The Roadshow

I’ve been an entrepreneur, in one capacity or another, for over 15 years. I’ve been fortunate to develop a network of fellow entrepreneurs (David Cancel, Nabeel Hyatt, Andy Payne …), co-founders (Rebecca Xiong, Geoff Menegay), board members (George Bell, Bob Davis, John Pleasants …), advisors (Coach Wei, Eric Silberstein …), team members (Brian Morgan, Dr. Raymond Lau, Evan Schumacher …) among myriad others that has helped me learn, question and grow.

I have advised dozens of fellow entrepreneurs starting out, and have always found it very rewarding (and, I’m told, usually helpful to them as well). Now that AOL has acquired Going and I’ve had some time to reflect, I’m very excited to begin sharing some of what I’ve learned -face plants, sweet successes, the whole gamut- with a broader community.

how2startup – Entrepreneurial Learnings is just getting going but I hope to make it a real resource and community for entrepreneurs, collecting a lot of knowledge and tools that are dispersed by the sharp bloggers out there and doing what I can to further innovation, creativity and more people taking the bold leap that is, as David Cancel puts it, “making something from nothing.” Please join me there.

Hi there, welcome to my site. Although most of my blogging and social media activity is taking place elsewhere, I may occasionally post more personal commentary here. For now the only content is the About Me page which probably borders on the ludicrously long, but hopefully has enough entertaining nuggets to justify itself.

Why is this blog called The Roadshow?

I have had many nicknames over the years, especially ones around the alliteration in my name. My favorite without doubt, though, was The Roadshow. I believe it was Paul Souza, now at Google, who came up with it while we were colleagues at iPhrase. Roadshows have a few meanings, from finance meetings for a new offering, to PR tours, but in this case it referred to all the sales calls we were doing. Paul was the bag-carrying sales guy and I was the product manager, out evangelizing, getting real-world feedback, and -oh yes- selling with the credibility that not being officially in sales affords. We made a good team.

Since those days I could never wait to get in front of real people -users, clients, investors, doesn’t matter who as long as they aren’t on the payroll or otherwise at risk of groupthink- to learn from, evangelize, and interact with them.

• I was born in Argentina and have lived in Brazil, Mexico and Germany, and in the US since 1992.
• I used to be a hacker, but was always interested in the humanities as well. Probably that is what took me to grad school at the MIT Media Lab, to do research in social media before the term was common as part of the Sociable Media Group.
• After grad school I worked in engineering, usability, product management, marketing and then general management.
• I’ve been involved with startups one way or another most of my life, and most recently co-founded Going -a user generated local events company for people looking for cool things to do in major cities, as well as for venue owners, event promoters and ticket sellers- which AOL acquired in June 2009.
• Startups are still my passion, as I work toward my longer-term interests in furthering education, international cooperation and other goals.