Last Friday, February 26th, Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen joined several other entrepreneurs, venture investors and academics at the 2010 Conference on Entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Jorn participated in a panel, the “Top 10 Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs,” alongside Gurbaksh Chahal (gWallet), Matt Cohler (Benchmark Capital), Carol Sands (The Angels’ Forum and The Halo Funds) and moderator Mark Leslie (founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas Software and current Lecturer in Management at Stanford). The panel discussed the ups and downs they’ve experienced as well as lessons learned.

One of the topics discussed were the main characteristics of entrepreneurs. Matt said passion makes or breaks a project. Gurbaksh said the ability to embrace rejection; being able to swallow rejection and deal with it, is a crucial characteristic. He cited how author J.K. Rowling was rejected seven times before her first book was published. Jorn agreed with the others and asserted that successful entrepreneurs have the following three qualities:

1. An optimistic mindset
2. The ability to absorb rejections
3. An ability to impact and inspire the people around you

A final question was raised and the panelists couldn’t come to an agreement. Are entrepreurs risk-seeking or risk-averse? Matt said entrepreneurs are change-seeking, not necessarily risk-seeking. Jorn said he sees himself as risk-averse, attempting to minimize risk as much as possible. What do you think? Are entrepreneurs risk-seekers or risk-averse?

(More photos from the panel to come)

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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of representing Meltwater at the Red Herring Global 100 award ceremony. At the conference in Laguna Niguel, CA, I presented Meltwater to a board of judges, highlighting who Meltwater is, what we do, and what makes us unique. The competition was tough. Eligible for the award were over 1000 companies who, within the last three years, had won a Red Herring regional award. Narrowing down their choice to a select few, Red Herring invited just 200 companies to present in Dana Point for the potential honor of being named one of the top 100 global companies of 2009.

The winners were evaluated on their financial performance and technology innovation. The judges also considered the companys’ global strategies and execution plans to help them assess how each company is prepared to handle the challenges of internationalization.

I believe that this award is an external validation of Meltwater’s place in the growing software industry. We are in good company as past award winners include Google, Yahoo, Skype, Netscape, Salesforce.com and YouTube.

View the full list of this year’s Red Herring’s Global 100 winners.

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One week ago, a catastrophic 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti and it’s estimated that over 200,000 people have died. Many of us are seeking ways to help.

Meltwater clients include non-profit organizations and charities around the world that are working hard to help in any way possible.

Here are a few Meltwater News clients who are making a difference in Haiti today:

Unicef United States Fund is helping UNICEF’s emergency response in Haiti and continually works to save children’s lives.
Donate on their website.

Church World Service is providing emergency supplies via local partners in Haiti, and is working with them on temporary shelter, food, and health assistance, while also supporting communities in the long struggle to rebuild.
Donate on their website.

World Vision’s 370 locally based staff are distributing emergency survival kits including food, water, blankets and tents as well as medical supplies to local hospitals and providing emergency health services to the injured.
Donate on their website.

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My last post introduced you to the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event, and on the 23rd November 2009, a group of Meltwater people attended the 9th annual event.

As the flagship event of the academic term, “SVCO bridged two world centres of ideas and explored the big issues and future directions of innovation and entrepreneurial phenomena in a vibrant and fast paced mix of masterclasses, tutorials, panel debates and networking events.”

The event brings successful entrepreneurs based in Silicon Valley to Oxford. Some of the big names in attendance included Biz Stone of Twitter and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. Silicon Valley is the birthplace of the silicon chip innovators and manufacturers. It eventually became the home and heartbeat of the high tech industry and has a global reputation as the hub of tech companies and innovation.

In my opinion, events like SVCO are changing the definition of “Silicon Valley.” No longer just a fixed geographic location, Silicon Valley is becoming more of a mentality. A good example is that Oxford is becoming a hub for entrepreneurship; there is a high concentration of start-ups and incubators based there as well as great talent coming out of the university.

Increasing access to information and communication is leading the Silicon Valley mentality to be transferred across the globe, and is helping to spread entrepreneurship without borders.

For an interesting summary of the event, here is a video from the BBC .

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