Recently I got a chance to talk to Megan Casey, co-founder of squidoo.com.

My favorite part of the conversation is when Megan talked about difference between having an idea and a vision. An Idea is something that strikes you in the night and you go “ooh!! that can be a lot of fun”. A vision is when you’ve taken your idea and started to articulate it, you’ve started to write it down and spec it out may be bounce it off a few people, but for the most part it is your vision. You start to come up with texture on how you are going to make it happen – these are the resources I need, this is the problem I am going to solve.

The biggest suggestion Megan had for all budding entrepreneurs is to have some discipline to take yourself to the point where you can say I have a vision and you can confidently tell the rest of the world what your vision is. As oppose to just saying that there’s this little thing I want to do or I am part of this team I or something like I work at Google – well, that in itself can be answer these days but you work at Google – why? what do you do everyday? what’s your vision?.

The minute you think of yourself as somebody with a vision that’s kind of empowering. It changes how you describe what you are doing, it changes how you care about what you are starting.

Below is the complete women2.0 video conversation with Megan:

Recently Women2.0 team – Shaherose, Emily and I got a chance to talk to Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch.

It’s really interesting when Caterina talks about how restraints breed creativity. There is a big advantage when you are starting out and nobody knows you and nobody cares about you. There is such a thing as too much money, too much attention, too much traffic – you can get lazy you, you can develop bad products – you see that happening at big companies all the time. You see people taking their customers for granted. When you are small , you are starving and you have to be incredibly creative to come up with marketing ideas, ways to distribute your software. You would not have been same creative if you had tons of cash, lots of attention and people are blogging about you all over.

Check the complete women2.0 video conversation below:

Recently I met with Veronica Belmont, co-host of Revision3’s tech-centric show, Tekzilla, and Qore on the PlayStation Network.

During our conversation, Veronica talks about being super passionate for whatever you are doing. If you are not, it’s definitely gonna show. If you don’t have knowledge to back up whatever you are talking about, there is no real substance to it.

Check out the complete women2.0 video conversation below:

Recently I met with Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream when Shellye shared how her experiences at companies like IBM, BlockBuster led her to where she is today.

One very fascinating story of our conversation is when Shellye was a summer intern after high school. When she told her supervisor that she wants to go to college and run her own company someday, her supervisor suggested her to take advantage of all the people in the company who run all kind of business. He supervisor suggested her to meet them and talk to them. Shellye was naive enough that she pulled out the directory and called VPs one by one and asked them to have lunch with her. To her surprise most people said “yes” – they were caught off guard by this little girl. She spent rest of her summer having coffee, lunch with people in all different areas at her company.

That incident gave Shellye the confidence to reach out to people – worst that can happen is somebody will say no – you are not any worse than before.

Check out the complete women2.0 video conversation for more advise on mentoring and planning:

Recently Women 2.0 collaborator Jazmin Hupp and I met with Wendy Lea. Wendy has worked as a bootstrap entrepreneur, corporate executive, and angel investor over the last 25 years. She recently joined GetSatisfaction.com as CEO. She shares her advice about when to admit that you don’t understand, raising capital, and how female leaders can authentically manage effectively.

Recently I met with Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff (Prentice Hall) and Director of Social Networking Alliances & Product Strategy at salesforce.com. She shares her personal experiences with Women 2.0 about the importance of mentors and role models, how immigration is similar to entrepreneurship, and her experience of writing a book. Learn more about Clara’s work at www.thefacebookera.com.

Recently I met with Sandy Jen, co-founder of Meebo, an Ajax-based in-browser instant messaging program which supports multiple IM services. She talks about how and why she chose to be where she is today, and shares her experiences as an entrepreneur.

Sramana Mitra on mentors and entrepreneurship (MP3)
Author of Entrepreneur Journeys, Sramana Mitra is an entrepreneur, a strategy consultant and a Forbes columnist. She blogs at www.sramanamitra.com.