'thave survived it. you know, then you have ihave a house, i have this. and i think when you are 16,there is nothing you really have to lose and something completelyfalls apart, you are like, all right, well, i am going toget up and try again tomorrow. so there is something to thatyouthful energy that you have, where, you know, i always sayit is not a failure if you can learn something from it andjust do it better the next time.

so for me i -- i have learnedthe most from the times that i failed in life. nick friedman:i was going to addsomething to that real quick. it is just a mantra i have heardmany entrepreneurs talk about. just the idea thatfailure is not an option. and so while there may be actualsmall setbacks or what somebody may label as a failure, you lookat that as just a stepping stone or a learning opportunity tosucceed the next time or to succeed in the long run.

and i think you know ronniementioned the word moxy and, you know, there is other wordsthat can be used to describe the most successful entrepreneursand i think it is that mentality of perseverance anddetermination and discipline to achieve the vision no matterwhat obstacles might set out for themselves and you know learnas you go through the navigation and adjust the plan as-needed. i think those are sort ofintangible elements that need to be sort of reminded toyourselves as you are going on

that journey. sway calloway:all right. real quick. we have about five minutes. i want everybody to answer this. and the question is have youever been burned on a deal? and if you can tell us whatthe deal was and how did you work through it? let's start with alexis. alexis ohanian:can i give someadvice real quick?

are you reading orson scottcard -- is it xenocide? they are all -- after endersgame, they all just tank. i am sorry. sorry. i saw it and i waslike i got to warn him. okay. burned on adeal. all right. one of the most importantlessons i had to learn fairly early on, is something thatsounds really boring and legalistic, butwill save your butt.

and that is vesting. especially vestingfounders stock. so steve and i started reddittogether in this little apartment in medfordwith $12,000 in funding. and we were equal founders. but none of the yc companies,none of the y cominator companies back then, they didall of our legal organization, were -- had vestedfounder stock. so there was novesting in involved.

it basically means you get allof your founder stock day 0. now, fortunately, steveis a wonderful person. and i hope he thinksthe same about me. so the two of usdidn't have a problem. but later on in thelife of the company, when we did give stockthat wasn't vesting, we basically handedeverything to an employee. as opposed to a normalvesting schedule, which is usuallyabout four years.

so, you earn a quarterof it every year. so let's say two yearsinto the company, you meet the man orwoman of your dreams, and you flee the country. that's great, congratulations. you only get half of the stockthat was promised to you. that is a lesson that whenyou have been burned by it, you make sure to tell everysingle person you can. but good news, there are so many-- i really believe mba programs

are designed to try tointimidate people out of starting companies andbusinesses with their jargon. so many of these lessons,whether it is legal or business, again, i am not a lawyer, butso many of these lessons are available online byreally awesome people. i know yec has built agreat network of this, but you will be amazed to seehow many great resources there are for you to educate yourselfabout a lot of this stuff so you can learn from our mistakes.

so please vest. vest, vest, vest. sway calloway:okay. anybody elsebeen burned on a deal? tina wells:okay. sway calloway:there you go, tina. tina wells:this involves mtv.but not in a bad way. but actually mtv saved me. all right. so we know i have abook series and this girl in the series is a singer.

and so my very good friend whorecently left mtv, liz gately, really wanted to develop theshow and tony disanto and we had a great plan. and i was working with avery well known record label. and this is bad dealpoint on their side. now, eight lawyers and thishuge musical conglomerate, had signed off on this deal withus, which was a five album deal, sort of kind ofgorillas, i don't know, these kids -- eightkids in a band.

they are not real. but we are going to make a show. and we have an amazing meetingand decide that my friend sophia bush is going to voice mckinsey. and this record label did nothave a deal with me that would enable them to representa non-real person. so when tina andmtv were very happy, we are going to create thisshow, they said, oh, no, you are not because we arenot going to make any money.

we are like that soundslike a personal problem. so we resolvedthis the right way. but if you know record labels, ireally thought someone was going to like roll up on my officeand shoot out my windows. i am like, what isthis yelling about? and so for me, whati actually did, and i don't cry in business. i say, tears are reserved formy personal life and my family. i have five younger siblings.

i do not cry in business. it is just notappropriate for me. i remember almosthaving like a meltdown, on a sunday night thinking ihad to go to work the next day. and one thing i say, is like,i am an entrepreneur because i want peace in my life and i wantto control my destiny and if someone else is makingme this uncomfortable, i have got to be done. so i called my agent andmy attorney and said,

we are not doing this deal,because if someone is saying that they will not release myrecord -- it is things i have never heard of, i am like,i am not even a singer. i don't know what youare talking about. we'll withhold your single,we'll do all of this. i said, you know, thenthis isn't a deal for me. and so i think sometimesyou have to realize as an entrepreneur that if theearly signs are there, it doesn't matter how muchi want the show on air,

if you are not going to releasethe single because you don't have a deal pointthat is your fault. what else are you going to do? and i think so many timeswe say, i want this. this has to happen. it has to happen. and i mean, mckinsey was ona wave to be hannah montana. and now that i sit back and seewhat we have accomplished just selling books, i am gladi didn't do that deal.

i am glad i didn't put myagents and people i really trust through it. and you know a few years later,liz and i are still trying to develop the show. and i think it is goingto come in a better way. but, i think that is kind of anexample of how you can have the law on your side. but one thing, one of my whartonprofessors told me the first day of class is, he saidcontracts don't matter.

and you have a bunch of whartonkids that are like what are you talking about,contracts don't matter? he said leverage does. he said always remember itdoesn't -- i have so many entrepreneurs who were legallyright and bankrupted themselves trying to prove they were right. always remember yourleverage matters. and so for me i realize -- i dida deal with harper conns where i owned a hundred percent of myrights and what they create on

my behalf and the best thing icould do was to walk away and still maintain all of my rights. and if three years from now orten years from now when i have children i decide to do it,i still have the right to make that decision. so i would say to you guys,don't always think that that first deal is thedeal you have to do. you know, think about if it isthe best thing for your life, because you want a happy life.

i could have sold 20 millionrecords and be the most depressed girl you haveever seen because i didn't get paid from it. so, you know, your happinessis really important. sway calloway:thanks for sharingthat. all right. let's give a round of applausefor all of our panelists. and we are going to doour breakout sessions. i want to just acknowledge mypublic affairs team right here, alexis, liza.

just stand up, please. just, you know -- jay? jay, stand up man. and our fearless leaderof mtv news, ben wagner. benjamin wagner,please stand up. please. please.