Power Point: Get customer-facing!

"If you're interested in an entrepreneurial career, find yourself in a customer-facing job."

-- Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony. I had lunch today with Waldorf, who was was a founding investor in the online-dating pioneer long before he rose to the top of the Pasadena-based private company. Besides telling me a few funny things ("Everyone thinks their town is the worst place for dating," he said--and in every new country the company enters, people tell him, "That will never work here."), he talked about what it takes to build a great business.

In a talk Waldorf gave at Stanford University--which I watched after lunch--he lists his "must-haves" for an entrepreneurial career. And yes, customer-facing experience is prime. "Whether you are in the social sciences or the engineering school," Waldorf says, "get a job where you can figure out what makes customers happy, how people buy products, [and learn how] how to make businesses go." --Jessica Shambora