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What sparked your entrepreneurial journey?

Training for triathlons and sparking a new entrepreneurial journey

The question is what sparked your entrepreneurial journey? My answer to this question is a bit different depending on which of my three entrepreneurial journeys you are referring to. My very first startup was called datesite.com. It was a crush site that I built while I was in college at Harvard where you could enter email addresses of people you had a crush on and see if you matched with other people at your school. I think the main thing that sparked this initial journey was the fact that I was too shy to ask anyone out myself and I thought this product would be useful for students at Harvard and it turned out within one week a quarter of all of the students at Harvard had used it. My second startup was called Friendly, friend.ly. It was a social question-and-answer website where you could ask people questions about themselves and answer questions about yourself and it used questions and answers or a Q&A as an icebreaker as a way to meet new people. So Friendly was actually another dating site in disguise because it was really a way to meet new people. I think the thing that sparked this entrepreneurial journey was the fact that I was living in Silicon Valley and I had just graduated from Stanford Business School and everyone was starting companies and I felt like I should start a company too. Silicon Valley was a great place to start a new company and there were a lot of other entrepreneurial people around me and it was a really exciting time back in 2008 to be starting a new company. My third entrepreneurial journey is building AnyQuestion, the app that we are on right now. And the thing that sparked this entrepreneurial journey of building AnyQuestion was really the fact that I thought of a product I would want to use myself that hadn't yet been built when I was training for Ironman triathlons. I wanted to be able to ask the best triathletes in the world questions and learn from them and I was surprised that there wasn't a platform where I could do that. And that is why I started to build AnyQuestion in order to build a platform where people can ask the best experts in the world questions and learn from them. And it has since then become more of a place where anyone can share their knowledge, especially their tacit knowledge. So in summary, my first startup, Datesite.com, was based on building a product that I wanted to use myself, that I felt addressed a need that I had and that others had. And my current startup, AnyQuestion, also I have built in order to address a need that I have that I think others have as well. With Friendly, the inspiration was more just being in Silicon Valley and being around a lot of other people who are starting companies and feeling like that would be an exciting thing to do. So those are the things that have sparked my three entrepreneurial journeys.

Datesite.com was sparked by a need I saw for a product that I wanted to use myself, Friendly.ly was sparked by the Silicon Valley startup culture, and AnyQuestion was sparked by a need I had while training for Ironman triathlons.

What sparked my entrepreneurial journey? Well, it's interesting because my journey has taken different paths with each of my three startups. 

My first startup, datesite.com, was born out of my shyness and reluctance to ask anyone out myself. I saw a need for a platform where students at Harvard could anonymously enter the email addresses of their crushes and see if there was a mutual interest. Within a week, a quarter of all Harvard students had used it, sparking my interest in entrepreneurship.

For my second startup, Friend.ly, I was living in Silicon Valley after graduating from Stanford Business School. The entrepreneurial spirit was contagious, and I felt compelled to start my own company. Friend.ly was a social question-and-answer website that served as an icebreaker for meeting new people. It was essentially a dating site disguised as a Q&A platform.

My current entrepreneurial journey involves building AnyQuestion, the app we're on right now. This journey was sparked by my desire to have a platform where I could ask the best triathletes in the world questions and learn from them while training for Ironman triathlons. I realized there wasn't a platform like that available, so I decided to build it myself. AnyQuestion has evolved into a place where anyone can share their knowledge and learn from experts.

In summary, my entrepreneurial journeys have been sparked by different factors. The first was addressing a personal need and seeing its widespread appeal. The second was the entrepreneurial environment of Silicon Valley. And the third was identifying a gap in the market and creating a solution for it. Each journey has been unique and driven by different motivations.

Ed Baker answers your Entrepreneurship questions. See all the advice Ed Baker has and get answers to your own Entrepreneurship questions.

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Ed Baker is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive, currently serving as the CEO and Founder of AnyQuestion, an AI powered knowledge sharing platform. Prior to this, he played an instrumental role as the Vice President of Product & Growth at Uber and prior to that he sold a company to Facebook where he joined the team as the Head of International Growth. Ed currently sits on the boards of both WHOOP and Form, and his extensive experience in product management, growth strategies, and consumer technology has made him a sought-after thought leader in the tech industry.