Bianchini on TBG and the Pickens Plan

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Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 6:30pm

Ning Blog >> Gina Bianchini

http://blog.ning.com/?author=3

Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 6:20pm

Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 6:19pm

I’M a child of Silicon Valley. I grew up in Cupertino, Calif., in the 1970s and ’80s, just as the area was transitioning from an agricultural center to a technological one.

My dad taught high school history and my mom was a homemaker, although I think of her as an entrepreneur. She raised three kids less than six years apart on a schoolteacher’s salary and held all kinds of odd jobs to help with the bills.

When I was 9, I started earning money by breeding mini lop rabbits and selling them through the local newspaper. Later, I worked my way through Stanford by alphabetizing applications in the admissions office, serving as a mountain-biking park ranger and selling advertising as an account executive for The Stanford Daily — among other jobs.

After graduation, I started in the San Francisco office of Goldman Sachs as an analyst in its high-technology group. In 1994, the San Francisco office was just a tiny outpost of the Goldman mother ship in Manhattan. There were only four or five of us working on deals when the Internet hit. Suddenly there was a ton of work for our little team, and I got a lot of responsibility and exposure. Directly or indirectly, most of the relationships I’ve developed throughout my career came out of that experience, and a lot of my best friends today are people I worked with when I was 22.

Eighteen months after joining the firm, I assigned to work on an initial public offering for the CKS Group, a Web site development and marketing communications company. The three founders of the firm had come out of Apple, and the C.E.O., Mark Kvamme, and I hit it off. Mark and his chief financial officer invited me to come over to run acquisitions, investor relations and equity investments, which I did for the next two and half years until I went back to Stanford to get my M.B.A.

About halfway through business school, Mark, who by that time had moved over to Sequoia Capital, called and said, “Gina, let’s start a company.” In the mornings I would go to class, and in the afternoons drive over to Sand Hill Road to work on this start-up out of the Sequoia offices. Two days a week, I taught a spinning class, too.

When I finished my M.B.A., I took the role of president, then chief marketing officer at the company I had incubated, Harmonic Communications, which provided advertising measurement and analytics. It was through Harmonic that I met Marc Andreessen, who was an investor and board member. Marc had been a founder of Netscape, and he and I shared a passion for the possibilities of social communication on the Web.

In 2004, after we sold Harmonic, Marc and I started kicking around ideas for a new company. We became incredibly excited by a simple question: What would happen if we gave people the freedom to create their own social experiences online? Our conversations started slowly, but we actually decided to start Ning over one long Sunday lunch.

When working with a co-founder, it helps to have the same core values and complementary skills. I know advertising and finance, and Marc is obviously strong in technology, among other talents. Neither of us wants the other’s job, there’s a lot of mutual trust, and we share the same approach to work.

Before Ning started, Marc and I decided that we would judge our success by the diversity of networks on the platform. Today we have more than 600,000 and counting. It seems as if there is one for every hobby, school, language or interest you can think of. I’ve seen networks for everything from raw-food enthusiasts to fans of Britney Spears.

I set aside time each day to look at new social networks on Ning, and I’m constantly inspired. Recently at a conference, one of the participants told me that he and his wife were starting a site for parents of terminally ill children. Enabling those types of connections reminds me why we do what we do.

As told to Daisy Wademan Dowling.

http://www.nytime

Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 6:03pm

Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 6:01pm

Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 6:01pm

The Power of Social Networks

Airtime: Thurs. Apr. 16 2009 | 09 19 00 ET

A free platform for do-it-yourself social networks has been gaining momentum, says Gina Bianchini, NING CEO.

Para ver el vídeo ir a http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1095044147&play=1

Comentario por Anna SB el octubre 17, 2009 a las 5:28pm