Clarence Wooten is a Serial Entrepreneur, Investor and Public Speaker in Palo Alto, California.

Clarence Wooten's Bio

Clarence Wooten is a serial internet entrepreneur who has been creating and building Internet startups since 1998. Back then he co-founded and was CEO of ImageCafe.com, an online superstore of pre-fabricated websites for small businesses. ImageCafe was acquired for $23 million by Network Solutions/Verisign in November 1999, 7-months after launch and just before the dot com bubble popped.

After being an entrepreneur based in Maryland his entire career, Clarence moved to Palo Alto, CA in early 2011 — to the heart of Silicon Valley, with the goal of doing it bigger and better. In pursuit of this goal, he recently founded VentureFund.io where he serves as CEO; and co-founded Progressly where he serves as Chairman.

VentureFund.io is a real-time traction marketplace that makes it easy for founders to build relationships with investors simply by sharing a live-feed of their startup's growth data. Our goal is to reduce selection bias and make access to capital performance driven.

Clarence is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and was honored as a distinguished alumnus in 2010.

In this episode, we discussed:

• 03:18 –  What Clarence does in his day to day roles at VentureFund.io and Progressly
• 05:18 –  Why he's enjoying the work he's currently doing
• 06:00 –  Who inspired his direction to go into business and investing
• 07:27 –  The biggest lessons he learned as a business owner over nearly 20 years in business
• 09:45 –  A story about an early roadblock on his career journey that almost tanked his business and how Clarence pushed through
• 11:35 –  When he began learning about the investor side and the process of becoming an investor
• 14:45 –  Explained what VentureFund.io is and does
• 15:50 –  Clarence defines “startups”
• 16:45 –  Explained the Traditional (TVR) and Traction methods for raising assets for  your startup
• 22:15 –  What might be contributing most to businesses that are failing
• 23:50 –  How he keeps pushing himself to new and higher heights

Links and resources mentioned:

• ClarenceWooten.com
• Clarence Wooten on Twitter
• VentureFund.io
• Progressly
• Clarence's Tool:  Techmeme.com 
• Clarence's Fav Book: Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0

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