Episode 94: Mira Wilczek - President and CEO of Cogo Labs

Welcome to Episode 94 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast from the leading authority for jobs & careers in the tech industry. For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed Mira Wilczek, President and CEO of Cogo Labs. Mira is also a Senior Partner at Link Ventures which is the firm behind Cogo Labs. Did you know that one of the top incubators in the tech industry is located in Cambridge? It is called Cogo Labs and their track record of success is extraordinary. They have been launching companies for the past 12 years with an 80% success rate, which is unprecedented. Their data-driven approach and capital efficient model, provides the foundation and insights to identify problems to launch successful consumer businesses. A recent success story is EverQuote, which went public last year. Mira is an entrepreneur with a passion for building companies and you should definitely keep an eye on Cogo Labs, as Mira and the team there have some very ambitious goals ahead. By the end of next year, they want to be supporting 30 concurrent companies and yes... they are on track to accomplish this goal. In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like: -The #1 reason why startups fail. -Mira’s background including a fun story from her days at MIT, plus her experience as an ‘ethical hacker’ at IBM and the company she founded, Red Panda Security. -The secret sauce of Cogo Labs - how they identify opportunities for building companies and why their model has been so successful. -The details in terms of the operations and platform at Cogo Labs, plus some company examples. -The criteria they use to determine when a company is ready to leave the nest. -What the job of a board member is. -Plus, a lot more. Did you know that we have a YouTube channel? We launched one earlier this year and there is a rapidly growing library of content to check out. You’ll find lots of great video snippets from our podcast, plus full interviews from our CEO Briefing and Inside: series. Go to youtube.com/venturefizz to subscribe. Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!