Entrepreneurweek Be Driven

With over 12 years experience in innovating marketing technologies through founding five startups to date, Nihal Mehta, is a noted expert in the emerging adoption of mobile technologies for media properties and consumer brands. Named one of the “25 People Every New Founder Should Meet in New York Tech” and a top “25 Up-And-Coming Startup CEO in New York” in 2012 by Business Insider, a 2012 AlwaysOn “Power Player NYC,” a top 10 NYC ‘Game Changer’ in the 2010 New York Enterprise Report, one of twenty RCR Wireless News ‘Mobile Movers and Shakers’ in 2008, a BusinessWeek ‘M-Commerce Baron’ in 2006 and named one of AdAge’s ‘Top 20 Marketers in Their 20s’ in 2005.

Nihal is currently CEO and co-founder of LocalResponse, Inc. which helps marketers respond to real-time consumer intent. Prior to LocalResponse, (which pivoted from buzzd, a leading real-time city guide), Nihal founded ipsh!, one of the first full-service mobile marketing agencies in 2001, which he sold to Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) in 2005. Nihal is also a Founding General Partner at the world’s first venture fund focused on mobile startups, ENIAC ventures; a Founding Partner of the India Internet Group which incubates and invests in Indian startups; and is an active angel investor including investments/advisories in Admob (sold to Google), Greystripe (sold to Valueclick), Movoxx (sold to Adenyo). Nihal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Philosophy and a BSE in Computer Science.

What challenge is your company addressing?

At localresponse, we make "ads suck less." ads have the potential to be super targeted based on the data we have at our fingertips today, to become real valuable 'content' to the user. localresponse mines public social data like twitter to make ads smarter. for example, tweet 'i'm hungry,' and see a banner ad for pizza hit minutes later.

Why are you an entrepreneur?

I am an entrepreneur to create, to make something out of nothing, to do the impossible. my personal mission is to make ads more and more contextual to the end user.

What is your best piece of advice to entrepreneurs?

1- find your passion, what i define as "what you think of being you go to sleep, the same thought that you have when you wake up" --> this is the hardest thing to do, often people live their whole lives before finding what they are passion about 2- work relentlessly at perfecting the passion you have found, embrace failure and keep iterating, "you only fail when you quit" 3- after some time (malcolm gladwell calls it "10,000 hours"), you become an expert in your field and see success!