Venture Voice

Download the MP3. Any shareholder in a startup can tell you there's a big difference between paper wealth and cash. Short of an IPO or outright acquisition, there are few options for the shareholders of even the most thriving private companies...

Download the MP3. "Dial 1 for sales, dial 2 for support..." Ten years ago it cost over $10,000 to get a phone system with the advanced options we're used to hearing when we call big companies...

I cofounded a company called Sawhorse Media that's making sense of Twitter (Twitter was founded by past Venture Voice guest Ev Williams). We decided to launch a new site called Venture Maven to make it easy to follow what VCs and angels are tweeting about...

Download the MP3. Craigslist seems unbeatable. It's often blamed (or celebrated) for destroying the classifieds business that helped keep American newspapers afloat. Now second-time Venture Voice guest Fabrice Grinda is seeking to dominate online classifieds with OLX, his latest venture...

Download the MP3. Joel Spolsky first came on Venture Voice over three years ago and discussed his company in a very different way than most entrepreneurs. Rather than start with the big idea and pay lip service to building a great team, Joel focused on getting great programmers first...

Download the MP3. Graham Hill started the blog TreeHugger to cover green issues in 2003. After a steady climb in traffic and advertising, Graham sold the company to Discovery Communications in 2007 for $10 million. Since launch and even after the acquisition, Graham ran his business virtually...

Download the MP3. It takes only a few seconds to customize a radio station on Pandora. Its founder Tim Westergren has been struggling for almost a decade to make it that way. Pandora was five years in the making before it streamed a single song to a user...

Download the MP3. The title financier conjures images of mahogany desks and million dollar checks for most...

Download the MP3. Not to be called a one trick pony, Sam Wyly's turned himself into a billionaire by starting and growing companies in technology, oil, retail and even in the restaurant industry...

Download the MP3. Jeff Stewart needed that done yesterday. Jeff became an entrepreneur when he founded the web consultancy Square Earth in 1995...

Download the MP3. Last time Derek Sivers was on Venture Voice three years ago he told us he had to "whack 'em [investors] off with a stick". Now we know why. Derek announces on our show for the first time the amount he sold his company for this past summer: $22 million...

It's great to hear stories like the one where Andy Bechtolsheim handed the Google founders a $100,000 check before they even set up their bank account. Convince an angel to invest and you're off to the races...

Download the MP3. Attention entrepreneurs dealing with the current economic downturn: This interview is for you. After working as a journalist for Jason Calacanis at Silicon Alley Reporter, Rafat Ali ended up broke in a market with a dearth of employment opportunities...