Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to go it alone. Most
successful business owners will tell you they could not have
accomplished their goals without help--from a mentor, colleague, even
mom and dad. For many, their ability to evaluate, internalize and act on
the counsel they received was instrumental in getting their companies
off the ground.
In an effort to tap some of this wisdom, we called on business gurus to tell us the very best piece of
advice they've received. From
hiring to
philanthropy and more, their responses were as varied as the companies they run.
Dennis Crowley, CEO, Foursquare
Photo © Ewan Burns
"Do what you love, and the rest will come."
After co-founding two businesses, reportedly turning down a $125
million acquisition offer and being named to just about every "40 under
40" list imaginable, Dennis Crowley, CEO of
Foursquare, still cites the advice his mother gave him repeatedly as a child: to follow his heart.
This was the mantra he adhered to when he decided to get his master's
degree at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program instead of going
for an MBA. It was also behind his launch of
social networking companies Dodgeball (which he sold to Google in 2005) and
Foursquare, and his decision this past May to launch
Swarm,
an app that will unbundle the check-ins and other social media
functions from Foursquare. (Foursquare will focus on helping users
discover restaurants and other venues.)
"When I look back at my career to this point, I've spent the last 10
to 15 years following the same narrative, building things that people
want to use and want to tell their friends about," he says, adding that
he decided to spin off Swarm because, "over time, we realized that if we
were passionate about these use cases, we needed to unbundle Foursquare
into two
apps."
He often thinks back to his mom's advice. "All of these [concepts]
started as me working in my apartment building on something I thought
would be cool," he says. "All are projects that turned into products
that turned into companies."
