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Kris Jones

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25
first
2015-01-13
most recent
2015-01-13
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Years of that. And I believe those companies are should be very, very big companies. So I think we'll go into a different sort of era in a couple of years where a lot of the disruption has happened and it'll move over into other industries. But no, man, I'm long tech and I'm investing my money where my mouth is as it relates to early stage tech in particular around mobile, social, local. And because of my background, I can't help but put some money into e-commerce.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “No, there's, I mean, I think the valuations right now are very, very high. But I don't believe so. And the reason I don't believe there's a tech bubble is because I believe that the period of time we're in right now is a period where you're going to see a lot of disruption, meaning that industries that have existed, whether it be the auto industry, for instance, Uber or the hotel industry, for instance, there's so many different hotel companies out there like Airbnb and others. So we're going through this period of disruption whereas these old school industries that have kind of failed to innovate or haven't taken advantage of mobile and in particular mobile are really quite honestly, they've met their match. And so I think we have several more”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Because I think that what we achieve in life tends to correlate with what we think we're capable of achieving. So the bigger our goals, the greater the things we think we could accomplish, the more likely it is that we are to accomplish them.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's as easy as going to WordPress and starting up your own blog, you could create a blog and start to express your thoughts on startup companies and that space so that when you do reach out to, say, a Gary Vaynerchuk or a Mark Cuban or one of these guys, the Josh Koppelman, you have a resume and you're really well prepared”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “The biggest supporter and fan of those type of people. So I don't know. I think it's, as long as you're sincere and you try to just test it by or are you adding value or are you trying to get something? Now, granted, let me clarify if someone out there that's listening wants to get into the VC or the VC space or into the investment space, I think it's completely appropriate to take coursework and to get experience to enter into a business plan, intern at a venture fund. So in other words, I think there's a professional angle here, which is, hey, you reach out to someone like myself or someone else and say, I've been prepping for this. You know, this is something I'm really interested in.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I get, honestly, I don't want to be, I'm an optimist, man, but to be honest, what I get a lot is, you know what, I get a lot of good questions. So let me start. I get a lot of really sincere, hey, here's my business idea. You know, what do you think? Or here's my business plan will you take a look? But I also get a sense that because I'm very public socially and whatnot, they'll read articles and stuff and they'll think that I could just go out for lunch with them or just very quickly give them what they need in order to be successful. And the reality is that it takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. And I think if that was expressed as a lead-in or if I got to know the person and I found that out, I became”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Internships, asking them a very thoughtful question on something that they've written. I mean, if I write something and get it published and someone reaches out and not unlike you did and says, hey, you know, I read your article here or there on your blog or on TechCrunch or wherever. And what do you think about this? I think that's one way of doing it. Because you're adding value. You're being provocative, if you will. You're challenging or you're getting the venture capitalist or the influencer to think. That's a big difference, Harry. Huge difference than what I get all the time. And again, I'm no Mark Cuban. I can't even imagine what Mark's email and LinkedIn and all those things look like.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So, you know, I mean, I always, there's a couple different ways of answering this because I've had this question before. One is you need to work on building up your influence. So building up your professional network. I almost said social network. That's a part of it. But going out and building up your network. And the best way to build up your network is to add value or to give value. So instead of reaching out and asking for something from an influencer, reach out and give them something. So that's one way that I would recommend.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “There's nothing wrong with that. You're human. But I'm telling you, if you could just kind of condense what you focus on on any given time to say one to three things, what you'll find is that you accomplish a lot more and you build a much stronger self-esteem and self-sort of concept because you prove to yourself that you actually can get stuff done versus the people who have”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So that last characteristic, which is really truly the silver bullet, is one's ability to stay focused. What happens with entrepreneurship, you know, people, especially if you're successful, people come to you all the time with more ideas and more ideas. The key really is to find something. You know, you got to vet out your idea, but find something that is smart, you know, that makes sense, that you believe in, something that you're passionate about, and then stay razor focused on whatever outcome you want from that. So if it's building it and selling it, you just need to be very, very focused and stay focused. People unsuccessful entrepreneurs tend to jump around too much. And anyway, that's kind of like my last characteristic, I think, that really, really could change the game. If there are any entrepreneurs that are out there that feel like you're, you know, the type of person that jumps around a lot of their, hey.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Sweet, sweet. The final one, dude. This is the silver bullet. This is the one when I was my first employee was at Pepper Jam was a guy by the name of Mike Jones. He was my childhood best friend. And he looked over at me and he's like, dude, how do you do that? I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you've been staring at the computer for five hours. He's like, dude, if a bomb went off outside of our office, you probably wouldn't even flinch.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Today, as an entrepreneur, as someone who wants to be successful, I'm going to overcome them and persevere. And that's going to define who I am. And that kind of attitude tends to motivate you. And then the final one, and I know we only have 20 minutes I always talk too long, but...”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “you know, not getting too full of yourself, not drinking your own Kool-Aid and being brutally honest about what your skill set is and where your weaknesses are. A lot of us as entrepreneurs tend to wait way too long to hire a compliment to our team, someone who's better at us than marketing or someone who actually understands the difference between financial accounting and financial analysis. And there's a big difference there. Two of the other characteristics or so One is this idea of just getting up in the morning and being juiced, being motivated to persevere. One of the quotes that I think of that I carried with me is the degree to which we persevere in the face of hardship defines the strength of our character. And I think what that suggests is that, you know what, no matter what comes my way,”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I would say there are a couple. I think that founders and successful entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic. They tend to be decisive, a characteristic of an unsuccessful entrepreneur is the inability to make decisions, in particular hard decisions. So successful entrepreneurs tend to be more decisive. Another characteristic, Harry, is this idea of self-awareness.