Rick Marini has been there and done that at Hustle Con

About this video

Rick Mourini, founder of Tickle and Branch Out, discusses his entrepreneurial journey from starting Tickle with a $100 million exit goal in 1999 to building Branch Out to over 800 million profiles. He shares lessons on balancing passion with market opportunity, navigating company near-bankruptcy, executing successful exits, and adapting when platform dependencies (like Facebook) shift unexpectedly.

Key takeaways

• Rick set an ambitious but achievable $100 million exit goal for Tickle as a gut feeling rather than validated market data, and later sold to Monster for exactly that amount after seven offers—demonstrating the value of knowing when to hold and when to sell based on business visibility and growth trajectory.
• Non-technical founders must find a technical co-founder (’tech soul mate’) before raising money, as investors will immediately ask to meet the CTO; Rick emphasizes that working at a startup for two years on someone else’s dime can be more valuable than business school for aspiring founders.
• Rick advocates writing down 5-10 motivations for starting companies where passion and financial return are important but not necessarily #1, and prioritizes building products that impact hundreds of millions of lives over niche passion projects—while noting that exits under $100M (even $5-30M) are life-changing and worthy despite Silicon Valley’s focus on billion-dollar outcomes.
• When Facebook changed its platform policies and hurt Branch Out’s growth, Rick’s response was pragmatic problem-solving rather than despair—emphasizing that ‘inactivity leads to doubt and fear, activity leads to confidence and courage’ and that entrepreneurs must be prepared for constant pressure and volatility.
• Rick recommends angel investors allocate no more than 5% of portfolio to high-risk deals, invest in areas of personal expertise, and focus on great teams, large markets, and disruptive technology; he also advises early-career professionals to work harder than peers, say yes to opportunities, and maintain good attitude to attract mentors and best projects.

Episode details: published March 5, 2015 · 918 views · 28:23 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

← Previous: Neville Medhora obsesses about copywriting at Hustle Con · Next: From 0 to 1m Monthly Visitors - How NerdWallet Built a Massive Audience - Hustle Con 2015 →

All My First Million videos · My First Million profile · My First Million (official site)