Jessica Mah (inDinero) - A Startup is a Learning Experience

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Business, Life Lessons, Creativity, Startups, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Education, Stanford University, Leadership, Challenges, Journey, Culture, Etl, Innovation, Founders, Stanford, Entrepreneurship

4.5 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2011

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

InDinero Founder Jessica Mah discusses the realities of the startup experience, in conversation with STVP faculty member and entrepreneur Steve Blank. Sharing the early successes and missteps for her company, Mah honestly reveals the lessons she continues to learn while directing inDinero's path to success through its commitment to customers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, brought to you weekly by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
0:10.3	You can find podcasts and videos of these lectures online at eChorner.standford.edu.
0:18.6	So tonight I'm incredibly pleased to introduce Jessica Ma'a, and she's currently the founder and CEO of Indonaro.
0:28.6	And I thought we'd maybe just start this conversation with kind of, tell me about your company. You've got 30 seconds to kind of give me about your company.
0:37.9	Short, you get 30 seconds to kind of give us the short version of what do you do and why do we care?
0:44.4	My name's Jessica Ma. I run a company called In De Niro and we started it about 18 months ago.
0:51.3	I went to UC Berkeley and studied computer science. And while I was there, my best friend
0:58.0	Annie and I were working on a past business, and we thought it's really difficult to manage our
1:04.0	business finances. We never knew how much money we were making, what our margins were, how much we
1:09.9	were spending. And I thought there
1:12.2	has to be a better way than to use a complex accounting software like QuickBooks. So we started
1:18.5	in DeNaro out of our dorm room and your Ycombinator funded. And then we raised a little money after
1:24.4	that and we're still going strong. Great.
1:29.7	So let's go back to your days in college.
1:32.4	Did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
1:34.6	I was pretty sure I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
1:36.0	And why was that?
1:45.0	I started just building companies in college, like very small, just for fun, businesses. And I thought it'd be really cool to do this after college.
1:49.0	Like I wouldn't have to work for anyone.
1:51.0	Little did I know how wrong that was.
1:54.0	So you already had the bug. Did you have the bug before college?
1:57.0	I had the bug in elementary school.
	...

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