Dharmesh Shah: Insights from and around MIT

At Business of Software 2008, Dharmesh Shah of the OnStartups blog (you should subscribe to his RSS feed) gave a great talk about start-ups. Dharmesh has a great presentation style – a perfect demonstration of how you don’t need soaring rhetoric to create a powerful and engaging talk. When Dharmesh speaks, it’s low-key and conversational, as if addressing a small group of friends. It almost seems ad-libbed, but that might just be because he forgot his slides.

Dharmesh has started a few start-ups. Originally, he bootstrapped, but for his most recent start-up he crossed to the dark side and got VC funding. Dharmesh also spent a year at MIT. All this means he has a uniquely informed perspective on the business of software. Well worth listening to.

Dharmesh talks about, among other things:

Your idea can suck. Just get started.
Not having cash breeds good behaviour.
The 12 flaming hoops of venture capital.
Write a blog, not a business plan.

Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh Shah is co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, the NYSE listed inbound marketing platform with a market cap of over $7 billion and $590 million revenue in past year.

Prior to founding HubSpot in 2006, Dharmesh was founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions, which was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. Dharmesh is an active member of the Boston-area entrepreneurial community, an angel investor in over 60 startups, and writes about startups, inbound marketing, and company culture. Dharmesh holds a BS in Computer Science from UAB and an MS from MIT but learned everything he knows about the software business from his regular attendance at Business of Software Conference since the very first one!