SpotLight on Success: Serial Entrepreneur Andy Kurtzig

I recently interviewed serial entrepreneur and successful business person Andy Kurtzig. Andy has a great entrepreneurial story and is a near perfect case study in founding and growing a business. Andy grew up in an entrepreneurial home and explains how his many mentors helped be successful in business. Andy also tells us a pretty cool story about Steve Jobs. Andy’s background consists heavily of entrepreneurs and business people. Andy’s mother and father were both entrepreneurs. His mother founded a very successful software company in the early 70’s, about the time Andy was born. You can read more about Andy’s mom in the Learn More area below.

Another factor that might lead one to become a successful entrepreneur would be actually growing up in the Silicon Valley. Andy grew up in Silicon Valley, with 2 entrepreneurial parents. So, dinner time conversation was almost always about business and technology during a very exciting time! Business and Technology have always been Andy’s passion and he spent his teenage years reading business books like Michael Lewis’ “Liar’s Poker” and “Barbarians at the Gate.”

Andy is also a coder, which lends to business success since coders do not have to rely on third parties to build their websites, business portals, databases, etc. This self reliance is key to building a successful business and is akin to a contractor building his own house. Andy founded, and was CEO, of eBenefits, a web based human resources service. At eBenefits, Kurtzig built a talented team, signed significant partnerships with Fortune 500 companies like Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Marsh & McLennan, and raised $8 million of venture capital financing. He went on to sell eBenefits to an Inc 500 Company. Prior to starting eBenefits, Kurtzig founded ANSER to service and develop software for the newspaper industry. He holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an angel investor in several companies including StubHub (acquired by eBay in 2007) and iLike.

Necessity being the mother of invention, Andy originally launched his most recent venture as a way to help his wife get answers about questions regarding pregnancy. His goal was to get legitimate answers to good questions. When you combine that with his strong business background, his location in the Silicon Valley and the ability to code his own software, you get JustAnswer.com.

JustAnswer® is a website where people go when they want an answer from a Doctor, Lawyer, Mechanic or one of thousands of third-party verified Experts one-on-one. Millions with questions come to the site for affordable and fast answers in more than 100 categories, ranging from Medical to Legal. Experts typically provide answers within minutes. For more information about the company, please visit the top 200-ranked JustAnswer website or view real-time questions online now. Andy told me in the interview that there are experts in JustAnswer generating six figure incomes. Not too shabby in a recession era.

Learn More:

Listen to the full interview here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cybervillage-spotlight/2010/01/15/andy-ceo-founder-justanswercom
“In 1972, the chief executive of Silicon Valley start-up firm asked Sandra Kurtzig to write a computer program to track inventory for his manufacturing company. Perceiving this as a golden opportunity, she left her sales job at General Electric to start her own custom-programming business.” Source: http://www3.babson.edu/eship/outreach-events/sandra-l-kurtzig.cfm

Contact Rob: Rob.Thrasher@gmail.com