BLACKSBURG, Va.—
It's technology that knows what kind of music you like.Pandora is a very successful company founded by a guy with strong connections to Blacksburg.
On Wednesday, he spoke with a business class at Virginia Tech about entrepreneurship.
Pandora is probably best known as a convenient music application on smart phones.
Tim Westergren founded Pandora about 12 years ago in San Francisco and started developing the technology.
He's a musician and composed music for film, too.
During those experiences he discovered there may be a need to develop a system that identifies and plays music you like, based on just a few song selections.
He shared his journey with Virginia Tech business students on Wednesday about how he took an idea and turned it into a real business.
"If you have an idea, pause for a second and think about it and then decide 'is this something I should go pursue and spend some time on it?' Don't just kinda let ideas come and go," Westergren said. "You only live life once and if you have something that might be interesting, I think much better to it a try than regret not having done it years later."
Westergren's wife is from Blacksburg.
He says he's been coming here for about 20 years now.
Professors and students seemed very happy that he was willing to share his adventure in the business world.
