20VC: How Entrepreneurs Should Manage Their Board & Why Time Constraints Are Always The Key To Progress with Paul Berberian @ Sphero

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2016

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Paul Berberian is the CEO of Orbotix, the company that created Sphero, the robotic ball controlled from your smartphone. They have investment from our friends in Boulder, Brad Feld and David Cohen. Prior to Sphero, Paul was the co-founder of Raindance Communications (NASDAQ: RNDC). Paul also founded Market Force Information, an emerging information company with a vision to provide retailers. As well as, LINK-VTC, a video teleconferencing company, which was sold in 1995 to Frontier Communications.

In Today’s Episode with Paul You Will Learn:

1.) How Paul came to be CEO @ Sphero?

2.) Paul has founded and run 7 businesses, How has Paul seen his style of leadership change over the past decade or so?

3.) Question from Brad Feld: When Paul disagrees with his board, how does he resolve it? What have been Paul's learnings in maintaining a happy board environment?

4.) Sphero have raised, at last count, $80m? How has Paul seen investor sentiment to hardware alter over the 5-6 years? How did he meet his investors? What did Paul do well and what would Paul like to improve upon for next time?

5.) Question from Brad Feld: ‘Sphero looks like a massive success but every startup has had failures, so what have Paul's failures been and what did he learn from them?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Paul’s Fave Blog and Newsletter: Quora

Paul’s Fave Book: The Black Box

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Paul on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the 20-minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings on Snapchat,
0:05.5	and today I'm very excited to bring you our second part of to this double on hardware,
0:10.1	with the first being on Wednesday with Ben Einstein at Bolt. And if you haven't checked that out,
0:14.2	that really is a must listen. And joining us for the show today, I'm delighted to welcome
0:17.8	a serial founder and entrepreneur in the form of Paul Barbarian.
0:21.6	Now, according to my count, Paul has run an incredible seven businesses and is now CEO of
0:26.8	Orbotics, the company that created Sphero, the robotic ball controlled from your smartphone,
0:32.1	and they have funding from our friends in Boulder, Bradfeld and David Cohen, just to name a few.
0:37.1	And prior to Sphiro,
0:38.6	Paul was the co-founder of rain dance communications, which floated on the NASDAQ. Now, Paul's
0:43.5	entrepreneurial endeavors do not stop there, but in the essence of the show, sticking to its name
0:48.5	of 20 minutes, we'll leave it for Paul to reveal all in the show. But before we meet Paul,
0:53.3	and with the weekend coming,
0:54.6	the weekend is time to sleep and unwind. But a great mattress makes it a lot easier. That's where
1:00.0	Eve come in. Eve are the makers of that great mattress. With three-layer technology and next-generation
1:05.2	memory foam, it comes packaged in a beautiful box and arrives the day after you order. They also
1:10.4	offer a 100-night
1:11.4	trial so you can ensure that the bed is perfect for you with free return pickup. So what's the
1:16.4	risk? Go to eavematress.co.uk. Enter 20 VC for 50 pounds off and it'll be with you the next day.
1:23.8	However, enough from me, so I'm now delighted handover to the main man, Paul Barbarian, CEO at Sphero.
1:34.3	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:39.1	Paul, thank you so much for joining me on the 20-minute VC today. I'm so grateful to you taking
	...

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