Words of Wisdom from Kaleil Isaza Tuzman

A couple of weeks ago I met one of the smartest guy you probably never heard of. Or, you have, if you’ve ever watched the Startup.com movie or if you know anything about the dot com bubble.

Kaleil Isaza Tuzman founded one of the hottest startups of the dot com bubble, govworks.com. He raised $50 million, grew the company to 300 employees and then scaled it down and sold it cheap ’cause of the bubble.

Ten years have passed and he’s done quite a lot. Most importantly, he founded KIT Digital, a publicly traded (NASDAQ: KITD) IP video enablement company. And the biggest one in this space, for that matter.

So, as I was saying, I had the priviledge to have a very fun & entertaining dinner with Reshma Sohoni, Kaleil and a few other people, a couple of weeks ago. And the the highlight of the evening was when I asked Kaleil what he would’ve done differently in the past 10 years. His answers stuck into my head so I decided to share them with you:

1. Keep your very good friends very close. You’ll find your best friends in your early 20s.

2. Have more fun. Much more fun. Don’t let work be your life. Get out and play. Try almost everything at least once.

3. Make more babies. Start a family. Early on, ’cause there really is no perfect time to do that.

That’s it. Thank you, Kaleil.

By the way, feel free to checkout my other posts from the “Words of Wisdom” series, here and here.