Managing director of Next Coast Ventures

Show notes: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake47

My guest for Episode #47 is Mike Smerklo. He is an entrepreneur, an investor, he’s the co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures. He was one of the first employees at Loudcloud, recruited there by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

in 2003, he purchased ServiceSource, a 30-person technology services startup in San Francisco. As CEO over the next 12 years, he grew the business into a successful 3,000-person publicly traded company with close to $300M in revenue.

Mike now shares his lessons in his book Mr. Monkey and Me: A Real Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs.

In today's episode, Mike shares favorite mistakes about giving into “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” and how he made the mistake of trying to be a blend of two very different leaders who were both role models to him. We also talk about why he wrote the book and the “SHAPE” formula — Self Awareness, Help, Authenticity, Persistence and Expectations.