"Sometimes an entrepreneur falls in love with an idea, you know, they're mesmerized by it. They build a product and they put it out there -- and yeah, it falls flat. Nobody seems to get it. A lot of times, though, there is a kernal in that idea that really plays well and the entrepreneur has to be open. Is there a way to morph it? Is there a way to pivot it into something that is going to be cool and is going to get traction. If there closed to that, it's not going to be good. If they're open to working with whatever seed idea is in there, I think that that can be okay." -- Rich Skrenta
Finding Great Ideas
Rich Skrenta , CEO, Blekko+
Rich Skrenta is a seasoned technology executive with nearly two decades of industry experience. Most recently he was founder and CEO of Topix, the leading online news community. Prior to Topix, Rich headed up engineering for a variety of products within AOL, including AOL Shopping, AOL Music and Netscape Search. Prior to AOL, Rich was the co-founder and CEO of NewHoo, which was acquired by Netscape and renamed the Open Directory Project. The ODP is the world's largest human edited directory of the web and used by Google, Yahoo, AOL and many other companies. Rich was an engineering manager at Sun Microsystems prior to NewHoo and has also had development roles at Unix Systems Labs and the Amiga UNIX Group at Commodore Business Machines. Rich holds a patent in network security, and has authored many well-known pioneering software efforts, including some early multi-user online games. Rich graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Computer Science.