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I just wrote an article that I submitted yesterday. It's called The Power of Gratitude. And it's amazing that leaders, successful people tend to be grateful. They tend to focus on the things in their life that are positive and that breed optimism. And those are the type of characteristics that correlate with being grateful for what we have, even though we want more. I think that's okay to want more. But getting more in tune with what you're grateful for and stop focusing on a lot of entrepreneurs, we do this, we tend to focus on what we don't have, that client that we lost, you know, something that's not going right. I'm telling you right now, based on experience, that's a waste of time. You need to focus on what we're”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “You know, that's great. Here's the lesson. The lesson is that there are a number of specific characteristics and qualities of successful entrepreneurs, those that succeed. There are also characteristics that don't contribute to success. And those entrepreneurs tend not to succeed. So when I look back on Pepper Jam, Clearly I made a lot of good decisions, right? It resulted in a good outcome. But having hindsight to look back and say, what do I know now that I didn't know then? There's a number of things that I do differently now. But ultimately those characteristics that I referred to are really the value that I give the companies that I invest in. And when I write for Forbes or Inc. or for any of these big publications, that's what I'm trying to share.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You know what? I'll just be brutally honest to that. I actually had achieved a level of financial independence and success before I sold just because I used to be a really successful affiliate marketer in those early days, the early 2000s. Did I go on a spending spree? Probably not. I had already moved at that point into my dream home and I was very fortunate, but I thought differently about what I could do for other people. I did swipe a couple of checks to people I love. I probably gave some money away to charity and stuff like that, which I wasn't in a position to do prior.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So happens, I know the time, September 1st, 2009 at about 8.58 a.m. because again, they were publicly traded and the announcement went out at 9 a.m. That's when my wire transfer came about 60 seconds before it went public. Yeah. So, I mean, dude, it was amazing.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Obviously, there is an anti-climactic aspect of selling your company. Yes, a But at the same time, just to be brutally honest, we put so much heart and soul into entrepreneurs do, into building companies that when that moment happens, yeah. I mean, oh my God, my life has changed dramatically. I mean, I was just reading something yesterday. I am no Mark Cuban, by the way, but I was reading something that Mark Cuban said on Shark Tank where he was like one of the people who pitched him said what is the first phone call you're going to make if you invest in my company? And he said, well, let's just let me just put it this way. Whoever I call is going to take my call. And one of the realities of selling your business to a publicly traded company and being able to tell the whole eBay story, you know, really has opened up just a tremendous amount of opportunities for me. So when I reflect on that day,”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “And he was part of a much larger company, I realized that where my passion and my excitement came from was really entrepreneurship, you know, building and starting things. And I felt that having some capital that I wanted to put to work, I felt that one of the ways that I could really do that best would be to invest in other companies. I founded a company called KBJ Capital, which now fast forward to 2015 is home to about 15 different companies, most of which are early stage technology companies. And so again, I'm just kind of living out my boyhood dream of the entrepreneurial dream. And I think when you're fortunate enough to eventually sell your company, you're in a position where you could give back. And honestly, investing in Coaching, mentoring is something that really juices me up.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, I mean, I'm a big believer in using your gut. I think that your gut, you know, that sort of intuition that we all have, it's important to get in touch with that and use it as often as possible. You don't always want to use it. Sometimes you want to put smart people around you and let them help negotiate and whatnot. But that particular instance, your listeners could go read the article to get more sort of background on it. But I believe I did the right thing. We ended up getting a deal done with GSI Commerce. As I said, we were then acquired by eBay. And that gets to your question, which is why did I start investing in companies and why have I become known as sort of a venture capitalist or an angel investor? And it's because after I sold my company,”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “It really gained a lot of steam, and I sold that in 2009, a big company out of Philadelphia called GSI Commerce came in. They were a publicly traded company at the time. They acquired us. We became part of GSI Commerce, and then within short order we were acquired by eBay. And now the company that I founded called Pepper Jam is now what's known as eBay Enterprises Affiliate Network.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “No, so it was really exactly. But that laid the sort of the seed for a company called Pepper Jam. which it grew out of a gourmet food business that we took online in 1999. Yeah, but what I realized was that wait, I can sell gourmet food online, but I could also build websites, generate traffic to those websites using search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing and a number of other things that were still very early to the internet at the time. And what it was really, I was referred to as search arbitrage. So I made quite a bit of money during my graduate school and law school years. And then when I graduated, I took this idea of pepper jam, which was an internet marketing company and affiliate network, and grew it into one of the sort of most well-known and largest search agencies in the United States. And so from 2000 through 2008, we won a bunch of awards. And, you know, I hired 135 plus people.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “That I decided to get in the game. Even though I was a student, I decided to go online, build my own website, and figure out how to make money. And so what I did for about a year, year and a half was became obsessed with learning, self-teaching, learning everything I could about how to generate web traffic and then monetize or make money from that web traffic.”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Well, first, you know, thank you, Harry, for the opportunity to engage with your audience. It's really an honor and a pleasure. So, yeah, I've been what I call an accidental entrepreneur. I was a professional student for nine years after high school, so I went to Penn State and got an undergraduate degree in psychology and then went on to graduate school where I studied experimental psychology and I got a master's degree. And then I went to law school and got a law degree. But it was in really my first year at Villanova back in 1999. So it was really late 1998-99. where I became enamored, really fascinated by how I thought the internet was going to change the way we do things. And I guess that was somewhat premoniscent because I think all of your listeners would agree that the internet has completely changed the game. It's kind of rocked the world internationally. And it's created a tremendous amount of opportunities for entrepreneurship. So I will get to your question by saying”

    2015-01-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 002: How to become a VC with Kris Jones · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source