I haven’t been able to devote as much time to this blog as I would have liked to, since the end of the school year looms and I have several final projects to finish.

However, my class on High-Tech Entrepreneurship has consistently been very good, and I want to post about the first of a series of four guest lectures over the next two weeks.

Today, Dany Levy from DailyCandy gave a guest lecture about her experiences at DailyCandy. A little background: DailyCandy is a free email newsletter that gives a personal, insider guide to the new and undiscovered. It has newsletters devoted to major cities including NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, Boston, and many more.

It was inspiring to hear Dany’s story, starting in print journalism at New York and Lucky, getting frustrated with the slow print publication process, and seizing the opportunity to use email to instantly send out information. This way, she was able to disrupt the way information was delivered. Oftentimes, Dany was able to beat the big name magazines to publishing scoops.

I took some notes, and this is a compilation of some of the more interesting take away messages that I got from the talk.

• Know what you can and can’t do, and find the right people to complement you. Trust in your team. Don’t be pigheaded about your beliefs.
• Don’t completely associate your company’s brand with one person. Spread the success among your team. A good example is Steve Jobs, who has long been associated with Apple’s success and innovation. When he left on medical leave at the beginning of this year, it was uncertain whether Apple would continue to be successful without him at the helm. However, we now know that the team at Apple is extremely competent and innovative, even without Steve at the head of day to day decisions.
• Embrace change, but stay true to what you believe in. Figure out what you believe in if you haven’t already.
• Dany didn’t like the idea of investing in a DailyCandy for men (Thrillist): It wouldn’t work because “Women like to share things. Men like to hoard.”
• There are differing opinions on this, but Levy believes that the idea should come first, and the money will follow.

I’m looking forward to the next three lectures in the series:

• Tuesday, April 21: Frank P. Slattery, Jr. ’59, President, Quintus Corp.
• Tuesday, April 28: Tim Ferriss, Angel Investor; Founder, BrainQuicken; Author: The 4-Hour Work Week
• Thursday, April 30: Professor Ed Zschau

I will try to post similar recaps of these talks as well. Until next time…