START WITH
THE PROBLEM. MIKE XENAKIS

What does it actually take to build a company? At this week’s NES meeting, Mike Xenakis answered by telling the longer, less polished version of a founder’s journey: a first startup that failed, sixteen years helping grow OpenTable, and the lessons he now brings to students and early-stage teams.

Mike’s career did not begin with a startup. He spent six years as an Air Force officer, then earned an MBA at Kellogg and moved to San Francisco during the dot-com boom. He eventually joined OpenTable near its beginning, led product work, and later ran its European business. Since then, he has taught entrepreneurship, advised companies, and invested in founders. His point was that there is no one correct moment to begin. The right problem can show up at different stages of a career.

His first startup taught the hardest lesson.

Before OpenTable, Mike and a group of business-school friends tried to build a service for family caregivers. The need sounded real, but the team did not know that world deeply enough. They ran into its complexity early and stopped the venture before it went far.

He framed the mistake plainly: wanting to be an entrepreneur is different from caring enough about a particular problem to stay with it. The first impulse may get a team moving. The second is what helps them learn from customers, navigate messy details, and keep going when the idea gets difficult.

OpenTable started with restaurants, not reservations.

When Mike joined OpenTable, making a restaurant reservation still meant calling. The opportunity was obvious from the diner’s side, but a reservation website would be of little use without restaurants on it. So the team first built software restaurants could use on their own: tools for managing tables, remembering guests, and staying connected with customers.

That product gave restaurants a reason to join before the consumer marketplace was large. Once there were enough restaurants, online bookings became useful to diners. As more diners arrived, the platform became more valuable to restaurants. Mike described this as the compounding effect of a two-sided network—one that took years of work, not a quick launch, to build.

The business model changed with that growth. Restaurant software helped OpenTable get in the door, but bookings eventually became the larger part of its revenue. The lesson for a student founder is subtle: the first thing people pay you for may be the bridge to a much bigger source of value. You still have to make that first thing genuinely useful.

Funding is a stage, not a substitute for proof.

Questions from the room turned to venture capital. Mike walked through the progression from an idea or prototype at pre-seed, to early traction at seed, to the evidence of product-market fit investors often look for at Series A. Later rounds usually fund the work of scaling—hiring, expanding, and reaching more customers.

As an angel investor, he said he puts the people first. He looks for founders he trusts and a problem they are committed to solving. Funding can accelerate a business, but it does not create the customer need or the team’s conviction for them.

In an AI world, relationships matter more.

Mike also asked what remains defensible when software becomes easier to make. His answer centered on the parts that are harder to copy: understanding customers, earning their trust, and finding a way to reach them. Building a product faster is useful. Building something people choose, return to, and recommend is the deeper challenge.

Then the room became the workshop.

After the talk, members split into teams for a short pitch challenge. Each team took on one of three prompts: grow a student venture community, re-engage alumni, or create a community partnership. With little prep time, they had to name a specific problem and make a case for a solution that could actually work.

The room surfaced different approaches. One team focused on mentorship as a way to help people keep showing up. Another looked at partnerships built around what members already care about. The selected pitch connected community service with donor support to help lower the cost of study abroad. What stood out was not a flashy slide or a complicated product. It was the clarity of the problem, who it affected, and why the proposed fix made sense.

That tied the whole evening together. Whether you are building a marketplace, organizing a club, or pitching a new idea, begin close to the people experiencing the problem. Make something useful for them. Then earn the right to grow it.