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My Year of Incompetence | Jesse Lipson | TEDxRaleigh

3,186 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 18:03 · Indexed 6 October 2026

Channel: TEDx Talks · 2018 · Nonprofits & Activism

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Taking a year to travel the world with his wife, serial software founder Jesse Lipson details a witty and soul searching path of vulnerability and insight into the human condition of both frailty and potential, even if sometimes you are wading through buffalo excrement. Jesse is a self-taught software developer and became a full-time entrepreneur at age 23. Shortly after the dotcom crash, he took over a small pharmaceutical market research company called Rapidata.net and also co-founded a web development firm called novelProjects. After a successful acquisition of Rapidata by Greenfield Online in early 2004, he decided to focus on the SaaS (software-as-a-service) space and built ShareFile in late 2005. ShareFile is a file-transfer service built for business users who need secure, reliable and easy tools for sharing data. He launched ShareFile in late 2005 and bootstrapped the company from zero to four million users in six years. ShareFile was acquired by Citrix in 2011 and today has over $200M in revenue and several hundred employees. He served in a variety of roles at Citrix for the next 5 years, including serving on the executive leadership team as Corporate VP of Cloud Services.

Jesse co-founded HQ, a co-working community primarily based in Raleigh with over 200 member companies and 50,000 sq ft under management. Most recently, Jesse started a software company called Real Magic. Real Magic recently launched Levitate, which helps small businesses grow and manage their professional relationships to help drive more referral and word of mouth business.  He holds a degree in philosophy from Duke University and serves on the Board of Directors of Yext (NYSE: YEXT). This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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