PETER HARTZBECH
CEO, iMotions
Red Herring's list "25 Titan in Waiting", the list of young entrepreneurs who will rock the world in 2007 and beyond, includes Peter Hartzbech, CEO of iMotions based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The list was published in December 2006. iMotions participated in Entrepreneurship Lab course in the Fall semester of 2005. Peter went on to hire Sebastian Buermeyer one of the students in the E-lab team assigned to iMotions.

Read the article.

GARY S. MILIEFSKY
Chief Technology Officer, Excelcion, Inc.
As Chairman and Co-founder of QuickBuy, Inc., I worked closely with an E-Lab team and received incredible support from Ken Morse. I appreciated the time he was so excited about what we were doing at QuickBuy, that he climbed up on top of a table in a crowded room to quickly find the MIT alum that he knew we could work with and make the introduction.

My first job in the software industry was to write TCP/IP code (implementing protocols like SMTP and FTP) at Spartacus, A Division of Fibronics, in Lowell, MA. That was in 1987 before anyone had ever heard of the "Internet"...it was Darpanet, a DOD project, at the time. At Spartacus, we built a big black box called the "K200" which connected IBM mainframes to the "Internet" using our KNET TCP/IP software. This box was the first ETHERNET box for an IBM mainframe.

It was exciting for me to participate in one of the many E-lab CEO Appreciation events -- to stand wedged between The FOUNDER of Spartacus and the FOUNDER of 3COM (Bob Metcalfe) discussing the state of the Internet. You meet people like these once in a lifetime. MIT E-lab brought me full circle in an industry I've been passionately involved in for most of my adult life (ok - when I was 13, after winning the science fair, I bought a Timex Sinclair - my first computer - - but no internet connectivity - in fact - no hard drive and, I believe, only 16k of volatile memory - things have definitely changed for the better in these past 20 years - as I write this on my Compaq IPAQ - half the size of the Timex Sinclair and 4096 times more memory).

My piece of advice is simple. Be honest, ethical and passionate. Be creative but stay organized. Communicate often. Find advisors and mentors who are smarter than you and more successful. Now is the time to build upon your dreams because this moment will pass you buy if you do not seize it. Finally, and always, remember to "measure twice - cut once."

I thought it was cool that Tarun and I started a company together. We didn't even know each other before we took E-Lab. In fact, we met on team formation night!

This is the most exciting thing and the scariest thing I have ever done. We are bootstrapping, which only seems to add to the anxiety. We aren't interested in funding right now so we don't have to fool around with all of that. On the good side, this allows us time to focus more on our customers, our service, and our product. However, we are using our own money and this has added to our emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes it feels like we are on top of the world and are possibly going too fast... Maybe we are signing up too many customers at one time... especially without a working product. Other times I feel that we are behind and that a new technology or large incumbent competitors are going to squash us. Also, without a paying customer, we only have about 3 months of cash to keep things floating. We have some customers ready to do a trial with us, we just need to get our product ready. We should have things ready this week.

Just a word more about our company: We provide medical transcription services to doctors, clinics, and hospitals. We basically turn voice files into text documents in 24 hours or less. It is not a real high tech solution, but we beat our competitors on cost (our prices are up to 50% lower) and on turnaround time. Our aim is to provide high-volume, low-cost transcription. We set up doctors with digital handheld recorders or with 1-800 dialup service in order to receive the dictation, we then return the documents to the clinic via the Internet.

Frankly I wish we could hire them full time.

Their project will help us decide how to roll out in the US, which is critical for our success moving forward.

They have surpassed my personal expectations over the first few weeks.