June 25, 2015: FIRE SIDE CHAT
A UNIQUE FIRESIDE CHAT With Simon Khalaf, Senior VP, Yahoo!Moderated by Rony Chammas, Founder
and CEO Peerspace took place in the beautiful offices of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP,
overseeing the golden gate bridge
A personal and wide-ranging conversation illuminated both speakers’ experiences with wit and wisdom.
The event was sold out, with more than 70 attendees.
Simon delighted us with insights and comments, quoted below:
“The ETHICS strategy for successful startups: Efficiency, Transparency, Humility, Innovation, Customer
satisfaction, Speed.”
“Acquisitions are like marriages, you lose 50% of what you have…”
“3 trend tracks: Mobile delivery market place, News/Content consumption, People to People
transactions.”
Simon also provided some useful tips:
“For Entrepreneurs: You cannot give up, Always hire A talent, Focus on execution, Don’t be overly
ambitious: set reasonably unreasonable goals.
“VC funding is like dating”: you need to show them you don’t need them, they will come running.
“The VC experience for startups is like the everyday Lebanese near death experience. It’s all about being
resilient.”
Our guest ended up on a very proud note for us Lebanese:
“Lebanese/semite are genetically wired for entrepreneurship.”
This convivial chat ignited a free flow conversation among all participants, and great opportunity for
networking.
In addition, we welcomed young Lebanese entrepreneur Karim Attiyeh from Paribus, who introduced us to his start up, Paribus. Paribus joined the YCombinator in SV. Read more here: https://paribus.co
