Who is Farhan Lalji?

E-consultancy has an interesting article about Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom (the guys behind Kazaa, Skype and Joost) today. The article talks about the difficulty of serial entrepreneurial success.

One thing I’d be interested in seeing is how likely big successes can be followed up by big successes. I was talking to a guy here at Yahoo! who came on board as part of an acquisition. It was his second time being in a company that was acquired. I hadn’t heard of the first company and if I wasn’t working at Yahoo! I doubt I would have known the name of the second. But he was able to be a part of two solid start ups that had solid exits. Nothing spectacular like Skype in terms of exits, but very successful.

So here’s my theory, when you have a big successful exit, something like Skype – which sold to eBay for $2.6 BILLION everyone has their eyes on you. They want to know what you do next and if you enter an industry they’re all over changing business models and investing in innovation to make life difficult for you.

I think this is why Joost is having a hard time. As soon as the media industry saw the guys who started Skype going into the video industry they were investing and building like crazy. Look at what’s happened since Joost started, Hulu launched and has done well, the BBC launched it’s iPlayer, NBC has broadcasted the Olympics and the NFL is talking about broadcasting it’s games online.

To me this explains why so many people who have a killer entrepreneurial effort the first time around end up in the VC world or go into hiding for some time. I’m not saying it’s impossible for people who have had a successful entrepreneurial experience to pull it off a second time. I’m just saying they have a spotlight on them and that’s something first time entrepreneurs or people who have only so-so experiences can avoid.