Innovation, Risk And Growth: Lessons In Entrepreneurship From Benzinga's Co-Founder Jason Raznick

Entrepreneurialism isn’t solely about the idea, research and drive to succeed — rather it’s primarily about the people you take along on the journey, the team you build around you.

Jason Raznick, co-founder of Benzinga, emphasized this point in The Raz Report podcast on Wednesday, noting that getting the best people was the biggest challenge when starting Benzinga from his home 14 years ago.

Influenced by his frustration with consistently missing his favorite TV show “MacGyver” due to being late, Raznick delved into research on digital recording. During his exploration, he came across Mike Ramsay, whose company TiVo had just filed a patent for a digital TV recorder.

While Raznick bypassed a job opportunity with Ramsay at TiVo in favor of continuing his studies at the University of Michigan, it gave him his first taste of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur.

“That experience of finding problems and solving them showed me a lot of things about entrepreneurship,” he says.

People Make The Company

Raznick’s path to co-founding Benzinga began by building a steady following on Yahoo message boards writing about small defense and security stocks.

Raznick calls himself co-founder because he believes every person who comes along in the company with a creative mindset and adds value to the product is also a co-founder.

“I’m the co-founder. A guy named Bill just walked in. He could create some new product. So why am I the founder? I’m not. Bill’s co-founding it every day, and that’s exciting to me,” he says.

And this is one of the biggest challenges facing any entrepreneur, says Raznick. You can’t do it alone with a product such as Benzinga. You need those “Bills” and finding the best ones isn’t easy.

“It’s the people at the end of the day that make the company. I have nothing to do with it, basically, other than putting the first shingles on, nothing to do with it. And so the biggest challenge is getting people, but also getting people to believe in the dream,” he says.

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But Not Everyone Believed In The Dream

Another challenge is funding, and Raznick heard his fair share of “no” when starting up Benzinga. Even people in the industry — some who were friends — for whatever reason, said “no.”

“And they would have had a nice exit at the point where we sold a majority of the company and they said no to me. It hurt at the time,” he says.

And it’s a part of this experience that taught Raznick one of the chief lessons about entrepreneurship: you can’t please everyone — sometimes they have to hear “no.”

“When I started the company if someone had an idea, even though I didn’t necessarily agree with it, I’m like, all right, let’s go for it,” he says.

He adds: “What ended up happening is performance of the company didn’t do well at this time because you’re trying to please everyone. You’re not really being definitive with decisions, and that’s not a way to grow a company.”

“So, you have to become comfortable in making decisions, even if they might upset some people,” Raznick says. “And so I would say the biggest lesson I would take in this one is radical candor and not be afraid of it.”

Delight Your Customers

Finally, but crucially, you’ve got to make your customer, or end user, delighted with your product, Raznick says.

“You got to be passionate about solving the problem and delighting your user,” he says. “Think about how you help the user. And then once you’ve got that solved, then you go out and execute.”

Raznick also stresses the importance of removing ego when executing and making decisions. “So, if you’re not good at receiving feedback, then this world isn’t for you,” he says.

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Watch the latest episode of The Raz Report below:

Photo: Benzinga