Venture Voice

We’ve interviewed some of the most accomplished and most hungry entrepreneurs on this show, but now the year’s almost over and it’s time to choose the Entrepreneur of the Year. We have no distinguished panel of judges or wise editorial board to make this decision.…

If you think the ringtone business is for kids, then Fabrice Grinda has a $130 million lesson to teach you. After starting the eBays of Europe and Latin America, Fabrice brought the ringtone business concept to America by starting Zingy. We caught up with Fabrice, now 31 and a millionaire several times over, just a couple of hours before he finished his last day at the helm of Zingy.…

While some entrepreneurs fret over new business ideas, Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software focuses on hiring the best and brightest for his New York City-based software company, and then figures out how to make a profit with the products they create.…

Many would-be tech titans dream day and night about how their hot new idea will change the world. Derek Sivers just wanted to have his independent band’s CDs sold over the Web. No one would do it, so he built his own music store.…

At age 28, Mena Trott is a veteran blogger and an accomplished company founder. Six Apart, the business she started four years ago with her husband Ben, now has over 100 employees. Its stable of popular blogging products (including Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal) are used by writers of all types — from the most influential bloggers to children who communicate after school.…

The business world seems to keep getting more complicated, but Jason Fried is all about keeping things simple. When founding 37signals, Jason and his two partners staked their careers on simplicity. They wrote a manifesto to convince others of their philosophy of keeping design on the Web simple.…

Dropping out of college to start a technology company is almost a cliché. But is technology the only industry that can seduce an ambitious student into entrepreneurship? Tom Szaky dropped out of Princeton because he saw an opportunity in trash. At 19, he started developing an alternative to Miracle-Gro by using the excrement of worms that eat compost.…

You might expect that if you launched your pride and joy — your startup company — at a conference, it would automatically be the center of attention. At DEMO, the leading technology product launch conference, you’re hatching your business alongside 64 other companies with cool new technologies.…

New businesses usually start small and work slowly and steadily to build their reputation. But that’s not true of startups that choose to launch their product at DEMO, the most prestigious conference dedicated to launching new technologies. Presenters have to agree to be radio silent about the cool technology they’ve been working on night and day for the past several months, if not years, of their lives.…

Entrepreneurs who were doing business in the eighties might still remember IBM for its suits and corporate ways. Now Drew Clark, the co-founder of the IBM Venture Capital Group, has shed his tie and is changing that image. His group is opening up IBM’s vast resources to startups.…

Statistically speaking, Starvest Partners shouldn’t be in business: Few venture capital funds raised in 1998 survived the dot com bust, first-time partners are a huge bet, and no other venture capital firms are run by women. But don’t tell that to Deborah Farrington, the founder and co-chairman of Starvest.…

If you thought you’re an entrepreneur just because you started a software company in Silicon Valley, you’re dead wrong, according to Scott Rafer. It’s just too easy. Scott’s the CEO of San Francisco-based Feedster, an RSS search engine and ad network that allows people to find blogs, jobs and more.…

Some venture capitalists keep a low profile, preciously guard their e-mail addresses from needy entrepreneurs and put on a jacket for publicity photos. Not Brad Feld. Brad started his career building his own technology consulting company with nothing but $10 and a 19-year-old’s ambition.…

While some people still wonder if the fax machine has been rendered obsolete, Jeremy Hague is ready to write e-mail’s obituary. Jeremy’s brand new company, Netralia, recently released a product to rave reviews called Skylook. Many people use Microsoft Outlook to manage their contacts and send e-mail.…

If someone told us to listen to business insights from a former game show contestant back in the day when The Price is Right was the closest thing to a televised business competition, we would have laughed in their face. Since then The Apprentice has attracted many ambitious young professionals to do battle for a spot in the Trump Organization.…

A quick glance at Evan’s bio might make it seem as though he just stumbles into all the newest, hottest trends. However, the only thing Ev stumbled into was traffic (the kind you get on the non-information highway — where he discovered the value of listening to podcasts) on his commute.…

Entrepreneurs need community. This entrepreneur makes communities. An Illinois native, Scott Heiferman came to New York while working for Sony in 1994. He quickly joined the avant-garde of the Silicon Alley community while growing his new media ad agency, i-traffic.…

We covered the past with Joe in our previous show, but it’s clear he spends a lot of time thinking about the future. Many people muse about how they would do things differently if they had only the chance to do it all over again.…

Conventional wisdom tells us to go get a job out of college to learn the ropes, not to take on friends as business partners, and to accept defeat gracefully. Joe Kraus’s business war stories are anything but conventional. Before graduating college, he convinced five of his friends to pass on blue chip job offers to start a business of their own.…

This Internet bad boy doesn’t think he’s so bad, and one of the top venture capital firms agrees to the tune of $4 million. Don’t know who Philip Kaplan of AdBrite is? Well if you were doing anything remotely dot com related in the late 90’s you probably know who Philip Kaplan of F___edCompany.com…