The Entrepreneurial MBA

Kyle Lui – Entrepreneur, Product Guy, Venture Capitalist & Tech Enthusiast

After graduating from Harvard Business School in 2011, I decided to exit the world of finance and enter the world of start-ups and entrepreneurship. Starting a company can be one of the most daunting experiences in one’s life. It was certainly an emotional and crazy roller coaster ride for me. After turning down a job in private equity and other early-stage tech opportunities to launch ChoicePass, there were plenty of times I thought I had made the wrong decision.

After we sold our company to Salesforce.com, I started advising other start up founders and even helped Salesforce assess potential investment opportunities. It was through this process that I realized how transformative my entrepreneurial experience was. Things that seemed obvious to me were mind blowing to first-time entrepreneurs. Because like anything, things always seem like common sense when you’ve gone through it.

I spent a couple years at Salesforce – common for founders of acquired start-ups. It is often as much about the people as it about the technology or the customers. However, unlike many other acquired founders, I had an amazing experience at the parent company. At Salesforce, I was on the founding product team for Work.com, re-launching Rypple.com (an innovative social performance management company that ChoicePass essentially merged with). Work.com would eventually be rebuilt fully on the Salesforce platform, and I gain first hand experience (and have some crazy battle stories) on how companies actually get integrated with the mothership.

As I was approaching my second year vesting cliff, I began seriously contemplating my next start-up. There were a number of ideas I was excited about, and I actually felt like I knew what I was getting myself into (night and day from the first time around). Then, I was approached by DCM Ventures, a unique venture capital fund with a truly global perspective. Despite moving in the opposite direction (entrepreneurship vs. venture), I actually see the opportunity with DCM as very entrepreneurial. The firm has a fantastic track record and a strong presence in the 3 largest technology markets in the world (US, China, Japan). The firm’s history of cross border transactions and business development was something other VCs only speak to. For DCM, it was a competitive advantage. So to sum it up – I’ve gone from private equity fund investing -> hedge fund -> business school -> start-up tech founder -> Product at large enterprise software company -> venture capital.

I hope this blog is helpful for those interested in entrepreneurship and technology, particularly those who didn’t learn to code when they were 15 and maybe pursued other paths prior to tech.

Follow me on Twitter: @ kylelui