Eddie Mattout
Management Team Spotlights
“Entrepreneurs run into trouble when they try to “boil the ocean” instead of ruthlessly focusing on really nailing one core market or core product. It’s so easy to say ‘keep it simple, stupid,’ but I’ve seen entrepreneurs overthink features and products” says Eddie Mattout in our conversation about major challenges he has faced working with entrepreneurs.
We hired Eddie on the Winter of 2018, because of his passion for entrepreneurship, fun attitude (which make our meetings have a great mix between professional and hilarious) and his ability to focus on multiple tasks. He reached out to us earlier in the Winter and was willing to help us in any projects that we had to offer. We decided to hire him because he was ultimately a person we wanted to have in our team!
Eddie is a pretty amazing human being. He is a rising sophomore at Stanford studying Symbolic Systems. Eddie says that explaining where he is from is probably the most complicated part about him. His grandparents are Syrian and Lebanese. He spent the first years of his life in Venezuela, where his father is from, then in Mexico, where his mother is from. He moved to New York when he was in lower school. When he graduated high school, he moved to Israel and served in the army there. So, in summary, he is a Syrian-Lebanese-Mexican-Venezuelan American who served in the Israeli Army. How cool is that! Eddie also co-founded a non-profit that runs summer camps for orphans and youth-at-risk. During his free time, he loves to hike, surf, and listen to live music.
As a VP at Cardinal Ventures he works to find the best mentors and advisors to help our founders with their ventures. This includes investors, experienced entrepreneurs, and professionals in a range of industries. “I connect with people who are eager to help student entrepreneurs and are willing to share their time, energy, and knowledge with our founders,” says Eddie. He also organizes campus events for the Stanford community. These events serve as a gateway into entrepreneurship and provide valuable resources for aspiring founders and early stage ventures.
When asked what the coolest thing about Cardinal Ventures is, he says: “I’m a big believer that you are the average of the five closest people you spend the most time with. Cardinal Ventures has allowed me to get to spend time with incredible individuals, including founders, mentors, and the entire team. Working with such motivated people who are really trying to make some sort of tangible impact has taught me a tremendous amount. I hope to one day share some of the qualities of many of our founders. For now, I am excited to continue to learn from them and work as hard as I can to help the founders’ dreams become a reality.” Just like Eddie, the entire CV Management team is passionate about our founders and inspired every day by what they do!
When talking about what founders can do better at, he says: “Get it out there, get feedback and iterate. Focusing is the most important part of being an entrepreneur and all too often ambitious founders lose that focus.” His insights hopefully show a bit about who we are, what we do and what we are passionate about.
We thank Eddie for all of his hard work on making CV a great program!
Nicole Birkner
VP of Cardinal Ventures
