Last Friday, February 26th, Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen joined several other entrepreneurs, venture investors and academics at the 2010 Conference on Entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Jorn participated in a panel, the “Top 10 Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs,” alongside Gurbaksh Chahal (gWallet), Matt Cohler (Benchmark Capital), Carol Sands (The Angels’ Forum and The Halo Funds) and moderator Mark Leslie (founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas Software and current Lecturer in Management at Stanford). The panel discussed the ups and downs they’ve experienced as well as lessons learned.

One of the topics discussed were the main characteristics of entrepreneurs. Matt said passion makes or breaks a project. Gurbaksh said the ability to embrace rejection; being able to swallow rejection and deal with it, is a crucial characteristic. He cited how author J.K. Rowling was rejected seven times before her first book was published. Jorn agreed with the others and asserted that successful entrepreneurs have the following three qualities:

1. An optimistic mindset
2. The ability to absorb rejections
3. An ability to impact and inspire the people around you

A final question was raised and the panelists couldn’t come to an agreement. Are entrepreurs risk-seeking or risk-averse? Matt said entrepreneurs are change-seeking, not necessarily risk-seeking. Jorn said he sees himself as risk-averse, attempting to minimize risk as much as possible. What do you think? Are entrepreneurs risk-seekers or risk-averse?

(More photos from the panel to come)