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Entrepreneur of the Month: Vipul Vyas

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Name: Vipul Vyas

Company Name: Skewz.com

Brief Description:
Skewz is a media rating platform. What does that mean? It’s a site that lets folks rate political news in terms of liberal or conservative bias. It also consolidates all of these ratings and lets people see both sides of each story by offering alternative perspectives on the same news event.

1. What was your primary motivation for starting a company?
To keep people honest. It was that simple. We created a site that allowed everyday folks to “blow the whistle” on what they perceived as media bias either on the right or left. Conversely, the site also lets people advocate for certain positions. So, if you like a piece of advocacy journalism that promotes a view on say global warming, you can rate that as well…it’s biased…but in that case it’s perceived to be a good bias. In addition, we wanted to use all those ratings to provide insight on how certain media outlets lean and also let users better understand their own leanings by comparing how they rate articles relative to the crowd.

2. What were the major steps you went through to start your company?
Well, just getting the right team together that could pull it off. Having the right mix of people is key. Not everyone can sprint full speed all the time. Having a nice sized group of between 5-7 people lets you get an idea off the ground quickly and lets different people push forward with intensity at different times. Putting that group together was the first major step. Of course, then came hashing through ideas and executing.

3. How did you raise funding? At what point in your launch cycle?>
We have boot strapped this whole thing. You don’t need big money these days to just get started. At some point we may explore getting outside money when we want to change our acceleration.

4. What, in your opinion, are the elements that are key to being a successful entrepreneur?
Luck and perseverance. There will be plenty of moments when you’ll wonder if this was the right thing to do. You have to power through those moments while being realistic…though being realistic is not typically a defining characteristic of an entrepreneur.

5. What was the most unexpected thing you experienced in the process of launching your company?
Fun. I thought it would be much more stressful. But we’ve had a blast. Everyone on the team has had previous start up experience before so the mindsets are right. The biggest difference is perspective. We’re having fun and not letting it consume us in a negative way.

6. What is the one thing you wish you knew before you started?
How old I had become. I just can’t work into the wee hours of the night consistently anymore. But..that’s probably a good thing. When you put constraints on your scarce resources like time (and those constraints are now showing because of age), you end up using those resources more wisely.

7. What was your most valuable asset in the process?
The right attitude. It might or might not work. If you pin too much on things then it will consume you and you won’t be able to have fun. If you can’t have fun, it will own you and it will become a weight around your neck. Once that happens it isn’t fun any more, you become resentful, and you don’t do you best. Then you really are doomed to fail. People can tell what businesses are run by people passionate about what they are doing. If they figure out an operation isn’t driven by those types of people; customers, employees, and investors will leave.

8. They say starting a company is a life-consuming event – how did you manage to retain some balance in your life? (or did you?)
Don’t let it own you. As I said, once it becomes a drag and you become resentful towards your new venture; the end is near. Have fun with it. Understand the risk and have an alternative plan and be OK with taking that plan if things don’t work out.

9. What are some of the big opportunities you are seeing currently (India and US)?
With the rise of a homogenized culture around the world, I think the biggest opportunity is taking ideas from one part of the world and testing them elsewhere. The portability and relevance of business models form one part of the world to another has never been as fluid. If something works in the US (especially on the web side of things) it has a decent chance of working elsewhere. Going international quickly has never been so attractive.

10. Resources/advice for our readers out there?
Legalzoom.com and Quickbooks Online…mundane, boring stuff for incorporation and managing the books very, very early in the process but they were useful. Cheap..and they can get you going quickly. They add structure to your business and at least make you feel you’ve got something real on your hands the first few weeks out of the gate.