“If you’re interested in an entrepreneurial career, find yourself in a customer-facing job.”
— Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony. I had lunch today with Waldorf, who was was a founding investor in the online-dating pioneer long before he rose to the top of the Pasadena-based private company. Besides telling me a few funny things (“Everyone thinks their town is the worst place for dating,” he said–and in every new country the company enters, people tell him, “That will never work here.”), he talked about what it takes to build a great business.
In a talk Waldorf gave at Stanford University–which I watched after lunch–he lists his “must-haves” for an entrepreneurial career. And yes, customer-facing experience is prime. “Whether you are in the social sciences or the engineering school,” Waldorf says, “get a job where you can figure out what makes customers happy, how people buy products, [and learn how] how to make businesses go.” –Jessica Shambora