SlideShare
SlideShare co-founder Rashmi Sinha, together with co-founder Jonathan Boutelle, creates a unique environment on the Web with her company SlideShare, a social-sharing slideshow Web site.
Sinha caught the entrepreneurial bug early. Researching search interfaces and recommender systems during her postdoc at UC Berkeley, she decided she wanted to focus on problems affecting users in a real-time environment. As a result, she founded Uzanto, a user experience consulting company. Some of Uzanto's clients included eBay, Blue Shield and AAA. One of her first products was MindCanvas, a game-like software geared for customer research that was released in November 2005. She launched her current venture, SlideShare, in 2006.
SlideShare allows users and businesses to share presentations, documents and pdfs. According to the company Web site, individuals and organizations upload their documents and the content spreads virally through blogs and social networks, connecting people and generating leads for business. The company estimates nearly 25 million visitors visit the site monthly. The company received series A funding from Venrock in 2008.
Sinha earned a PhD in cognitive neuropsychology from Brown University in 1998. She blogs about the social web at www.rashmisinha.com. She speaks frequently at conferences like FOWA, SXSW & WebVisions.
Last Updated: Wed, Mar 10, 2010
| Category | Title | Author/Speaker | Organization | Length | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video | Business Model for a Media Company | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 02:22 | 02/2010 |
| Video | Entrepreneurial Advice | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 01:57 | 02/2010 |
| Video | Seeking Inverstors | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 03:39 | 02/2010 |
| Podcast | Sharing a Measure of Success | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 57:22 | 02/2010 |
| Video | Sharing a Measure of Success (Entire Talk) | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 56:20 | 02/2010 |
| Video | Strategy Versus Execution, Part 1 | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 02:35 | 02/2010 |
| Video | Strategy Versus Execution, Part 2 | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 03:33 | 02/2010 |
| Video | What Have I Learned as a CEO | Rashmi Sinha · Jonathan Boutelle | SlideShare | 02:05 | 02/2010 |
A media company on the Internet requires a lot of traffic to make it worth the time to make large-scale brand advertising happen, explains SlideShare CTO Jonathan Boutelle. His cofounder Rashmi Sinha said it's important for a Web site to make clear to their users how they intend to generate revenue and whether it's going to be through ads. Even when the site first launched, she continued, they have always had advertising. Sinha describes it as making a pact early on with their users that SlideShare will be an ad-driven service that they can use for free.
Getting into entrepreneurship isn't a jump, asserts SlideShare CTO Jonathan Boutelle, it's a pivot, and more often than not, a series of pivots. He adds that if the first thing you do isn't your dream product or service but it gets money from customers, you're already headed in the right direction as an entrepreneur. And what motivates an entrepreneur? His cofounder Rashmi Sinha says that for herself, it's the ability to be independent and to always be facing a new challenge.
To reach the point of seeking out venture capital, Rashmi Sinha, cofounder of SlideShare, explains that the company developed in stages: SlideShare got to the point where it could no longer just grow organically and needed outside funding. "Your first investor [is] possibly your lawyer," interjects Jonathan Boutelle, Sinha's cofounder at SlideShare. He describes the process of an outside entrepreneur trying to navigate the world of Silicon Valley like peeling through the layers of an onion: first, there are the lawyers and advisers; then angel investors; and in the center, venture capitalists.
Jonathan Boutelle and Rashmi Sinha, founders of the presentation-sharing site SlideShare, describe the entrepreneurial process as a series of pivots. Boutelle explains it's not just a jump, but an evolving growth of stages that leads to an idea that can start a business. From there, Sinha says that focused execution keeps the vision moving forward. By continually measuring the activity, they both believe that entrepreneurs can better recognize the growth stages of their company.
Jonathan Boutelle and Rashmi Sinha, founders of the presentation-sharing site SlideShare, describe the entrepreneurial process as a series of pivots. Boutelle explains it's not just a jump, but an evolving growth of stages that leads to an idea that can start a business. From there, Sinha says that focused execution keeps the vision moving forward. By continually measuring the activity, they both believe that entrepreneurs can better recognize the growth stages of their company.
Is SlideShare about strategy or execution? "It's about both," answers Rashmi Sinha, cofounder of the presentation-sharing Web site. It surprises her how important execution is to the process. In Silicon Valley, she explains, there are a lot of smart people with good ideas who aren't persistent enough to make their vision come alive. CTO Jonathan Boutelle chimes in that one of the biggest engineering challenges to execute was the raw scaling of the site to handle nearly 25 million monthly visitors. Returning to the original question, he adds that good execution should drive strategy.
Execution-wise, SlideShare founder Rashmi Sinha believes that one of the most difficult tasks is getting people to stay focused on the problem. "It's exciting to build new features, but harder to make it work day in and day out." To do this, she explains that we identify the most important aspects of critical products on a daily basis, constantly reassessing the various frequencies and metrics of the site and business. Jonathan Boutelle stresses the importance of making these numbers easily understood and accessible for each employee of the company.
"The list of what I don't know is much larger than what I do know," surmises SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha. But the only thing she does know, she continues, is how to learn, figure out the situation she is facing and get better at handling it. Pressed deeper by the moderator, she emphasizes how important it is to ask questions and have good advisers. Good advisers "are able to spot the signals and see the patterns," she says, adding that a good adviser sees what stage your company is in just by hearing about the issues you're seeing. "It gets down to the whole Silicon Valley magic again," summarizes Jonathan Boutelle, cofounder of SlideShare - this is a community full of experienced entrepreneurs from whom you can ask for advice.